The Trials Of Achenar Hc

The Trials of Achenar is a 1997 HyperCard fantasy role-playing adventure for the classic Macintosh by Scott Sams and Colin Reilly. You play a young apprentice wizard learning the trade across a top-down world of colour graphics, sound, music, and animation, posted to Info-Mac on 26 June 1997 as a roughly 3.4 MB BinHex stack.

An apprentice's journey

Despite the Myst-evoking name, the Trials of Achenar is its own thing: a small-scale RPG built as a HyperCard stack, with a colour top-down view, exploration-driven puzzles, and a coming-of-age story about a wizard-in-training. The 'Hc' suffix in the slug points back to its HyperCard roots.

Built on HyperCard

The game requires HyperCard Player 2.1 or later (bundled with most period Macs) and at least 5 MB of RAM. Like many ambitious HyperCard titles of the late nineties, it pushes the stack format with custom artwork, music, and animated cards rather than the plain text-and-button layouts the engine first shipped with.

Shareware terms

The Trials of Achenar was distributed as shareware with a 30 USD registration fee, in line with other independent HyperCard adventures of the era. The classic Mac shareware model let solo developers like Sams and Reilly ship a polished RPG without a publisher behind them.

Compatibility today

Macintosh Garden notes display issues on PowerBook G4 systems running Mac OS 9.2.2 with HyperCard Player 2.4.1, so the smoothest experience is on its original target hardware or in an emulator running an earlier System and HyperCard. The game holds a 3.5 of 5 community rating on Macintosh Garden.