TaskMaker

The player's overall status is measured by seven status bars. All stats save for food will replenish through time and resting:

Food: Food is the character's appetite and requires food in order to fill. Although food does not affect combat, it allows the character to rest and heal. When depleted, the character will be unable to rest and continually lose health until he either receives more food or he dies.

The player controls a young hero who has arrived to be trained and eventually become the leader of the game's main setting, Outer Terra. The TaskMaker, leader of the game's world, serves as the player's mentor. The TaskMaker assigns the player ten tasks, the first nine of which are quests to obtain an item from a different dungeon or town. In doing so, the player encounters game elements such as illusionary walls, teleports, traps, and switches, as well as monsters and other non-playable characters with whom the player can interact. After retrieving an item, the player returns it to the TaskMaker, who then assigns the next task.

In the game's next-to-last task, the TaskMaker asks the player to kill a prisoner on his island. Returning to the TaskMaker after killing the prisoner reveals the TaskMaker to be evil, and the game ends; not killing the prisoner results in a battle with the TaskMaker as the final task, and leads to the game's true ending. Once the TaskMaker is killed, the player is declared "master" of the land, and a special menu is unlocked in the game, allowing for the player to edit all the dungeons and villages.

The original XOR version of TaskMaker was reviewed negatively in MacWEEK, which compared it unfavorably to contemporary Macintosh role-playing video games The Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, and Pool of Radiance. MacWEEK noted the game's quick and controllable fun, but claimed that it lacked richness and had less enticing graphics compared to the other titles. The Macintosh IIx version of the game got 4 out of 5 stars in Dragon; the reviewers said that it was "not hard" but added, "it is proven that those who write game code specifically for one computer system and don't rely on a port of another system's code usually publish a better-than-average game." The Lessers also noted that the game's graphics were reminiscent of the Mac game OrbQuest, in that "[y]ou have a top-down view of your area, in black and white and shades of gray."

0 "is nonetheless a very solid, professional production ... an enjoyable, if slightly dated RPG" comparable to Ultima III through V. Inside Mac Games rated the shareware version of the game four out of five and called the re-release "a superb update to the original". Inside Mac Games selected the re-released Taskmaker as best shareware game of 1993.