Simon the Sorcerer

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Simon, an apprentice sorcerer, receives a letter from his friend Calypso, the Grand High Wizard of Fleur Deli. Calypso chooses Simon among hundreds of others to rescue him from the hands of an evil wizard called Sordid! The gameplay on this adventure game is quite simplistic and follows the classic recipe of most adventures games of its time. The screen is split into the main story (visuals) window at the top and a commands list at the bottom. All you have to do is to just point and click your mouse on the top window to move Simon towards any possible direction and you can click on any of the available commands (presented as icons) of the list below to activate and / or interact with objects and other characters. One of the special features in Simon The Sorcerer is the self-mapping so as not to waste valuable time, which is done with pencil lead and elbow grease to draw in rough paper! It may sound a quite strange addition but, back in the early 90s, not all adventure games included mapping. This way you can easily access certain locations you already visited! You will have to solve several puzzles and deal with trolls and dragons! Your quest is challenging but you must stick to your goal in becoming a great sorcerer and finally saving the master! The only negative thing I found is that the game has too much, time consuming, disk swapping and loading as it comes in 9 disks(!) in all 16bit home versions! But if you own an Amiga, an Archimedes or a DOS PC with a HDD, the game could be easily installed on the hard disk.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The graphics look awesome on the Amiga OCS version (as in all other 16bit versions). Every location is among the most visually attractive we've seen on a home computer and all screens are so stylish that provide the feel of a real fairy-tale story! The Amiga OCS version has 32 colors on screen and, compared to the more advanced Amiga 1200 (the AGA version) and its other counterparts (Acorn Archimedes and PC), the graphics still look appealing so no one will complain for their quality. The game's sound is equally great, with a nice (but recurrent) tune throughout the game while there are there are several small tunes playing, depending on what you encounter at any moment.