Hocus Pocus

Wizard Hocus and his assistant Pocus apparently got dragged down to hell, and now you have to get them out. Nothing complicated — a classic Point-and-Click adventure from Homegrown Software that tried to compete with LucasArts in the nineties without their budget or creative flair.

Hocus Pocus alternates between adventure and platformer. You click on objects, collect items, solve simple puzzles, then switch into a mode where you jump across platforms and dodge enemies. The genre-switching is an interesting idea that could work, but in practice it feels scattered — like the creators didn't know what they wanted to do and decided to do both at once. Item preparation takes forever, jumping is erratic and inelegant. The graphics are standard DOS fare — pixelart that won't wow you, but it's fine. Colors are garish, animations stiff. Sound works if you've got a Sound Blaster, otherwise you're out of luck.

Mechanically it holds together, but the solutions aren't particularly clever. Puzzles can be solved by a combination of trial-and-error and reading item descriptions. The platforming sections aren't hard, just tedious — jumping feels cheap and purposeless. The game doesn't pull you forward with story or mechanics, just sheer inertia.

For its time it was average stuff. Today it's not even interesting from a genre evolution standpoint. Hocus Pocus got lost between ambition and ability — it had potential, but lacked character, identity, craftsmanship. Look at Samurai Coda from the same era — those guys had a clear vision, here you just get a manual.

You can play it today just fine in DOSBox, but it's really for collectors of nineties adventures. If you want actual fun, grab any Sierra game or Lucas Arts title instead — those have character. You'll play Hocus Pocus to say you've experienced it, then never come back.