What is OrbQuest - The Search for Seven Wards?

For devotees of fantasy role-playing adventure comes OrbQuest: The Search for Seven Wards. You seek a magical orb shattered into seven parts, the Seven Wards, which must be gathered from far and wide to restore the orb and defeat evil. The Search for Seven Wards takes place on a map of challenging scale—sprawling mountain ranges, great rivers, huge forests and wreacherous marsh- lands, a dozen cities and villages, and other locations crucial for a mouse-driven little character to explore. You choose : your character’s name, sex, and occupation, and the program randomly assigns your character six other values, such as strength, intelligence, and charisma; these values can be enhanced or reduced during, play. The landscape fairly crawls with icons representing monsters and villains— including the IRS, whose savage agents grab your character’s gold. 

The best feature of OrbQuest is its’ grand scope: the great distances to be traveled and the exhaustive search, which is the essence of a good quest. Unfortunately, the game lacks imaginative twists. There is little need for strategic thinking. An experienced player may find OrbQuest too familiar, too straightforward, and derivative of more creative predecessors. For example, Ultima II has been available for about two years and remains a superior game in most respects (as does Ultima III, with its four-player teams and mapping that blocks the players’ view around corners and over mountains). First-time adventurers will enjoy OrbQuest more than jaded game addicts. 

Despite these criticisms, OrbQuest is easy to understand, fun to play, and not an easy win. Modestly packaged, it suffers none for the lack of posters, arcane writings, and other fantasy game doodads.

OrbQuest: The Search for Seven Wards does not advance the art and science of digital adventuring but does offer a hide-and-seek game of substantial breadth. It may hold the promise of better things to come in future games (including a sequel to this one) planned by the OrbQuest folks.

McCandless, Keith. (February 1987). Graphic Adventure. Macworld. (pg. 150).

Download OrbQuest - The Search for Seven Wards for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

System Requirements

From Mac OS 1.0 up to Mac OS 6.0

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Mini vMac