Wiz 'n' Liz

The Good
Meet Wiz and Liz – two magicians who live on the planet Pum. They spend most of their time brewing potions and casting spells, and the only pets they have are wabbits. One day, one of their spells backfires and sends all the wabbits to distant parts of Pum, and as Wiz (or Liz), you must get the wabbits back in the tons of levels.

You start out in front of their shack, with a cauldron in front. There is no exit, so you have to make one by using the two ingredients (already supplied) to cast your first spell. You can obtain more ingredients by collecting the wabbits. It is interesting to mix different ingredients together and see what you come up with, and by casting certain spells, you can unlock mini-games, get extra points, extra stars (which can be used to buy hints or ingredients, if you manage to cast a spell that cause stores to appear), and more. Several spells also cause bizarre things to happen.

The main aim is to get wabbits. You first have to get them to receive letters that make up a word listed. This is funny, because every word you make is pure nonsense. Once you get all the letters, you have to get a certain number of wabbits again and the level exit will appear when you do this. Wiz 'n' Liz is split into three levels: “Apprentice”, “Wizard”, and “Sorcerer”. These levels provide variations of gameplay. There are different bosses in each level, and there are dying wabbits to worry about in later ones. If you do not collect a wabbit in a certain time, it explodes, and if that happens, all the letters you collect are lost, and you have to hunt down the wabbits that carry the letters. It is frustrating just to find the wabbit that is about to blow up, but at least it is challenging. To make matters worse, you have a certain amount of time in which you have to do everything.

The mini-games themselves are great since they are the same games that I grew up with, and the aim of these games are simple to follow. One of these include a Nibbles-type game where the aim is to guide your snake to a number, and the more numbers that you get, the larger the snake becomes. You can't die as long as you do not come in contact with yourself. Another game is Waining Wabbits, where you need to collect the wabbits that fall out of the sky.

There are seven levels in the “Apprentice” levels, including Desert Land, Snow Land, Temple Land, Lunar Land, Grass Land, Mine Land, and Wood Land. You can play them in any order you like by navigating a roller coaster and entering a door. The graphics are great, and it differs between modes. Once you complete the eight lands in the “Wizard” and “Sorcerer” levels, you have to complete them again and again. This is worth the effect as there is much more scenery to gawk at in these levels. There are several endings to this game, and they are funny, since they are a rehash of the introduction. The real ending can be seen if a user manages to finish all three levels.

The Bad
Sometimes when you collect a wabbit, you find that it only hops away when you are near it. This can be quite frustrating in the last two levels, especially if you are racing against time to collect a dying wabbit, as your character runs fast at the start, but acts like a tortoise at the end, and you are forced to jump to gain speed.

On the “Sorcerer” levels, it is ridiculous that you have to rescue a dying wabbit every five seconds. Yet on the first two levels, you have a bit of time, catching other wabbits before you have to make your way toward the next dying wabbit.

The Bottom Line
The object of Wiz 'n' Liz is to collect wabbits that have been released into the wilderness by mistake. The good thing about the game is mixing different ingredients and using them to cast different spells to see what you get, as well as playing mini-games that you may or may not have grown up with. There are eight lands to conquer, which are a lot easy when you first start playing the game, but become challenging later, due to several tricks that Psygnosis planted within the levels, such as adjusting your character's speed from fast to slow, making wabbits explode when you abandon them, and giving you less time to collect letters and wabbits at the same time.