Nostalgia #1 - Adventure Game Series - Simon the Sorcerer

Welcome to the first in my new series, Nostalgia!

When I was a kid, computer gaming was just coming to the fore. There were a ton of first person shooters being made including Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake and System Shock. However, another genre also dominated the gaming scene when I was growing up, and that was the point and click adventure game genre. As much fun as first person shooters were, nothing quite captured my imagination as much as adventure games. The other thing that was captured was my level of frustration trying to solve the puzzles. Puzzles that were quite obviously designed for teenagers or even adults to solve, but there I was, a 10 year old child trying to figure out all these things! So each week I will bring to you one of the adventure games I played in my childhood and bring back some of that Nostalgia, or hopefully inspire some of you to try out the old school point and click adventure games if you haven't yet! So let's get started!

This week we will be looking at one of my personal favourites - Simon the Sorcerer.

Technical Details

Simon the Sorcerer is a point and click adventure game developed by a company named Adventure Soft. It was released in the year 1993 (whew! that was a long time ago!). I personally played it on MS-Dos back in the day, however it was also produced for other platforms such as the Amiga. It ran the normal action playset such as "Look at", "Pick up", "Open, etcetera.  Now that all that technical mumbo jumbo is out the way, let's get to the juicy stuff!

Story

Simon the Sorcerer revolves around a boy named, you guessed it, Simon and his dog Chippy who was adopted after he turned up at Simon's door with a mystical book. One day Chippy is messing around and Simon comes to investigate, finding the old book that Chippy brought along with him. The book is named "Ye Olde Spellbooke" and Simon throws the book on the floor, opening a portal to another universe! Chippy goes through the portal and Simon chases him through it! Unfortunately, the portal closes behind them and they are stuck in this new and magical world. He ends up in a house who belongs to a sorcerer called Calypso, and a note that says Simon was sent to this world to save Calypso from an evil sorcerer called Sordid.

What follows is the hilarious adventure of Simon trying to become a sorcerer and defeat Sordid to save Calypso! Simon comes across many great characters such as a bridge troll, a huge ice giant, a sleeping dragon, and my personal favourite, a green man called a swampling who is having a birthday party... alone.

The humor in a lot of these characters is what kept me so entertained throughout playing the game. The dialogue will have you in stitches and will keep the game in your memory long after you have played.

Simon and his dog Chippy arriving in Calypso's cottage.

Graphics and Gameplay

The graphics were quite simply gorgeous for the year of production. The game was created in 256 colours but it sure looked like more to me when I was playing! Adventure Soft really pushed the envelope and made each and every background image as gorgeous as they could, and there were a whole bunch of them! A long intertwining forest, a cave housing a dragon, a swampling's house and of course the main city that had quite a few sets, these were just a few of the backgrounds that were included in Simon the Sorcerer.

The gameplay was standard for a point and click adventure of that time. You were presented with a pallet full of simple actions such as "Pick up", "Open", "Talk to", and so on, that you would use to interact with the world and the other characters present in the world. The only thing I can fault Simon the Sorcerer for was the excessive amount of pixel hunting, however, I guess you couldn't expect anything else since that is what the whole adventure game genre was built off. I am pretty sure I used a walkthrough for a few parts being so young.

You also have a full inventory system as most adventure games did. You could combine items in your inventory to create different variants of the item which would be used to solve the puzzles throughout the game.

The gorgeous graphics shown along with the inventory system and action system

Sound

The great thing about Simon the Sorcerer was that it was different from most adventure games. It had a complete talkie and voiced characters (at least most of the important ones) and that is what added a lot of character to the game. It also had great music. However, after a few hours of playing, the music would start getting on your nerves. There is only so many times you can hear the same song and not start getting an itch in your ear.

My favourite supporting character, the swampling.

Overall

This game remains in my heart. I actually played Simon the Sorcerer 2 first and had so much fun with that one that I had to come back and play the first one. The vibrant world and even more vibrant characters is what seperated Simon the Sorcerer from so many other games and that is one of the reasons why I would recommend this fantastic adventure game to anyone.

I personally rate it a 8 out of 10.

I hope you enjoyed the first in my new series, Nostalgia. If you have any feedback for me or would like to discuss your memories with Simon the Sorcerer, hit me up down below in the comments section. Until next time!