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Occult powers have seized the sixteen Dark Talismans, kept in the Cauldron of Providence, and scattered them throughout the kingdom of Arnaroth, throwing it into chaos. Four of them ended up in the Haunted Forest, four in the Scary Dungeon, four in the Cursed Castle and four in the Doomed Cavern. The elderly wizard Able is the only one able to recover the Talismans and place them again into the Cauldron, one after the other while respecting the original sequence. Unfortunately, his magic is now weak, and not all of the evil creatures haunting the realm will be affected.

The player, in the role of Able, must therefore proceed through the four areas which compose the world of MagicAble, paying close attention to the enemies, and collecting four Talismans in each of the four areas following a precise order. This is the first peculiarity of a rather unique platform/collect-'em-up game. In fact, each Talisman bears a Roman numeral from 1 to 4, so you must collect and bring the first, second and so on, one after the other, to the Cauldron, placed at the centre of the map. The first setting that opens, when Able touches the Cauldron at the beginning of the game, is the Forest; the others become accessible as you bring the four talismans back to their destination.

Another unusual feature is that Able is not free to jump whenever he wants to, but he can only do it when he stands on the magenta magic stones. This means that the road to reach a Talisman will often be different from that which leads back to the Cauldron, as Able, for example, will have to reach a point in a high position and then drop down and follow another path. All this adds a strategy layer to MagicAble which is not common in titles of this genre, and increases its depth. As if that were not enough, the kingdom of Arnaroth is populated by hostile presences, which Able must avoid, as they take a life from him whenever he collides with them. Some enemies can be temporarily stunned with a spell, which takes a few seconds to recharge, and, in addition to that, bounces instead of going in a straight line, so if the timing is not correct, it might miss its target, exposing Able to the risk of getting hit.

Graphically MagicAble is fair, but sometimes the sprites, not being "masked", blend in with the scenery. Sound is limited to a tune in the initial menu and some effects. But its peculiarities reveal how much its author, who recently entered the "retro" Spectrum scene, tries to go beyond the classic schemes of this kind of games. And in such a crowded genre, this certainly should not be underestimated. This means MagicAble surely can't go unnoticed!