Magic Carpet (video game)
| Magic Carpet | |
|---|---|
North American PC box art
|
|
| Developer(s) | Bullfrog Productions |
| Publisher(s) | Electronic Arts |
| Designer(s) | Peter Molyneux |
| Engine | Magic Carpet |
| Platform(s) | DOS, PlayStation, Saturn |
| Release date(s) |
PC PlayStation Saturn |
| Genre(s) | Action |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Publication | Score |
| CGW |
 (PC) |
| EGM | 7/10 (PS1) |
| Maximum |
 (SAT) |
| Sega Saturn Magazine | 90% (SAT) |
Magic Carpet is an action video game released by Bullfrog Productions in 1994.
Its graphics and gameplay were considered innovative and technically impressive at the time. A revised edition, Magic Carpet Plus, included the Hidden Worlds expansion pack which added 25 levels and a winter-themed tileset. The title also had a sequel released in 1995, Magic Carpet 2.
The player plays a wizard on a magic carpet flying over water, mountains and other terrain while destroying monsters and rival wizards (which are controlled by the computer) and collecting "mana" which is gathered by hot air balloons and stored in the player's own castle.
The story is told in a cutscene that depicts the pages of a book being flipped. According to this back story, mana was discovered and though it initially had beneficial uses, the quest for it made the lands barren. Worse, many corrupt wizards began turning to mana for their own nefarious purposes, eventually leading to war between them. The battling wizards began using more destructive spells and summoning deadly monsters, the latter of which often turned against them. One wizard hoped to end everything with an all-powerful spell but instead only left the worlds shattered. Only his apprentice survived and his goal is to restore the worlds to equilibrium.
The player has to visit several small spherical "worlds" (50 in the original game and an additional 25 in the expansion). The goal in each world is to build a castle and fill it with the necessary percentage of the total mana in the current level (or "world"), restoring it to "equilibrium". The total mana level is fixed in each world.
The player can destroy enemy monsters and then salvage the mana they leave behind, represented by pearls of varying sizes. To accomplish this, the player has to possess the mana so that mana-collecting balloons bring them to the player's castle (the balloons ignore mana that are unpossessed or possessed by an enemy wizard). Greater amounts of mana stored in the castle allow the player to expand the castle and cast more powerful spells.
As the player expands the castle, it spawns additional balloons and armed guards that defend the castle against attacks by enemy wizards. Besides storing mana, the player's castle also serves as a home base for the player character where he can regain health and mana. Upon death, the player character respawns at his castle. Dying without a castle forces the player to restart the level since the game does not have a mid-level save feature. As long as the player's castle is at least partly intact, the player character cannot die.
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Wikipedia