Well, there’s twelve of them for the year, so we might as well pull another Softside magazine Adventure of the Month out of the jar, this time from April. (Previously: Windsloe Mansion, Klondike, James Brand.)
When I hit this game I had an immediate reminder of how fragile the media I write about is. I remember seeing the file in the past on some forum post, which now does not seem to exist. Atarimania, the most commonly recommended archive, didn’t have it. I finally got a hit at Atari Online, but you know availability is getting dicey for a when you have to break out the Polish archives for a US monthly subscription-on-tape.
As the Atari name implies, that’s the only platform I found it for. The TRS-80 versions and Apple II versions are supposed to exist.
Also, the game has no author listed, but based on the style and layout it is most certainly another Peter Kirsch one, despite the content changing things up on his usual modus operandi (having a linear sequence of short scenes).
Regarding the plot (“find and rescue the princess”), weirdly enough, we haven’t had a lot of princess-rescue games. Technically the very first adventure (Castle) is one, but there’s also a prince you can rescue, or you can rescue both the prince and princess. Wizard and the Princess played it straight. Dragon Quest Adventure kind of played it straight but also you weren’t supposed to kill the dragon and you get a kiss. Treasure Hunt had a “black book” with the “addresses and phone numbers of every beautiful princess that lives in Vermont”. The Program Power game just titled Adventure had a princess that kept running away.
I’m starting to think people were thinking the idea was old hat even in the 1970s. For our purposes here though, this seems to be playing it straight, but I haven’t gotten far enough to be sure. At the very least, the focus is more on the witch in the title than a princess.
To be clear on it looking like Kirsch, compare to James Brand and notice the upper-case room description to start, the exits listed with one space of indent, the visible items listed with three spaces of indent, and the pattern of when text gets “highlighted”.
Still, this game has a unique kick-off on gameplay: a very short timer, with you placed adjacent to a Witch Cottage with both a sleeping cat and a sleeping witch. This is the sort of game where you send a lot of “clones” to be killed to get things worked out, even though the starting map is very tiny.
A selection of deaths:
There’s a table inside the cottage containing a book which seems to indicate our overall goal: get ingredients for an invisibility potion.
I mean, the first ingredient location is obvious, but taking a whisker without raising a fuss seems trickier. Can the blood and fingernails come from us? And I haven’t seen any snakes. What I have seen is a cave with a shovel and bat (not the flying kind), a garden with a MAGIC CHARM BRACELET (which you have to dig up), an AXEMAN by a tree (I can refer to the tree but not the axeman), a branch up the tree, and robin’s egg (see previous death screen).
Finally, there’s a mountain where the castle is, but it is too steep to climb.
That doesn’t give me much to work with. But I’m still intrigued to have quite a lot going on in a tight space, so I’ll keep fussing about here. I did seem to have resolved one issue already, though. As promised on the opening screen, we have to worry about it getting dark. However, picking up the MAGIC CHARM BRACELET makes the messages go away, so I assume either it is glowing so we can see or it is stopping time in some manner.
This means failure.
Renga in Blue 
Iirc, the spell book itself has the potential to trip or slow down a player’s progress if they don’t notice what is on that first line when they read it (see the screenshot).
Pingback: Witches’ Brew: They’ll Sweep You Off Your Feet | Renga in Blue
Witch Brewers Union? lol.