Necromancer / game / commercial










From: Atari SIG (xx004@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)

Date: 11/10/91-12:58:00 AM Z









From: xx004@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Atari SIG)
Subject: Necromancer / game / commercial
Date: Sun Nov 10 00:58:00 1991


Necromancer
-----------

Summarized by
exuhag@exu.ericsson.se (James Hague)


Okay, the plot.  You are a Necromancer (tree wizard).  That animated
cursor thingy is called a "wisp," which moves at your command.  The
overall point of the game is to defeat....um, well I don't recall ever
exactly knowing.  But that's not important.  The game takes place in
three stages, how well you do in each one affects the difficulty of the
next.

The point of the first stage is to grow as many trees as possible.  You
start with a set number of seeds, and you get more every time you hit
that bouncing one-eyed guy with your wisp.  Plant a seed by pressing
the button over a blank part of the screen.  While a tree is growing,
Ogres can walk over it, reversing the growth.  Protect your trees by
hitting the Ogres with your wisp.  Once a tree is fully grown (with
sparkling leaves), the Ogres can't hurt it any more.  But, there is a
spitting spider which bounces around and can poison your trees.  When
this occurs, the trees cry out for help and you can cure them by
hitting them with the wisp.  If you don't help them, they die.  You can
also kill the spider with the wisp.  Stage one ends when you run out of
energy.  You lose energy for lots of reasons (getting hit by the
spider, planting a tree, etc.).  You can also gain energy (by killing
the spider, etc.).  The longer you are in this stage, the faster it
gets.  Basically, you want to grow a good crop of tree, but you want to
lose your energy before things get too hectic and you start losing
trees left and right.

You enter stage two with the number of trees you grew during stage
one.  Moving the joystick while not pressing the button moves the
wisp.  Pressing the button and moving the joystick lets you move the
Necromancer.  The object of stage two is to kill as many of the spiders
on each of the five levels as possible, and to get out of level five
with as many trees as you can.  You start on the left side of the
screen, the trees on the right.  The brown things in the bottom of the
vaults are spider eggs.  The flashing one will hatch next.  Hit your
supply of trees with your wisp and you will now control a tree.  The
idea is to walk a tree on top of a vault and press the button to plant
it.  It's roots will grow into the vault and will soon fall, crushing
the spider egg.  If a spider hatches first, it will attack and kill
your planted trees--and the Necromancer.  Kill the spider with your
wisp--if you are carrying a tree you must put it down first.  The
spider can also deplete your unplanted stock of trees if it hits them.
When you run out of energy, the game ends.  You lose energy when you
get hit by the spider, spit on by the spider, or picked up by the hands
that try to grab you or your trees (you don't lose energy when a hand
grabs a tree, you just lose a tree).

To climb down to the next level, you have to walk over a question
mark.  This will lower a ladder.  If you hit a question mark when the
ladder is already down, it may either give or take away energy.  The
little spinning thing which roams around cleaning up the question marks
is called a Janitor.  If he hits you, you get some energy.

When you have gone through all five levels (note that you don't have to
even do anything on the levels--you can just run through them if you
want), you get some energy for each remaining tree.  The number of
enemies in the third stage will be determined by how many spiders or
spider eggs you neglected to kill.

The controls in stage three are exactly like stage two, and once again
there are five levels.  The idea is to walk over all of the
gravestones--doing so will progress you to the next level.  Hit the
zillion attacking spiders with your wisp.  As long as they are in
contact with you, energy will be drained away *very* rapidly.  Flashing
spiders CANNOT be killed.  Periodically, an evil wizard will flash into
existence and the tongues of flame will create new spiders.  Hit the
wizard with the wisp for lots of energy.  This level is *frantic*.

Get through level five of stage three and you win.  There's supposed to
be some neato effects if you do.  I've never made it, though I played
the game to death.  Level five is impossible (and this comes from
someone who used to play lots of Robotron and Sinistar).

Hope this helps.  Let me know if I missed anything.  Necromancer is one
heck of a game.
--
James Hague   
exuhag@exu.ericsson.se









-----------------------------------------
Return to message index