It’s a beautiful sunny day. You fly over the nearby city, watching people doing their daily chores, houses being built, merchants trying to sell their wares. After a short flight, you enter a deep green forest, filled with different specimens of local flora and fauna. Suddenly, you hear a loud shreik and a series of fireballs hurls towards you. A giant wyvern has spotted you and has decided that you should become its lunch. You dodge the fireballs, which hit nearby trees, setting the entire area on fire. You fight back with your arsenal of lightnings and large flaming meteors. And then, out of sudden, another wizard dives down from the sky, with an apparent attempt to shred you to pieces with his army of undead archers. Welcome to the world of “Magic Carpet”!

The origin of this game is somewhat legendary. At first “Magic Carpet” was supposed to be yet another flight simulator, which would support a bit more realistic terrain rendering and shading. With time it turned out however, that the game engine had become something a lot more, than originally intended. Processing time was amazingly fast, and the things you could do with the game world were truly astonishing. Thus, the idea for a flight simulator was scratched and “Magic Carpet” was born.

 The story is set back in the ancient times of 1001 Arabian Nights. A great magical energy called Mana is being discovered. The one who controlled would have the power to shape the universe, the fact which eventually led the entire world to a state of great war. You are Zanznamar, an apprentice of a wizard who cast a spell of great power in an attempt to become the ulitmate winner of the war. However, the spell backfired, resulting in the wizard’s death and a great earthquake, which torn apart the entire world into 50 separate lands. Your goal, as the apprentice is to clean up the mess your master had made and restore magical balance to all lands, reuniting entire world in the process. This is being done by flying on your magic carpet around the entire land and collecting floating golden mana balls. These are then carried by baloons to your castle, where they are stored for safekeeping (and growth of your own power by the way). The world is restored after a certain amount of mana is collected in your castle. Obviously, this is not as easy as it sounds. In order to get mana, you will have to battle different kinds of hostile creatures and other wizards, who compete for power. To do this you will use an arsenal of 25 different spells: starting from a plain fireball, through lightning bolts and meteors, finishing on a powerfull force blast, volcanoes and summoning undead armies.

 Speaking of volcanoes… 

 The amazing feature of “Magic Carpet” is that you can completely reshape the landscape of each world. Not only can you burn down the forests, destroy enemy buildings or completely devastate innocent villages. Some of the spells allow you to create an enormous crater in the ground or a deep miles long canyon. The aforementioned Volcano Spell actually lets you raise a giant mountain, which spits out lava and fierce balls of fire every once in a while. And then… there is the Castle Spell. One, that creates you the fortess which will secure your reservers of mana. Cast it once, and you will raise a single tower. Cast it twice, and four more towers appear! Each subsequent casting of this spell (up to 8 times at most per world) additionally extends your castle by battlements, archers and even more towers and balloons. Should you lose your castle, you would either have to rebuilt it in a safer place… or die from the hands (or rather spells) of your enemies.

 And enemies do come in different varieties. Apart from 7 other wizards who will try to steal your mana, there are numerous beasts which are the main supply of this substance. Besides your “average” troll, rabid gorilla or a vulture, there are fire shooting worms, dragons, lightning-striking krakens and griffins and of course the mighty wyvern, who wreaks havoc wherever he flies to. “Magic Carpet” can offer you a great dosage of excitement, especially with its dynamic music – calm at first, turning into a fierce battle song as soon as you endure a beast/wizard in combat.

 Apart from a single player campaign, “Magic Carpet” supports a network play. This means that you can endure your friends as one of the wizards, trying to take control over the world and depleting their mana resources. This is done by destroying their castles and subsequently stealing their mana (which is being done using the Possession Spell). Apart from that, the same rules apply as in the single player gameplay: as long as your castle is intact, you have virtually unlimited number of lives (meaning: after you die, you are resurrected instantly at your castle). If you die without a castle you are eliminated from the game (which corresponds to a level restart in single player game).

 “Magic Carpet” is an action packed game filled with 50 levels, which give the player a rather nice learning curve. While at some point repetitive monster-bashing, collecting mana, etc. might start getting a bit dull, the experience of flying on a magic carpet through deserts, forests and over large bodies of water is still at least one reason to play this game.
 

Sound – 8/10 – Game has a really awesome ambient arabian-style music which perfectly fits the atmosphere of the game. It changes dynamically depending on the situation and each area (desert, sea, town) has its own unique set of sounds

Graphics -7/10 – “Magic Carpet” featured a new degree of realism in flight simulation. Not only the terrain varied in shape, but you could mold it any way you liked using the spells.

Overall - 7/10 – The gameplay itself was quite fun and amusing, giving an opportunity to take a random stroll and enjoy the beauty of the land while hunting for mana, as well as exciting battles. Too bad though that the ending cinematic was far less than one could expect after completing such a long (and difficult) game.

(screenshots taken from Magic Carpet 2: The Netherworlds)