14 DAY TRIAL // 
Steve Jackson's Sorcery! loves to surprise players and to thwart their expectations about fantasy worlds, creating tension by making sure that the player is always looking for that out-of-place detail or conversation line that will help him decide how to best solve a situation.
The world and its core quest are familiar but also surprising; the combat is simple but offers genuinely great moments, and the spell system is powerful without giving the player a way to avoid the most important challenges.
Sorcery! never gets bogged down in complexity and knows how to use language to enhance the immersion of the player and his desire to know more about the universe he is trying to save.
The experience was created by Inkle and the first and the second books have launched on February 2 on the PC and the Mac, with both of them already out on iOS and Android-powered mobile devices, where a third chapter is also available.
A fourth book, the final one in the series, is expected to launch at the same time on all platforms later in the year and at that point a complete pack featuring all of them might be also revealed.
Story
Steve Jackson's Sorcery! was originally an adventure book that appeared in the middle of the '80s and the core story is focused around an adventurer who is looking for the Crown of Kings, which was the basis for a balanced political system and is now in the hands on a powerful archmage that seeks to use it to control Kakhabad and then use its forces to invade Analand.
The names of locations or characters might be unfamiliar to modern fantasy genre lovers who have not explored the original books, but the concepts powering them are very easy to recognize, with the team at Inkle using them to create some impressive player-driven narratives.
Sorcery! will be instantly engaging to those who loved 80 Days because it allows them to once again explore a world via words, descriptions, choices, and dialog, with the carefully crafted lines associated with each encounter, creating a sense of place and immersion.
The first chapter asks the player to explore the hills, forests, and villages of the Shamutanti Hills to reach a major walled city, called Khare, which is the focus of the second episode, with the player able to easily transfer characters and saves between the two.
The cast of characters features plenty of powerful enemies, weird creatures, scared villagers, shifty bandits and more and the world of Sorcery!, even if it lacks the depth of the more complex fantasy universe, is filled with both humor and dread.
But there are plenty of alternate paths through the two core stories and each situation has plenty of variability, with the overall feeling of freedom enhanced by a rewind system that gives gamers a way to go back in time and explore new ideas if they are dissatisfied with initial results.
Inkle puts the player's imagination at the center of the experience, asking adventurers to carefully consider how to deal with each situation and constantly forcing them to decide whether they want to focus on local problems or the bigger quest to find the Crown of Kings.
Gameplay
Steve Jackson's Sorcery! might be driven by narrative and choice, but the core mechanics, while limited, serve the experience well and even introduce a high level of challenge at some points.
The protagonist of the saving Analand story starts off with a bag of gold, some rations and the stamina of a hero, but he will soon have to choose how to use these limited resources and how much he is willing to risk to advance or to deal with side quests.
Moving around is as simple as drawing the figurine across the beautiful map from one point of interest to another, and each encounter involves time reading about the circumstances and then making one or more decisions.
Sometimes talking is the best solution and running away can often be a good idea, but there are plenty of moments in Sorcery when an actual battle has to take place.
The game then shifts perspective to focus on the engaged characters and introduces a mini-game centered around stamina and attack power that asks gamers to choose whether they want to defend, in order to limit the damage they take, or deliver their strikes, to wound the enemy and take a chunk of his stamina.
“The system does not allow for too much strategy, but it's a good way to introduce some excitement or tension to Sorcery!, although not all problems can be solved with a blade.”
The game also features an interesting spellcasting system, centered around three letter words, and casting uses stamina, which means it's always a good idea to think before using magic, with the concept further complicated by the fact that particular objects are required for some effects.
The player also has a spirit animal linked to each day of his adventure, which can be moved to help via prayer and invocation during some of the most perilous moments of the adventure.
The exploration, conversations, magic and combat are mixed in good proportions, and it's great to move from encounter to encounter for the first time and discover how to best deal with each of them and what the final challenge for both of the chapters entails.
There are some difficulty spikes in Sorcery, mainly for players who really want to explore every situation in one campaign, which makes the rewind system a great idea that cuts down on any potential frustration.
Graphics and audio
Steve Jackson's Sorcery! smartly uses its visuals to allow gamers to imagine the world they are exploring and how each encounter evolves rather than force a particular vision of the fantasy universe on them.
The two maps are beautifully drawn, with plenty of detail, and it is great to see the small dots of progress pop up all over the place, charting the adventure that will ultimately lead to the Crown of Kings.
Sorcery! features plenty of text, with sequences of narrative getting stitched into the story right in front of the player and even the combat system, is nice to look at, despite the limited amount of details and the repetitive movement.
The best visual element in the game are the small sketches that give gamers a look at the unique monsters or characters that they interact with, which evoke the base material on which the experience is based.
Sorcery! features no voice acting, which is a great decision because it gets players to focus on the very well designed text of the encounters, but has a solid soundtrack and some good environmental cues that add to the personality of the various explored locations.
The Good
- Player-driven story
- Unique fantasy world
- Rewind system
The Bad
- Limited combat
Conclusion
I love the fact that the game can swing abruptly from victory to defeat and the other way around, especially when the player is poking his nose where he should not or when trying to take out powerful enemies during side quests.
I also appreciate the Inkle included in the rewind option to make it very easy to both get into a better situation, rather than simply use the Try Again options in combat and hope for another result, and to see how a different conversation option can lead the protagonist down another path.
Steve Jackson's Sorcery! is a great showcase for the way solid writing, well-designed encounters, and unique presentation can be used to create an interesting world for players to explore, with variety and surprise backed into the core mechanics.
Inkle is aiming to deliver the final two episodes on the PC before the end of the year, and I can hardly wait to see how the saga of the Crown of Kings ends and what new difficult decisions the main characters will have to deal with.
