Posted on: November 14, 2023
Nervensaegen
Games: Reviews: 102
The Summoning is weird--in a good way
Played this as a kid and remember it in detail, since it was the oddest experience. The game was both nostalgic and wildly experimental by design, even in 1992. Let's start with quest logs. This game perma-connects to your printer and _prints_ a log of your conversations as they are happening in the game. Yes, you heard that right. The quest log is a print-out on paper. Speaking of which, the game doesn't tell you that you got a "quest". It doesn't even tell you, which part of the conversation is important. You got to figure that out yourself. And no, this is not because other games in 1992 didn't have quests. The inventory system is just as strange, you'll see that soon enough, and let's not even talk about the hand-sign magic system, where you need to remember and combine symbols. Uff! I hope you got pen and paper at the ready. Speaking of paper and nostalgia: you get to draw your own paper map. Yes, other games in 1992 had auto-map. This one isn't "other games", though. Controls are so-so, movements are a bit choppy. Moving objects feels like they weigh nothing. Animations... well... exist. Story presentation: I hope you like walls of text. Fights are meh! And yet, the damn thing is bloody addictive. Just one more corner, one more puzzle, only a couple more minutes, and it will be dawn before you know it. In short, yes in one way, the game is dated (it looked oddly dated when it was released, for that matter). Yes, there isn't too much to the story we haven't seen, or the fights, or anything. And yet! For whatever the game does, it always adds something unexpected. Some odd little quirk that leaves you thinking "wait a minute, what the hell did that thing just do?" And while not many of its ideas stood the test of time, they are enough of a collection of weird oddities that I recommend you try this for yourself. Do it! This wee little beastie is nostalgia personified, and if that's what you like, give it a shot!
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