Game 446: Eastern Front (1941)

Photo collected by Imperial War Museum, original source unknown

In the spring of 1941, two years after the fall of Poland and subsequently uneasy relations with Russia, Hitler's German Reich stood near the peak of its power. Northern France was occupied, Yugoslavia partitioned after a short-lived uprising, and the complete invasion of Greece well underway. His generals were assured that Russia, militarily weakened and disorganized in the wake of Stalin's purges, was next. In June, aided by Romanian and Finnish allies, Germany mobilized millions of personnel and tens of thousands of tanks, combat vehicles, and artillery pieces to the borders of an unprepared Soviet Union to launch the largest and bloodiest operation in military history.

Chris Crawford's Eastern Front, his third commercial computer wargame (and second extant one), casts you as Germany's supreme commander general of the entire eastern front, and simulates 41 weeks of war, each presented as a turn. It is not a whale, despite being one of the most famous and well received computer wargames of the decade, but as the next whale is a Crawford title, it seemed pertinent to play this as a predecessor. The Wargaming Scribe did this one awhile ago now - check out his AAR if you haven't already.

Eastern Front 1941 has a host of features that make the selection of wargames that I've played from its time and even a bit later look very primitive in comparison. While SSI was pushing the limits on what could be done with Applesoft BASIC, Crawford was driving Atari's metal with raw assembly.

• Unprecedented scale; command upwards of 100 units on a two-million km² map featuring smooth 4-way scrolling.
  
• An intuitive interface that is mostly controllable with a single-button joystick.
• Simultaneous "we go" turn execution; you plan the marching and attack orders for the next week and then watch all of the pieces move and succeed or fail in compressed semi-realtime.
• Competent AI that self-optimizes its plans during your own turn, and requires very little time for further thinking once you hit the "end turn" button. The longer you take, the smarter it plays.
  
• Seasonal weather effects that dramatically impact play. Autumn mud brings everything to a sticky halt, winter climate brings chilly death to your frostbitten men.
  
• Probably the best wargame manual I've seen yet. Even the earlier, cheaply printed APX manuals are excellent.
• Expansion disks including additional scenarios, a scenario editor, and even the source code.
  

 

I've mentioned that I don't like playing as the Germans, who are the only gameplay option in Eastern Front 1941, as they were in Crawford's earlier Tanktics. I'll do it, but I'll still feel weird about it. Tanktics can get a pass since it only depicts a small tank skirmish that ends as soon as the last T-34 is disabled, but on an operations level, every city taken represents thousands of rapes, murders, and mutilations encouraged by Nazi racial doctrine. Every successful push is followed closely by S.S. death squads to carry out massacres and summarily execute Jewish prisoners as matter of policy, with millions more fated to die in captivity. All of this is, of course, sanitized away as a sterile game of numbers and pictograms, and the crimes against humanity barely even whispered in the manual. Perhaps this is somewhat accurate to the experience of high strategists, but even the least fanatical, most duty-focused army commander couldn't have been completely ignorant that they were fighting a war of annihilation.

Anyway. I'll be playing the original 1981 APX version, which is more or less feature-complete. The 1982 re-release adds more scenarios, some incremental UI/UX improvements, and the rather appreciated ability to save your game ("after all, the game [only] takes about two or three hours to play," rationalizes the APX version manual) but otherwise looks and plays the same. Prior to writing this, I have played a number of turns for practice and understanding the rules and strategy, but no game went past August yet. So this post begins my first complete playthrough.

We start with a giant cluster of German units, colored white, stationed around Warsaw running up against a weak line of Russian units, colored red. Circles with X's represent infantry and squares represent cavalry or armor - the latter tends to be stronger, but combat strength is given as an absolute quantifier. A 100-strength infantry fights just as well as a 100-strength panzer division; the panzers just tend to have more strength than that.

Cavalry/armor, however, moves faster. Under perfect conditions, a rarity, they can move up to eight spaces in a turn. Infantry, under perfect conditions, move up to five. Combat, terrain, and traffic from friendly units slow things down.

It's critical to plan moves very carefully, very thoroughly. It took me a bit to reckon with the fact that this is simultaneous turn execution, and not alternating turns, and that profoundly changes the way you plan out your marching orders. You don't move your units one-by-one; you queue up orders for every single unit, even the ones in the back who can't move right now, planning for the eventuality that the fighting in the front will create room for them to move as the week advances.

I made myself a mapping aid tool to produce a larger, annotatable picture.

• This is a scoring game with no definitive win condition. The bulk of points are received for moving raw muster strength east, and sizable bonus points for capturing Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad, annotated with red stars.
  
• Germans units are the strongest overall. However, they do not receive reinforcements from home - any losses a German unit takes are permanent.
• Finns are the next-strongest, but they can't attack, they just create zones of control. For now, I can't do very much with them, but if I can secure Leningrad and drive out the militia, they'll be usable.
  
• Romanians are weaker than Finns, and will later be complemented by Hungarian reinforcements, which are comparable in power.
• Russians units are poor, but will receive regular reinforcements in the form of muster strength replenishment. More Russian units will also come from the cities and map borders as the year advances.
  
• Russian militia, which are represented by the same icon as Russian infantry but can be recognized by query, can move and create zones of control but do not attack.
  

Let's look at some numbers:

 

Finland:

Axis	Strength	Strength	Russia
2 Finnish Infantry	112	110	1 Militia Army
4 Finnish Infantry	104	101	4 Militia Army

Poland/Slovakia:

Axis	Strength	Strength	Russia
		85	7 Tank Army
38 Infantry Corps	120	118	8 Infantry Army
28 Infantry Corps	112	70	1 Tank Army
41 Panzer Corps	198	137	11 Infantry Army
26 Infantry Corps	104
10 Infantry Corps	101
56 Panzer Corps	194	91	4 Infantry Army
2 Infantry Corps	123
1 Infantry Corps	129	86	8 Tank Army
5 Infantry Corps	136	75	3 Cavalry Army
24 Panzer Corps	203	132	3 Infantry Army
6 Infantry Corps	127	90	6 Cavalry Army
7 Infantry Corps	150
46 Panzer Corps	192	131	10 Infantry Army
8 Infantry Corps	129
47 Panzer Corps	199	71	5 Tank Army
9 Infantry Corps	136
57 Panzer Corps	184	125	5 Infantry Army
29 Infantry Corps	111
3 Panzer Corps	202	124	6 Infantry Army
49 Infantry Corps	140
14 Panzer Corps	195	151	12 Infantry Army
17 Infantry Corps	119
48 Panzer Corps	191	130	26 Infantry Army
4 Infantry Corps	142	88	3 Tank Army
		77	4 Tank Army

Hungary:

Axis	Strength	Strength	Russia
54 Infantry Corps	106	79	11 Tank Army
		79	12 Tank Army
30 Infantry Corps	131	80	5 Cavalry Army
11 Infantry Corp	125	126	9 Infantry Army

 

Romania:

Axis	Strength	Strength	Russia
4 Rumanian Infantry	92	91	4 Cavalry Army
2 Rumanian Infantry	96
1 Rumanian Infantry	97	84	2 Cavalry Army

 

Advantage is decisively mine on all fronts, especially the main army group, but time is not on my side. My units don't get reinforcements, and Russia's do, unless they're dead.

To make the best use of my numbers game, I'm going to want to destroy as many Russian units as I can, as quickly as I can, as efficiently as I can. The most efficient way to do this is with pincer attacks; any defending unit that becomes overwhelmed will abandon its orders and retreat, and if it cannot retreat, it will instead suffer enhanced casualties and possibly disperse entirely. A pincer attack makes retreat impossible, cuts off reinforcements, makes the defender fight more poorly, and only requires two attackers per victim.

My initial goal - scatter the Russian armies like a pool rack. Push them, break them, move them around to make pincering the isolated units easier. Bully the weaker units, use tanks like bulldozers, and assume every attack and every push will be successful - better to overplan and have units with uncued moves than have units that spend part of the turn sitting still!

I plan out the turn, and agonize over every step. Bad planning can get units stuck all trying to enter the same squares at the same time from different directions, and I make use of visual maps to ensure this will not happen.

It's a bit overwhelming to have to coordinate seven days of movements at once for so many units, and I kind of wish I could just plan the turns one day at a time, so I did. I used movable GIMP layers to simulate day-to-day action, with these rules:

• Days 1-3: Move panzers.
• Days 4-6: Move panzers and infantry.
  
• Day 7: Most units rest, unless moving would be particularly beneficial and the preceding terrain crossed that week was fairly quick. If I'm feeling lucky about a piece I'll move it twice.
  
• Russians don't move, except to retreat when an attack succeeds.
• Attacks are always successful. Pincer attacks instantly eliminate the defender.

This isn't by any means a perfect method, and the resulting plan looks like chaos when I put it all together, but there's purpose behind every move. Overconfidence can still work out to my benefit as long as I keep pushing east. My biggest drawback is that race conditions can lead to gridlock if I plan to have two units cross the same spot on different days but they wind up reaching it at the same time from opposite directions (After you, Franz! No, after you, Hans!).

 

June 22 - June 28

Finns will hold - that's all they can do for some time. Germans and Rumanians will push the Russians into unfavorable terrain like rivers, coastlines, and swamps, and pincer attack as much as possible.

Let's see how this actually pans out.

Sadly, there is no way to view the overall battle situation! You can scroll freely during turn resolution, but if your viewport isn't pointed at a thing when it happens, you don't see it. The best I can do is observe once the turn ends and manually compare to the turn before, which couldn't have been very convenient in 1981!

I overlaid my plans on the results:

Poland/Slovakia did quite well! There's a bit of gridlock here and there, and my northmost infantry got in the way of the panzer, spoiling an aggressive advance which assumed it would get to move first, and the panzer blocks an infantry who was meant to follow, but overall I am pleased. Nobody else spends the week sitting on their helmets waiting for the horses to get out of the way.

Romanian troops didn't do quite as well, with a Russian cavalry unit holding steady despite being attacked by two nominally superior infantry forces at once.

I have more numbers.

Poland/Slovakia:

Axis	Old strength	Current strength	Current strength	Old strength	USSR
			86	85	7 Tank Army
38 Infantry Corps	120	120	92	118	8 Infantry Army
28 Infantry Corps	112	112	69	70	1 Tank Army
41 Panzer Corps	198	195		137	11 Infantry Army
26 Infantry Corps	104	104
10 Infantry Corps	101	101
56 Panzer Corps	194	194	88	91	4 Infantry Army
2 Infantry Corps	123	123
1 Infantry Corps	129	120	81	86	8 Tank Army
5 Infantry Corps	136	136	76	75	3 Cavalry Army
24 Panzer Corps	203	192		132	3 Infantry Army
6 Infantry Corps	127	127		90	6 Cavalry Army
7 Infantry Corps	150	150
46 Panzer Corps	192	181	105	131	10 Infantry Army
8 Infantry Corps	129	129
47 Panzer Corps	199	192	60	71	5 Tank Army
9 Infantry Corps	136	136
57 Panzer Corps	184	171		125	5 Infantry Army
29 Infantry Corps	111	111
3 Panzer Corps	202	202	119	124	6 Infantry Army
49 Infantry Corps	140	140
14 Panzer Corps	195	193		151	12 Infantry Army
17 Infantry Corps	119	119
48 Panzer Corps	191	191	108	130	26 Infantry Army
4 Infantry Corps	142	142	43	88	3 Tank Army
			78	77	4 Tank Army

Hungary:

Axis	Old strength	Current strength	Current strength	Old strength	USSR
54 Infantry Corps	106	106	35	79	11 Tank Army
			80	79	12 Tank Army
30 Infantry Corps	131	131	75	80	5 Cavalry Army
11 Infantry Corp	125	125	122	126	9 Infantry Army

Romania:

Axis	Old strength	Current strength	Current strength	Old strength	USSR
4 Rumanian Infantry	92	92	83	91	4 Cavalry Army
2 Rumanian Infantry	96	96
1 Rumanian Infantry	97	97	78	84	2 Cavalry Army

 

These are good trades, but how long can I keep this aggression up? The manual says I have 96 Soviet units to look forward to, and my tanks aren't going to last another 40 weeks if they keep taking hits the way they have this turn. Will my strategy of deliberate overconfidence lead to a mistake that the Soviets can exploit?

It took me almost an hour and a half to plan out this turn, but Scribe assures me that they get quicker. We'll see, but rest assured that my next posts will be more condensed than this one. I don't want to write about the anatomies of 40 individual turns, you don't want to read them.

Games 444-445: Early Mindscape

1985 introduces our first two whales on Apple's new Macintosh computer - Balance of Power and Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True, both by publisher Mindscape. A subsidiary of Scott Foresman, then the USA's largest educational textbook publisher, Mindscape quickly carved its niche as a clearing house for edutainment and other studious software. The Mac, which Apple had hoped to market as a serious, grown up computer, would be a good fit for Mindscape's serious, grown up games.

But what of their ancestors?

We've got two lines of ancestry here - first there are the prior games of BoP's designer Chris Crawford, of which I've only played one - Avalon Hill's Tanktics. Certainly there's a non-whale or two since then worth playing!

Second, there are the earlier games published by Mindscape themselves. Mobygames lists Tink!Tonk! Tonk in the Land of the Buddy-Bots, an early childhood educational game with characters by prolific author Mercer Mayer as a 1983 Atari release. It's a little unclear if this is accurate; the manual states a software copyright of 1984, but also states a 1983 copyright for TINK TONK, Inc, suggesting that these were pre-existing characters, though I can't find any evidence they existed before Mindscape's software.

However, it shows in a 1984 Mindscape catalog, so this is at least among the company's first wave of releases, as part of the Sprout line of ages 4-8 educational software. Only Crossword Magic is verifiably older, and that's because it was initially self-published on the Apple II by developer L&S Software - Mindscape handled the ports to Atari and C64.

So, I've picked my introductory Mindscape title. An educational title meant for very young children.

 

Game 444: Tink!Tonk!: Tonk in the Land of Buddy-Bots

Tonk is not impressed by the Buddy-Bots.

In Tonk's main game mode, you explore an open world in the style of Atari's Adventure in search of robot parts to assemble your buddy-bot, which are won in six minigames that test pattern recognition skills. An alternate mode lets you practice these minigames independently.

 

I beat the hardest difficulty in twelve minutes. Cause I'm that good.

 

The manual has a map of Buddy-Bot Land, which is a big time saver even though it does not show all of the part locations.

Now, there's a nasty secret about the highest difficulty. It's possible to soft-lock your game! The land is randomly seeded with robot guards, who will confiscate a part and take you to King Gork's castle in the south. They are easy to run from and won't follow you across sectors, but they can make crossing certain sectors impossible.

You're not getting through that.

There's a good chance that the southeast quadrant of the map will be completely inaccessible without using the raft. And you get one chance to use it.

Apart from that, this is quite straightforward. Visit each sector, avoid guards and pitfalls, find parts, and play minigames that wouldn't challenge a preschooler.

There's a part right there.

Caves mean minigames

Bot puzzle! Can you reassemble it correctly?

Getting caught is no big deal. Gork just stands there as you leave.

Looks interesting!

But it's pointless. The bots don't do anything and don't even care if they're assembled correctly.

Match the bot with his silhouette for a part.

Can you reassemble this bot from memory? Fail and he'll forlornly sigh YOU FORGOT ME.

GAB rating: Below average. Not much to say here! It's competently programmed, visually appealing, the music is catchy, and like most kid's games, fairly insubstantial overall. The Adventure-style gameplay makes it interesting enough to rate, but not interesting enough to rate any higher than this.

Let's do one more Mindscape release - this time, another educational title, but one that's very much not meant for small children.

 

Game 445: Crime and Punishment

 

We haven't seen Imagic in a while! The short-lived developer of some of the Atari VCS and Intellivision's most technically advanced video games refocused on 8-bit computer game development by 1984, releasing their final titles in 1985. Crime and Punishment, an educational title about American justice, was their sole collaboration with Mindscape.

1984 saw the passing of the Sentencing Reform Act, a culmination of a decade-long research project led by tenured law professor (and Federalist Society speaker) Jack Kress. In an effort to reduce sentencing disparities owing to judge's personal biases, which had long been an issue, the most notable byproduct of the act was the Sentencing Guidelines, a non-binding rubric system for calculating legal remedies for felonious offenses, which is practiced at the federal level and has influenced state-level systems. Other byproducts of the act included mandatory minimums and abolition of federal parole.

Imagic's Crime and Punishment, co-authored by Kress, aims to be a learning tool with two programs; an information module with a brief overview on the history and operations of the U.S. criminal justice system, and a game where you play the judge and must estimate appropriate sentences for convicted felons. As someone who's taken an introductory course in criminal law, I found the module a reasonably good primer and even learned a few things I didn't already know.

This was released more or less simultaneously on C64, IBM, and Apple computers.

Commodore 64

IBM PC

Apple II

There aren't a lot of differences between versions. The PC version probably has the best looking judge graphic, but it doesn't play nice with any version of DOSBox - only PCem runs it without missing graphics. Apple II displays more colors than the others - six as opposed to just four, and actually shows the flag correctly, but the judge looks awfully stupid in it.

Ultimately I decided to use the Commodore 64 version, although it doesn't really take advantage of the platform. Despite some questionable color choices, and some very long loading times at the start, I think it's overall the best looking and sounding version, with better color contrasts, less harsh beeper music, and is the only version with a pleasing gavel-knock sound.

As judge, you may review the facts concerning the case, including details such as the injuries or damages, the relations between offender and victim, the offender's character and reputation, and media coverage before pronouncing sentence, after which you are shown the median sentence according to Kress's guidelines, and scored according to how close yours was. The game claims you are penalized for asking too many questions, but I haven't seen any proof of it.

The guidelines themselves are not provided, even in a simplified form; you have to go by your feelings, your knowledge of comparable real-life cases, or experience playing. By far the most important factor is the crime itself. But sentencing is also affected by factors such as their criminal history, the circumstances surrounding the offense, and others.

You knew this was coming.

Let's look at this case of lockpick and blackjack possession. The defendant pleaded guilty, and said he had to steal in order to support a drug habit. He was raised in the inner city by an alcoholic father, received a merit scholarship, and studies political science. He has four prior convictions including burglary and a juvenile charge of public lewdness. His probation officer urges a stern sentence.

Some more, possibly irrelevant details

 

A first time offender might get away with probation, but I'm going to trust the probation officer. Six months in jail.

I did okay, but after doing a few more cases, I figured I could do better with some proper data analysis. The cases are procedurally generated, but are based on a set of about 80 templates.

I played through 120 cases and took notes on crime type, sentencing, prior convictions, and in cases of white collar crimes, monetary losses, which makes less of a difference than you might think. From this data, I made a table of crimes, in rough order of most to least severe. This is going to wreck my SEO.

Prison and probation sentences are in years/months, jail sentences are in months/days.

Crime	Sentence	First offense	Repeat	Cases
Murder (repeat)	Death			1
Sabotage	Prison		23/8	1
Assassination	Prison	22/10 to 30/1		2
Treason	Prison	21/11	27/3	2
Rape/murder	Prison	21/10		2
Kidnapping/rape	Prison		20/9 to 22/3	2
Sedition	Prison		20/7	1
Murder of a police officer	Prison	19/7 to 21/10		2
Smuggling	Prison		16/7	1
Rape/burglary	Prison		15/2	1
Kidnapping	Prison	13/11	15/2	2
Attempted assassination	Prison		12/8	1
Rape	Prison		11/7	1
Forcible sodomy	Prison		11/7 to 14/11	2
Sexual assault on a child	Prison	12/8	11/6	2
Arson	Prison	10/5		1
Attempted murder	Prison		9/9	1
Hijacking	Prison		8/11 to 9/9	2
Robbery	Prison	7/4 to 8/4	10/2	4
Assault/burglary	Prison		7/0 to 7/8	2
Sexual exploitation of a child	Prison	6/2 to 7/0		2
Cocaine sale	Prison	5/10		1
Attempted rape	Prison	5/2	6/5	2
Burglary of a dwelling	Prison		4/1	1
Forced prostitution	Prison	3/11		1
Assault with intent to rape	Prison	3/11	7/8	2
Daytime burglary	Prison		3/11	1
Terroristic threatening	Prison	3/7 to 4/1		2
Assault	Prison	3/1 to 4/2		2
Unlawful imprisonment	Prison	2/4		1
Burglary of a business	Prison	2/4		1
Computer piracy ($71,000)	Prison		2/2	1
Illegal business practice (tenth offense)	Prison		2/0	1
Unlawful business practice	Prison		2/0	1
Forgery	Prison	1/11	2/2	3
Heroin use	Prison	1/10	3/11	1
Illegal commercial enterprise	Jail		23/14 to 23/26	2
Burglary of a business	Jail		22/4	1
Possession of a deadly weapon	Jail		22/4	1
Computer piracy ($1,695)	Jail		22/0	1
Illegal business practice (second offense)	Jail		19/6	1
Dealing in unsafe products	Jail		18/12	1
Accepting bribes	Jail	17/26	19/26 to 23/14	3
Resisting arrest	Jail		15/22	1
Perjury	Jail	15/0	15/2	2
Cocaine use	Jail	14/28 to 15/2		2
Carrying a concealed weapon	Jail	14/20 to 21/18		2
Drunk driving	Jail		12/8 to 20/16	2
Possession of burglar's tools	Jail		10/24	1
Violation of probation	Jail		10/16 to 10/20	2
Menacing	Jail		8/28 to 16/4	3
Aiding and abetting a felon	Jail		8/20 to 15/22	2
Mail fraud	Jail		7/26	2
Illegal price-fixing	Jail		7/2 to 16/0	2
Theft of trade secrets (tenth offense)	Jail		6/16	1
Bribery	Jail	5/2	14/4	2
Offensive touching	Jail		4/0 to 6/20	2
False alarm	Jail		2/8	1
Criminal trespass	Jail	1/26	9/6	2
Criminal solicitation	Jail		1/22 to 2/16	2
Operating a pyramid scheme	Jail		1/14	1
Theft of trade secrets (second offense)	Probation		9/0	1
Operating a pyramid scheme	Probation		8/2	1
Auto theft	Probation	8/1		1
Criminal impersonation	Probation	8/1		1
Theft by con game	Probation		7/10 to 8/7	2
Unlawful use of a credit card	Probation	7/4	8/1	2
Pimping	Probation		6/8	1
Marijuana use	Probation		6/5	1
False advertising	Probation	6/2		1
Statutory rape	Probation	5/3 to 6/10	7/1	3
Reckless driving	Probation	4/9		1
Prostitution	Probation	4/8	5/4	2
Loitering	Probation		3/9 to 4/9	2
Hunting out of season	Probation		1/4	1

 

There are a few inconsistencies, but not that many. The crimes of operating a pyramid scheme and burglary of a business had to appear twice each because of sentencing disparities that could not be accounted for based on damages. Another surprise is that in the two cases of sexual assault of a child, the first time offender got a longer prison sentence than the repeat offender - but I had not considered factors like the age of the child, or what the prior conviction was for.

The list also shows some questionable priorities in terms of criminal severity. Why is repeat heroin use punished far worse than repeat drunk driving? Why was a home burglar who stole $50 given four years, and a business criminal who defrauded a million dollars given 19 months, both cases being second offenses? But this reflects the real-life priorities of common law, and my critiques are far from the first or the most insightful.

But overall, the list seems like solid groundwork. So let's try out some cases.

Case 1: Perjury

Details on the perjury itself are scant, but the defendant has six prior arrests with one conviction for animal abuse. I opt for a 15 month jail sentence, as per the table above.

Yeah... too harsh. It's worth five gavel taps, but I'm advised to do better.

Case 2: Dealing in unsafe products

The defendant is a Vietnamese immigrant, has a prior conviction for vandalism, had been held in contempt of court, and is a business owner. ACLU urges leniency. I opt for a 15 month jail sentence, given the minor priors.

I should have gone with the table! This is exactly what the last sentence said. Still, this is worth eight gavels.

Case 3: Smuggling

 

This is a serious offense, but it's his first, and he pled guilty. The offender was raised by welfare hippies, and works a steady job. Community opinion wants leniency.

From the table, I estimate a 15 year prison term.

Six gavels for a somewhat excessive sentence.

Case 4: Kidnapping

Not looking good for the defendant, who has ten prior arrests and nine convictions of unspecified crimes. I follow the table exactly and give 15 years, two months.

Should have gone higher still, but this is still worth eight gavels.

Let's do one more.

Case 5: Illegal price-fixing

This is a first-time adult offense, though he used fake I.D. as a juvenile. The defendant informed on his accomplices, has a history of being cold and calculating, and dreams of being a millionaire.

His dreams may be ruined, but owing to this being the first offense, I grant leniency with a five month jail term.

Ouch!

 

I thought I'd perform better than this, but even after 125 cases there are still a lot of holes in my chart. The difference in punishment between first offense and repeat offenses can be very significant for some crimes, and insignificant for others.

GAB rating: Below average. It's a unique concept for sure, but in practice this just isn't very good at all. Without any guidelines to reference, you're just playing a guessing game. Of course this isn't meant to be a conventional game as much as a learning tool, but it's a missed opportunity in that regard as well. Apart from the information module, the game does nothing to discuss criminal law or any of the legal theory behind it. It will teach you that accepting bribes is a more serious crime than offering them, but doesn't foster any discussion on why.

Still, I like the idea, and there's nothing else quite like this. I'm surprised that Crime & Punishment never got revisited in the years to come - one can imagine a CD-ROM edition with interactive sentencing guidelines, gigantic databases of real-world reference cases, Encarta-like articles on legal concepts hyperlinked from the case files, and FMVs of Jack Kress pounding his gavel as he admonishes your weak justice game. I'd play it.

Spellbreaker: Won!

I missed something early in the game. The golden box in the ogre's lair containing the third cube responds to Jindak, but not just because the cube inside is magical. The box itself is magical too! It is linked to the cube, and exiting from the cube dimension's east exit will take you to wherever the box happens to be. Unless you're carrying it!

In retrospect, I now know that I cheated myself out of a clue by taking it with me and hoarding it like a pack rat. If I had just left it, I would have very soon discovered that the cube's linked exit takes me right back there (and been beaten to death by the ogre). And I might have noticed that this is the only cube without any sealed exits, and from there puzzled out the reason why. But because the box was on my person, the east exit simply bounced me back like every other cube dimension's unusable exit and I was none the wiser.

On the other hand, because I took the gold box with me and hoarded it like a pack rat, I didn't have to reload a saved game from near the beginning of the game to get it!

The box has another function. It can be linked to any other cube by placing that cube inside. I'm not sure if there is a point in doing that, but this also changes the engravings on the box to depict a thematically appropriate beast:

1. Moles - Packed Earth
2. Rabbits - Soft Room
3. Dolphins - Water Room
4. Eagles - Air Room
5. Butterflies - Changing Room
6. Worms - Boneyard
7. Fireflies - Light Room
8. Spiders - String Room
9. Owls - No Place (why owls?)
   
10. Grues - Dark Room
11. Salamanders - Fire Room
    

Knowing this, I have a way of reaching the volcano's outcropping. Toss the box over there, then Blorple into the third cube and exit east.

Here, I found a twelve cube, but this time upon collecting it, a surge of power flowed through it and into me. This must be the last one! This cube is unicorn-themed, and Blorpling into it goes to a chaotic Magic Room.

The Magic Room doesn't seem to be immediately useful. The place is a mess, and Jindak even reveals that there's nothing magical within. North goes back to a meadow that I've already been to, South links to the box, and East is blocked off by an impassable void.

Time to confront Belboz. I Blorpled to the String Room and exited south. He hadn't responded to "talk to Belboz," but I tried commanding him to stand - almost surprisingly, this worked! I doubt I would have thought of this without the hint that I'd need to talk.

Belboz told me that a doppelganger had been here, and challenged me to prove my identity with a trivia question about the Enchanters Guild. This part is copy protection! So late in the game, too. The answer is in the set of trading cards that come in the package.

Belboz gave me a key. I then asked him about the cubes - he explained that these cubes held the foundational elements of the world, and that whoever possessed them could reshape the universe. Other than that, I couldn't get any useful answers from him.

One last unsolved problem - opening the door from the inner vault. I blorpled back, tried my key, and it didn't work. Rezrov, however, did work this time! Possessing the twelve cubes of foundation makes all the difference here.

The door slammed shut as I went north to the outer vault, where I found twelve more cubes, denoted "x1," "x2," and so forth, arranged in two piles. Another door, this one made of iron, exited to the north, but the iron key does not open it, and Rezrov triggers an alarm and your imminent death at the hands of the bored royal guards.

Jindak, however, shows both piles of cubes are magical, and one pile is a bit more magical than the other. I know what's going on here.

This puzzle is a chestnut, but the rules here are that you get three casts of Jindak - after that, an alarm triggers, and two moves later, you die. Saving won't work here!

First, you want to remove two cubes from each pile, leaving two piles of four. Your first Jindak will then reveal which pile of four contains the strongest cube, and if they're the same, then the strongest cube is in one of the cubes you removed. After that, it was trivial to figure out which of those four was the strongest with two Jindak casts. I made sure to a Blorple memorized before the last Jindak - there's no time to memorize after the alarm sounds.

But... after being pretty certain that I found the powerful cube, I Blorpled in and there was nothing there! I reloaded, tried again, and this time found the powerful cube (it is randomly chosen each time you reload) in just two Jindaks, and still, nothing!

 

A commenter alerted me to my error - I assumed that the cube I want is more powerful than the fakes. It could actually be less powerful than the fakes! This complicates the puzzle a bit.

The first move is still to weigh four cubes against four cubes - this time, it identified one pile as the stronger, but the correct cube could be in either one of them.

Weigh 1: [x3,x4,x5,x6] < [x9,x10,x11,x12]

Next, I swapped some cubes around, and weighed three against three. Two from the underweight pile and one from the overweight pile, against one from the underweight pile, one from the overweight pile, and a dummy cube that was neither underweight nor overweight. No matter what Jindak said, I'd have a way to solve the puzzle with just one more cast.

This second cast of Jindak showed both piles were the same.

Weigh 2: [x4,x5,x9] = [x1,x3,x10]

All six of those are fake! That leaves x6, x11, and x12 as the only possibilities. From the first weigh, we know that x6 can't be overweight, and x11 and x12 can't be underweight.

I memorized Blorple before weighing x11 against x12. They were identical, proving that x6 must be underweight and the correct cube.

The alarm went off, summoning the guards, and I Blorpled into x6, taking me to a Sand Room.

 

This room, seemingly the inside of an hourglass, can be exited up or down, and both lead to places I've been before, but things are different. Incidentally, putting this cube into the gold box changes the engravings to turtles, but there is no linking exit.

Up goes to the "Ruins Room," but now there is a normal sack on the ground containing a girgol scroll, and the room is flooding. Down goes to the Dungeon Cell, but the door is closed and locked, and the cabinet contains a blank scroll. Attempting to leave either location is fatal; you either drown, get arrested, or if you try to leave by Blorple, spaghettified.

We've time traveled into the past! Infocom does seem to love this trope.

By setting the Dungeon Cell to the state in which we originally found it, we can Blorple out and live. This means retrieving the scroll, leaving the spellbook inside, locking it - it can be unlocked and locked with Belboz's key - and Rezroving the cell door before immediately Blorpling the power cube. Or, as I realized later on further experimentation, any other cube.

But this trades the all-important spellbook for a seemingly useless blank scroll!

Resolving the past Ruins Room is simpler - you just need to move the Girgol scroll into your zipper and leave it behind, taking the sack with you. But you don't have a lot of time to do this before the room floods enough to ruin the scroll.

I reloaded to the Sand Room and did the Dungeon Cell time paradox routine - but I made sure to memorize multiple Blorples before giving up the spellbook. In preparation for the Ruins Room, I Blorpled to the Magic Room first, where I'd have time to empty out the zipper, save for a few items I'd need next.

In the Ruins Room, I moved the scroll from the sack to the magic zipper, first taking a moment to inscribe the Girgol spell onto the blank scroll, and then Blorpled back to the Magic Room where my stuff waited and could be moved back into the sack.

Now that I had the final power cube, the swirling void here was passable, and took me to a castle, where the shadow - my shadow - appeared. He relieved me of the cubes, magically froze me in place, and explained that he, quite predictably, used me to get them for him, as he started assembling them into a structure which emitted rays of cosmic energy as he completed its construction. Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy might have had just a touch of influence here.

The spell on me wore off shortly after he put the last cube in place, but by then it was too late to do anything - he entered this hypercube with a dramatic backflip and ascended to a higher plane of existence, and deleted me from mine.

I soon discovered that by attacking the shadow, he casts his spell sooner, which will wear off before he finishes his spiel, at which point he ignores you. Cast Girgol just before he enters, and you have a few turns to act.

Removing a cube foils his plans, but isn't the best outcome.

The shadow, now as solid as a real person, performs a back flip into the tesseract. "No!" It screams. "Stop! Fool, you've destroyed me! You've destroyed everything! All my lovely plans!" Now glowing as brightly as the construction it made, the figure approaches the center. It dwindles in size and grows in brightness at the same time, until it reaches the empty center. Then you, it and all the world blink out like a spent match.

 

The correct move, and I'm not really sure I understand why this works, is to replace the cube with another object of sufficiently large size. Most of the things you've got will do.

"Stop! Fool, you've destroyed me! You've destroyed magic itself! All my lovely plans!" Now glowing as brightly as the construction it made, the figure approaches the center. It grows smaller and smaller, and just before it disappears, the hypercube vanishes with a pop, and the "twelve" cube melts in your hand like an ice cube.

 

You find yourself back in Belwit Square, all the guildmasters and even Belboz crowding around you. "A new age begins today," says Belboz after hearing your story. "The age of magic is ended, as it must, for as magic can confer absolute power, so it can also produce absolute evil. We may defeat this evil when it appears, but if wizardry builds it anew, we can never ultimately win. The new world will be strange, but in time it will serve us better."

 

Your score is 600 of a possible 600, in 771 moves. This puts you in the class of Scientist.

GAB rating: Above average. 

I put this conclusion ahead of Sorcerer, but behind Enchanter. Much of what I said about those two applies here - the writing is still good, the room descriptions nice and evocative, and the magic-based puzzles are some of Infocom's best yet. The economy with rooms and objects is admirable as well; almost everywhere you go and everything you see serves a purpose, if not at first, then eventually!

But the worldbuilding, which is so often the strongest part of Infocom's best games, feels flatter than usual, despite the literal multidimensionality. Unlike in Zork and Enchanter, I never felt I was exploring or immersed in a fantasy world. Being structured around a collection of magic cubes and corresponding hub areas makes it feel disjointed and chaotic - this may well have been Lebling's intent, but it means the world never really comes together in any satisfyingly cohesive way. I initially thought that the cubes' unused exits might wind up linking together and join the world for one big interconnected payoff in the end, but they wound up being mostly irrelevant, used only once for a minor (and moderately unfair in my opinion) puzzle.

Spellbreaker isn't quite free of annoying genre conventions either. Granted, there are no mundane mazes, no hunger, and no expiring light sources, but having to constantly juggle inventory items partway in got annoying, and having to stop what you're doing to sleep got annoying. The many, many ways you can die or make the game unwinnable, forcing a reload, was also annoying, but at least it tended to be obvious when this happened. Many of the puzzles are based around strict timing, and are failed if you use a "turn" to examine anything or to check your inventory - that was also annoying. So was having to type "MEMORIZE BLORPLE" a thousand times - couldn't we have just had that one committed to memory? So was having spells fail randomly.

Speaking of which, the major premise of the game - the end of magic - isn't explored all that deeply. It would have been interesting to see magic further deteriorate as you progress through the game, forcing you to adapt and rely on non-magical means of problems solving, but nothing like that ever happens. From start to finish, all of your problems are solved with the right spell.

Besides, the Coconut of Quendor is just going to bring it all back anyway.

In the end, Spellbreaker's positive qualities stand out, but I still feel a bit let down by it, and by the Enchanter trilogy as a whole.

My Trizbort map:

Spellbreaker: Monoliths

Despite a tip from a commenter telling me that it was already possible to break the seal affecting all of the hub rooms, and also possible to productively interact with Belboz, I could not figure out how, nor how to progress in any meaningful way. I turned to the walkthrough, and saw that its next instructions showed how to deal with the octagonal room.

What you do is put the compass rose in a compass-shaped inlet, as I had, to open the passageway into the octagonal room. But I was wrong in my belief that the compass controls it from here! Before entering, you remove the compass rose. The passage stays open. Then you go in, and you touch the runes on the octagonal room's walls with the compass to open a passage there.

Seriously - did anyone figure that out on their own? Placing the compass in the initial inset was pretty obvious, and removing it not quite as obvious, and I knew the compass was somehow used to manipulate the room, but why would you think that touching the walls with it would do anything?

This area is actually a maze of octagonal rooms, and each of the compass's eight directions is good for one use before turning into brass and deactivating, and north is already used up to get inside. In effect, you get seven moves to navigate the maze, and can't move in any direction twice. The rooms themselves have eight walls each, and each wall has a rune whose color dictates whether the compass will react and open a hole there or not.

The maze is not large or complicated, and one room's west wall is uniquely marked with a gold rune and alabaster inset. I couldn't find any way to reach this room without using up my west move, and I don't think it's possible, but it doesn't matter - all you have to to is Rezrov the inset and the wall opens up revealing... another cube.

The ninth cube goes to "No Place." Eastward from this hub is the Inner Vault from Zork III, still full of treasure, and the door from the Outer Vault locked and Rezrov-proof. Southward from No Place is a nondescript "plain," which is in fact a frictionless plane like something out of Mathmagic Land. Colorful rocks glide around the landscape, and another cube sits on one, but walking around is impossible, and the rocks protest if you try to climb on them.

I offered the lava fragment to the green rock in the immediate vicinity, and it gratefully allowed me to climb aboard and carry me where I wished. I moved toward the brown rock in the east, and it moved away, but I could eventually trap it in the corner of this plane and get its cube.

The tenth cube goes to a "Dark Room." And this dark room is situated over a dark, dark cave. So dark that your own light sources don't work very well.

You know what this means - grue city! And if you're in deep enough that you can see their outlines, you're already dead.

To survive, you've got to memorize a Snavig spell and then abandon any light-emitting items before going on. And then you must cast Snavig to become a grue.

Past the grues is a pool of faint light, with a climbable pillar in the middle. And on top of it, a cube.

The eleventh cube goes to a "Fire Room." South goes to back to the clifftop connected to the very first cube. North goes to a volcano - we'd been to its base before, but this part is higher up.

On the volcano, a heat-resistant outcropping can be seen to the west, but there's no obvious way to reach it.

Now I'm 415 points in, out 600, and I've seen 80 rooms, but a lot of them are part of the octagonal room maze and plains area. That's already more than the median 48KB Infocom game; only Zork I and Planetfall are appreciably bigger. I've got to be nearly done.

I have four unsolved problems:

• How do I enter the sealed rooms in the hubs?
• What do I do with Belboz?
• How do I open the door in the inner vault?
  
• How do I reach the volcano outcropping?
  

The first two should be solvable already, but I still can't figure out how.

Tips would be appreciated - if possible, I'd prefer gentle tips that prod me in the right direction to find the bit of information I'm missing to solve the puzzle over outright spoilers. I'll have updates in the comments regarding my progress over the weekend.

My Trizbort map (so far):