The Fool's Errand from Miles Computing is a tour de force of gaming excellence, a scintillating potpourri of puzzles to ponder, mazes to mouse upon, and challenges to compute. Author Cliff Johnson has taken computer gaming, turned it inside out and upside down, and redefined the state of the art to a new high in achievement that could only have been accomplished on the Macintosh.
In one sense, The Fool's Errand is a collection of 80 puzzles to solve. In another sense, it’s the world’s first interactive myth with a hero of the legendary status of Gilgamesh, even the equivalent of Beowulf in computer gaming.
The game begins with a wonderful VideoWorks-type “movie” that introduces you to The Fool and his errand to unseat the evil High Priestess from worldwide dominion. His first ally is no less than The Sun, who presents him with a map of tiles, most of which are missing and out of place. To reassemble the map, which must be used to unravel the final mystery of the evil Priestess, The Fool must seek help in many lands, from many peoples, all by accepting the challenges, the puzzles they place before him.
Some of the puzzles are jigsaws in which a scrambled picture is presented to the player. You need a keen eye to see the relationships among the various parts. The solution presents both another tile for The Sun’s map and a visual clue. The graphics on these puzzles are reminiscent of the better decks of Tarot cards — dark and brooding, silhouetted yet detailed.
Other puzzles present various renditions of mazes that you must solve by moving through them with the mouse. Some of the mazes redefine themselves as you play, with walls that move and trap you in one-way corridors. Other mazes may depend upon anything and everything from partial invisibility to mind-busting intricacy to stymie the player. But all can be solved by perseverance.
Then there are puzzles the likes of which never existed before. There are puzzles with buttons at the bottom of the screen. Press one and a shadow appears. Press the next and the shadow is crossed by light. Press a third and yet another shadow appears. Keep pressing and suddenly the random penumbra forms the shapes of letters that are all intertwined and influenced by the order in which the buttons are moused. Can you find the final letters, the clue, and obtain the prized Sun Map tile? These are challenging indeed.
Dexterity, too, is needed for some of the puzzles. Yet even the most dexterous puzzle depends on a well-ordered mind to direct the hand that wields the flashing mouse. In one puzzle, for example, you not only have to press randomly Hashing, eye-deceiving buttons but also do so in an order that their very flashing has defined for you. There is no real way that words can describe an experience that must be seen to be understood — or not understood, as the case may be. Suffice it to say that reflexes must always be coupled to synapses and that the player who accepts The Errand will never lack for mental and physical stimulation. Finally, after you have solved all 80 puzzles, you must solve the secret of The Sun’s Map. Those who manage this will find a true treat in the form of another “movie" that only successful Fools can view.
So, as a game, The Fool's Errand has enough challenge, enough puzzling perplexity, enough mousability, to rate it, even with nothing else added, as a true “five mouse” program.
But The Fool's Errand goes beyond being "just" an excellent game. It ventures into the realm of myth, into the prototypical lands of the epic legend, into the maelstrom of the Jungian archetype, and it returns to our world and offers us a way to extend ourselves beyond the boundaries of our normal existence.
Now, with The Fool’s Errand, you too have the possibility before you of accepting the type of challenge other heros, previously dressed in panther skins and on first-name terms with various gods, have taken up before you.
Shapiro, Neil L. (July 1988). The Fool's Errand. MacUser. (pgs. 117, 119).
Cliff Johnson
Games
out of 10 (2 votes)
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the_fools_errand_original.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Mini vMac
