The Summoning

The Summoning is an often overlooked and underrated Action RPG published in 1992 by SSI. The game was created by Event Horizon which later became Dreamforge Intertainment. This same developer made Ravenloft, Sanitarium, Anvil of Dawn and War Wind series.

The story of The Summoning revolves around an unnamed hero who has been brought back to life (summoned) to counter a new foe. This is actually a direct sequel to Event Horizon's first game Dark Spyre. However, this game is visually and aurally much better than the first game. The game utilizes an isometric point of view to give the illusion of 3D similar to Dark Spyre but compared to Dark Spyre the levels are more detailed, the color palette is better and overall level design has been improved. The game blends a clever mix of puzzles (mostly pressure plate, find the key variety) and action. There are a number of NPCs that you encounter and a robust dialogue system that uses keywords to forward the dialog tree is used to converse with them. Most of the NPCs you meet have very distinct personalities.

There were quite a few innovations in this game. The magic system employed the use of hand gestures (although you still have to get scrolls to memorize them). It seems that a lot of thought went into the design of the interface to allow faster action. The game used both keyboard and mouse and in some respects can be considered as a slower paced Diablo. Players could memorize certain spells and use function keys to cast them. The inventory system was also very unique for its day as it was always available and could be dragged up or down to view more options. This was similar to Lucasfilms' adventure games. In fact Event Horizon's next game was an adventure game called Veil of Darkness which utilized a modified version of The Summoning's game engine.

Despite being on only two 3.5" floppies (total 2.88 MB) this is a very long game. The story is pretty involved and over the course of the game gets more fleshed out. There are some very memorable characters in this game as well. The game has three endings however, only one of them is good.