Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum (1986) is the first game of the Might and Magic series and the debut of New World Computing[1][1]. It is a first-person, turn-based party role-playing game whose defining trait was that the whole world — not only its dungeons — was explored in first person[1][1].

Development

• Jon Van Caneghem designed and programmed the game almost alone over about three years; outside artists drew the graphics[1][1].
• Publishers offered him about a dollar a copy, so he published it himself through New World Computing, named after Star Trek's "strange new worlds"[1]. Activision later took it on as an affiliated label[1][1].
• Its science-fiction twist was deliberate: Van Caneghem wanted the fantasy world to reveal its nature only at the very end, "like an episode of the old Twilight Zone"[1].
• Early copies started the party with clubs and no money; later releases added a ready-made, hardier starting party[1][1].

Releases

Dates and publishers as listed by Wikipedia and MobyGames[1][1]; the PC Engine version from NEC Retro[1]. The Japanese computer versions got new graphics[1]; the NES version added an automap[1], and the PC Engine version a voiced intro and a fixed party of six[1][1].

Setting

The party begins in the town of Sorpigal on the world of VARN, which looks like medieval fantasy but turns out to be an artificial world — the "Vehicular Astropod Research Nacelle"[1][1][1]. The quest for the Inner Sanctum leads to the struggle between the Guardian Corak and the renegade Sheltem, who has taken the place of King Alamar[1][1]; the story continues through the Gates to Another World in the second game[1].

Gameplay

• Up to six characters from five races — human, elf, dwarf, gnome and half-orc — and six classes: knight, paladin, archer, cleric, sorcerer and robber[1][1][1].
• Seven attributes rolled from 3 to 18: might, intellect, personality, endurance, speed, accuracy and luck; alignment and sex mattered in a few places[1][1][1].
• 94 spells — 47 for sorcerers and 47 for clerics — in seven levels, cast by level and number from the manual[1][1][1].
• About 55 maps of 16×16 squares, mapped on paper; saving only at inns; monsters unseen until met; combat on a text screen with options to run, surrender, bribe or fight[1][1][1].
• Side quests — climbing every tree in a grove, solving the magic square — were among the first real side quests in computer role-playing games[1][1].

Reception

• More than 100,000 copies sold by 1989[1].
• Computer Gaming World's Scorpia praised it as "world touring on a grand scale", and the magazine later added it to its Hall of Fame[1][1]. Dragon called it one of the top five computer games ever produced[1].
• Retrospectively, the CRPG Addict scored it 60 out of 100: "innovative and vast; an excellent early game"[1].

Re-releases and legacy

The game is part of the Might and Magic Sixpack (1998) and of the 6-pack Limited Edition sold on GOG since 2009[1]. Ubisoft acquired the series after 3DO's bankruptcy in 2003[1]. There was no official Russian release; in 2024 Old-Games.ru published a fan translation[1].

Trivia

• The villain Sheltem was named after Jon Van Caneghem's Shetland sheepdog[1].
• The free-roaming first-person world was a deliberate contrast to The Bard's Tale[1].

More on this game: character classes, skills, spells and monsters.