Simon the Sorcerer series
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Simon the Sorcerer is a series of point-and-click adventure games created by Adventure Soft. The series follows the adventures of an unwilling hero of the same name. The game has a fantasy setting and is a comedy.
The first two games are often compared with the Monkey Island series in terms of style and humour, and the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels and derivative games.
Both the first and the second episodes are playable with ScummVM.
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[edit] About Simon
Simon the Sorcerer is a teenager from our world. He is transported into a fantasy world as a sorcerer dressed in a cloak and pointy hat; his cloak and hat are purple in the first game, but change to red in the second and third game. He must use his logic and magical skills to solve puzzles as he progresses through the games.
Simon is extremely rude and insults everyone in his way. This tends to interfere with the success of his quests, forcing him to go to ridiculous lengths in order to finish his adventures. Simon breaks the fourth wall with his comments about adventure games.
[edit] Simon the Sorcerer
Simon the Sorcerer was released by Adventure Soft in 1993. The story begins with the protagonist, Simon, as an ordinary teenager. His dog, "Chippy", discovers a chest in the loft of his house containing a spellbook titled "Ye Olde Spellbooke". Simon throws the book onto the floor, but a portal opens above it. The dog goes through the portal and Simon follows.
After entering the portal, Simon finds himself in another world. After escaping from some trolls, he discovers that he has been brought on a quest to rescue the wizard Calypso from the evil sorcerer Sordid.
The game includes parodies of various popular books and fairy tales, including Rapunzel, The Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Jack and the Beanstalk and the Three Billy Goats Gruff.
Simon is voiced in this game by Chris Barrie, well-known at the time for his roles in Red Dwarf and The Brittas Empire.
[edit] Available versions
Several different versions of this game were created. For the Amiga, the AGA A1200 version boasting 256-colour graphics was available on 9 double-density floppy disks. Shortly afterwards, a 32-colour Amiga 500 edition was created so that any Amiga could play it, and finally a CD32 version was released on CD with 256-colour graphics and voice acting. This was the first Amiga adventure game to feature full voice acting, but only on the CD version.
The game was also released for IBM PC compatibles under MS-DOS and later re-released to run on Windows 95 using DirectX. A 256-colour version of the game was released for the Acorn RISC OS platform on floppy disk, with a CD version including voice acting released later.
[edit] Simon the Sorcerer II: The Lion, the Wizard and the Wardrobe
Simon the Sorcerer II: The Lion, the Wizard and the Wardrobe (commonly known as Simon the Sorcerer II) was released by Adventure Soft in 1995. The title is a reference to the Narnia book: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
In this game Sordid returns to life as a spirit, later transferred into a robotic body when the father of a peasant boy, Runt, burns his book of magic and throws it into the centre of a pentagram on the floor. In order to get revenge on Simon, Sordid sends a magical wardrobe to retrieve him, but due to a mistake the wardrobe ends up on the door-step of Calypso's Magic Shop. Upon returning to consciousness Simon learns that in order to return home he must find an extremely potent source of power called mucusade (a pun on Lucozade).
In this game, Simon spends a large part of the game traveling around the capital city of the Land, but later travels far and wide as certain events complicate his quest.
The game contains a lot of teenage humour and sexual allusions, more so than in the first game.
For this instalment, Brian Bowles became the voice of Simon.
[edit] Simon the Sorcerer 3D
The third game, in a break from tradition, is not a point-and-click but instead a 3D adventure game that incorporates action elements such as crawling, first-person view mode and the manual use of certain objects. The decision to switch to 3D was made as a result of pressure from potential publishers.
It opens with a lengthy cut-scene explaining how Simon's body, which had been separated from his soul by Sordid in the second game, was recovered and "rejoined" with his soul. At the start of the game Simon's immediate objective is to get to the city Poliganis and join Calypso. Before he can do this several smaller tasks have to be completed, in typical adventure game fashion. Upon arriving in Poliganis he is greeted by Melissa Leg, the heroine who apparently rescued his body from Sordid. She wants a favour in return: to track down the Swampling and let her know of his whereabouts. Eventually Simon finds the Swampling, after which several revelations regarding the game's storyline, the origins of the Universe, etc. come to light.
The sarcastic attitude and cruel humour that Simon the Sorcerer is famous for carries through in this instalment, perhaps bringing it up a level again from Simon 2. Along with this, several of the mainstay characters shared with the first two games make appearances, including Calypso, the Swampling, Goldilocks, the RPG players (a different faction this time), the Hedgehog Boy, Sordid, Runt, and the two Demons. There are many new characters also, continuing the theme of a fantasy world and including a Fairy Godmother, Judas, the High Priest of the Temple of Life, the Keeper of the Soul Bell, the man in the hole, the Entomologist, the Inbred Yokel (and Daisy), the Dwarf Prince and his clan, the Dragon Soddinell, S.I.G.N. the alcoholic golem, the Gnomes and the noblemen who fire them, a heroic prince, Coneman the Barabrain (his spelling was never very good), Jar Nin, the real Melissa Leg, a Welsh cheese wagon driver, the Barman with a hunch, Yvette, the vacuum cleaner salesman, the Sheriff, Porkins, the Wizard's Guild, various Orcs, street urchins, the Pizza Lord and his brother, the woodcutter, the lawyer, Grandulf, a drunken Druid, the Princess and Sir Squeaksalot, and the Wigologist.
The project suffered from a very long development time, resulting in the game's graphics being severely outdated by the time it was released. For this and other reasons, the game was poorly received by critics. [1] It is one of the longest games in the adventure game genre, partly because of its huge geography and partly because of the multitude of very difficult puzzles, not least the highly original final puzzle, after which a cut-scene ensues leaving a cliff-hanger and a large hint as to a fourth game.
[edit] Simon the Sorcerer 4: Chaos Happens
This game is planned for release in Q1 2007[2], and is being developed by Silver Style Entertainment.
The game marks a return to the heralded point and click interface and will feature high quality pre-rendered backgrounds. The characters are in 3D. From the artwork released thus far you can see Simon appears in his red outfit, but other colours can be seen as well, and there are many returning scenes and characters from previous installments. The German version has already been released, release dates for English version and versions for other territories to be announced.
[edit] Sordid's Puzzle Castle
A game featured in an arcade within The Feeble Files. It is comprised of 6 mini-games:
- Dwarf Balancing
- Arrange 6 dwarves on either side of a see-saw to balance it.
- Find the Frog
- A simple shell game. Simon's hat conceals a frog.
- Goblin Banging
- A Simon variant in which you hit 6 goblins in succession (4,6,8).
- Sorcerer's Challenge
- Thirty-six coins are arrayed in a 6x6 grid.
- Flipping a coin will flip adjacent non-diagonal coins. This effect does not wrap.
- Try to get all but one to show the same side.
- Swampling Stew
- A 10-guess Mastermind variant with 6 ingredients and 6 positions.
- Wizard's Pairs
- Concentration, with 20 images (5x4) of characters from Simon 1.
All six games are played in random order until the player loses and wins nothing, or until the player quits/finishes with a number of tokens based on the number of rounds won: 5, 20, 100, 200, 500, or 1000.
[edit] Trivia
- Mike Woodroffe, head of Adventure Soft Publishing and HeadFirst Productions, has a son called Simon. Simon is credited as writer and the designer for the first two Simon games and as creative director, writer and designer for Simon 3D.
- Simon Magus is also known as Simon the Sorcerer in English[citation needed].
- The third instalment of the series was originally intended to be a traditional 2D point-and-click game. However, resistance from potential publishers led to these plans being scrapped and the creation of Simon 3D. Andrew Brazier, Assistant Designer on Simon 3D, commented in an interview[3]: "Unfortunately, 2D is pretty much dead now. The only way we could make a 2D adventure nowadays is to fund it ourselves, which is unlikely, especially as adventures are probably the most demanding (resources-wise) games you can make."
- Despite being subtitled "The Lion, the Wizard and the Wardrobe," the lion in this game features only very briefly. The Wardrobe is a key plot point and the Wizard is, of course, Simon himself.
- The third game in the series was originally supposed to be distributed by Hasbro interactive, a company which left the project in the last minute and shortly afterwards went through bankruptcy. However, as a result there are numerous allusions to Hasbro and its products within the game.
[edit] See also
- Simon The Sorcerer and the bridge between the dimensions
- Adventure Soft Publishing
- Simon the Sorcerer 3D official website
- ScummVM - Software that allows you to play Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2 easily on various platforms
- ScummVM Music Enhancement Project Enhanced music for Simon the Sorcerer by James Woodcock
- Simon the Sorcerer I Overview/Review
- Fan page on Simon the Sorcerer Series
- Simon the Sorcerer series at MobyGames
- [4]
- Simon the Sorcerer 4 website
