magic and the country will again fall under their influence. The player character is, pretty much accidentally, recruited by the Guardians to rescue his friend Xam, who was kidnapped by the witches, retrieve the charms, fix the Bracelet, and then use its powers against Jannedor to kill her and destroy her castle, thus defeating the witches and restoring luck to Aquitania. Once Jannedor's evil ambitions are put to an end, however, the player's character is put back just where he was before he began his adventure—in front of a speeding bus—and killed. Development Jinxter was originally conceived as an answer to Infocom's Enchanter and was created by a relatively large development team. The game was originally written by the sister of Magnetic Scrolls' founder Anita Sinclair, Georgina, who had previously written the novella A Tale of Kerovnia for The Pawn. However, due to a falling out between them, the whole text had to be rewritten in three weeks by Michael Bywater, who had previously written the What Burglar magazine for The Guild of Thieves and then helped with Corruption. The game's package contents included The Independent Guardian newspaper written by Bywater. Reception Jinxter received positive reviews, including the rating scores of 70% from Amiga Computing, 7/10 from Amiga User International, 88% from Amstrad Action, 8/10 from Power Play, 9/10 from Commodore User, 37/40 from Computer & Video Games, 89% from Computing with the Amstrad, 92% from Crash, 92% from The Games Machine 9/10 in Your Sinclair, and 83% from Zzap64. The game was also a commercial success. In 1998, ACE featured it on the list of 100 Top Games as "an odd adventure decorated with beautiful graphics." However, in 1996, Computer Gaming World ranked its ending as the 14th least rewarding of all time, as "even when the player won, the protagonist died." References External links Jinxter at the Hall of Light (HOL) 1980s interactive fiction 1987 video games Acorn Archimedes games Amiga games Amstrad CPC games Amstrad PCW games Apple II games Atari 8-bit family games Atari ST games Classic Mac OS games Commodore 64 games DOS games Magnetic Scrolls games Science fantasy video games Single-player video games Telecomsoft games Video games about witchcraft Video games developed in the United Kingdom ZX Spectrum games