History

Sorcerer's Isle was written by Scott Brinker in February 1990 and was the renamed finished version of the game Quest For Sorcery II written by Scott Brinker and Tim Stryker back in July 1987. Quest For Sorcery II was intended to be a sequel to Quest for Sorcery and designed as a hybrid of Fazuul (by Tim Stryker) and Quest For Magic (by Scott Brinker and Tim Stryker).

Sorcerer's Isle was the game that Scott Brinker was trying to write when he wrote Quest for Sorcery. He was never happy with the results of Quest for Sorcery. Sorcerer's Isle was one of the products that debuted under the brief Galactic Innovations moniker, never having the Moonshae Telecomm name despite its early origins. Incomplete binary versions exist from a Moonshae backup in 1987 with much of the messages and descriptions matching Sorcerer's Isle. The game wasn't released until the names were changed - both Moonshae and the game!

The game was sold until the Galacticomm acquisition.

Game Information

Centuries ago, on the forgotten world of Shar, a conclave of some of the greatest sorcerers in the Universe gathered to study science and magic. In their studies, they discovered the ultimate combination: mixing technology with spell-weaving. This strange mating of different taps upon the Essence of the Universe resulted in many powerful, amazing, and sometimes dangerous objects and machines. And with their newfound power, they constructed a magnificent city in the sky – the City in the Clouds. Everything seemed to be Heaven on Shar, until one day, every sorcerer vanished. The city was quiet, except for the soft whistling of the wind.

Now, you find yourself preparing to begin a journey... a journey that will take you to the lost City of the Clouds in an attempt to unlock the great mysteries of the hybrid science and magic. Indeed, you seek to master the omnipotent secrets of these ancient sorcerers.

Gameplay

Gameplay within Sorcerer's Isle is fairly typical of text "adventure" games (now more commonly called interactive fiction games) like Zork, Colossal Cave, etc; and MUD games, like Dungeon, Rogue, etc. Players issue simple verb-noun command pairs, such as "north", "get object", "mix object1 object2", etc. Players can interact with other players in the game, as well.