Curse of Enchantia is a classic point-and-click comedy adventure game from Core Design, better known as creators of Tomb Raider. It is probably best remembered for its often strange design ideas and nonsensical puzzles.
The game's story tell of a magical land of Enchantia, where an evil witch queen wants to be stay young for all eternity, but one missing ingredient to cast this spell is a male child from another world. The witch creates a magic portal to the 1990s Earth, spots the young Brad, who just happened to come to play baseball with his sister, and immediately incants the summoning spell. The game begins in a dungeon, from which Brad must escape and then find a way to vanquish the witch and get back to his own dimension.
Curse of Enchantia was supposed to be followed by a sequel in which Brad would return to destroy the rest of the witches, but instead it was made into Universe, a similar game with an entirely unrelated plot.
This game provides examples of:
- Anachronism Stew: Lots of very modern things in the otherwise Fantasy world, especially in the volcanic garbage dump area.
- Barefoot Sage:
- Parodied with the old barefoot guru who meditates while smashing two stones against each other. He even has the sign "Rock Basher Meditators Inc." in his cave!
- The old magician in the "Mage's Shop of Wonders" is also barefooted, overlapping between this and Magical Barefooter.
- Buried Alive: At one point, a Magic Misfire by a mage transports Brad into a coffin in an old grave.
- Combinatorial Explosion: There are a whole mess of items in the game you could use for multiple tasks, but of course each item is only used for a specific situation. Figuring out the situations themselves (e.g. breaking a fishing rod to make a fire) is another matter.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Taken to an extreme - death is not even possible. Anything that would kill the player character in any other game is a mere hindrance that at worst causes Amusing Injuries that Brad instantly recovers from.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Subverted. Brad encounters quite a few dangerous things, situations and creatures, but he can't actually die in the game.
- For the Evulz: The coven of witches that rules over Enchantia is described as "committing the most terrible deeds for no reason".
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The witch queen in the end when she is hit by her spell and then destroyed with her own Ring of Power.
- Ice Queen: Quite literally, as the game features also a very Ice Queen-like witch who is living in an Ice Palace and has an Ejection Seat in her throne for whatever reason.
- Malevolent Architecture: The evil queen's castle - complete with Portrait Painting Peephole, Surprise Slide Staircase and Bookcase Passage.
- Magic Versus Science: During the Final Battle, including combating a conjured ghost with a vacuum cleaner (Weapons That Suck, literally) to prove once and for all that Black Magic sucks.
- No Body Left Behind: An unconscious bandit vanishes after being stabbed with his own sword.
- Pragmatic Hero: Brad's quite ruthless use of Kick Them While They Are Down.
- Red Herring: "The Red Dragon" inn. It plays no role in the plot, as the bouncer wouldn't let Brad in, and there's no way to get around him.
- Solve the Soup Cans: The game is packed with these kinds of puzzles. Most of the solutions to the problems you encounter turn out to be very arbitrary, even by adventure game logic.
- Spin to Deflect Stuff: Using a fan as Attack Reflector for a Projectile Spell.
- Vain Sorceress: Obviously. With Hellish Pupils and Femme Fatalons and all that.
