Legend of the Sword

• Title — Legend of the Sword • Developer — Silicon Software • Publisher — Rainbird Software • Designer — * Karl Buckingham • Colin Mongardi • Eugene Messina • Platforms — Atari ST, Amiga, MS-DOS • Released — 1988 • Genre — Interactive fiction • Modes — Single-player

The lands of Anar have been invaded by the forces of an evil wizard, Suzar. In times past, a magical sword and shield guarded the inhabitants. The player character and his party set out to search for the items in order to stop the wizard.

The interface is divided into four areas, the top left is used for images which change depending the situation, the top right is the scrolling map area, the middle shows the movement commands and hitpoints which are depicted as a burning candle. The bottom third of the screen is used for text display.

Legend of the Sword was in development for over two years. The development started when Karl Buckingham decided to write a novel about a dream he had. When talking to Colin Mongardi, he decided to write it as a video game instead. He hadn't played an adventure game before and after playing The Pawn, decided his game wasn't going to have any vague puzzles. Silicon Soft was based in Eastbourne, England and was set up under the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. The game was designed by a three-person team of Buckingham, Mongardi, and Eugene Messina for the Amstrad CPC. When finished, they contacted publisher Mastertronic but didn't like their offhand approach to the game. Next was Rainbird which required a 16-bit version because they thought an Amstrad version wouldn't sell, also an additional six months of development time was requested by the publisher in collaboration with their development team. The game was then remade for the Atari ST and written in the C programming language.