Simon the Sorcerer is back! Rejoice! Wait, who is Simon the Sorcerer? Oh dear, this is one of those regional things, isn’t it? You see, while Simon’s classic point-and-click adventures were quite popular in Europe back in the day, he made very little impact in North America. This is the challenging needle that Simon the Sorcerer Origins has to thread. Can it satisfy old fans while also being approachable to people who have never encountered this snarky boy wizard before? Let’s have a look and see.
This game is a prequel, apparently set a few weeks before the events of the first game. Simon doesn’t have his familiar robes yet, though you don’t have to wait too long for that. He also hasn’t met his nemesis Sordid yet, and that’s kind of what the story in this game is about. Setting the game where it is means that new players won’t be struggling to catch up, and thanks to the usual Simon fourth-wall breaking, returning players will have lots of references to past material to enjoy. Simon the Sorcerer Origins takes its story just a little bit more seriously than the older games did, and whether that’s a good or bad thing is an exercise left to the reader.
One bit of good news is that Red Dwarf’s Chris Barrie is back to lend his voice to the character, and he’s as much of a treat as you would expect. A lot of the humor in this game comes from Simon’s asides to the player, and Barrie delivers them with the snarkiness they demand. With the game making an honest attempt at a dramatic story this time, I think the humor on the whole might not feel exactly the same as the older games, but at least Simon sounds the part.
In terms of gameplay, this is a fairly standard point-and-click adventure. It controls well enough on a controller, even though a mouse would certainly be preferable. If you’re playing in handheld mode, you can use the touch screen. That works a lot better. There are some bows to modern design here, allowing you to quickly shuffle through hotspots rather than pixel hunt, but in other ways it’s not quite up to what you would see in some other adventure games from recent years. In a lot of ways, it’s sticking to its guns as an example of the genre as it was when Simon was originally riding high.
I think the puzzles are mostly reasonable, at least. The game rarely gets to the point of ridiculous nonsense that some classic adventures do. But if you do happen to need help, don’t expect anything from the game. Indeed, if you even dismiss some text off the screen too quickly or forget some details of a conversation or description, you may well be out of luck. This is not a game that likes to repeat itself. I think many newer games in the adventure genre try to give the player some nudges when they get stuck, and do their best to keep critical information accessible. Heck, even a lot of games from back in the day do a better job of this than Simon the Sorcerer Origins. It doesn’t sink the game, but if you don’t keep good notes you might find yourself doing that unpleasant thing where you’re walking around using every item on everything hoping to get a reaction.
With that said, I had a decent time with Simon the Sorcerer Origins. The world and characters are charming, the story has a little bit of heart, the jokes are sometimes quite funny, and I didn’t have a rough go of most of the puzzles. I didn’t love the timed sequence near the end, but this too feels like a throwback to the old days. There was always some kind of irritating action bit squeezed into these things. It sure doesn’t hurt that the game looks and sounds really nice, too. My understanding is that the Simon series eventually dipped into some really ghastly 3D, but Origins shows us how a proper toon version of Simon and his world would look.
As I’m a newcomer to the Simon the Sorcerer series, I can’t really speak to how authentic this prequel is. But a bit of research tells me this franchise has been through some tough times, so fans will hopefully have some forgiveness for a good-hearted effort even if it doesn’t quite hit the mark. As for myself, as someone who has enjoyed adventure games through the highs and lows, I had a solid time with Simon the Sorcerer Origins. Not every reference landed, but the game wasn’t so obsessed with them as to make me feel lost. The story was engaging and the puzzles were largely fair, and that’s a big part of what I like to see in games from this genre. Fans of Broken Sword or Monkey Island might want to give this a shot, even if they don’t know Simon from a hole in the wall.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
Review Copy Provided by ININ Games
