30 years later, I’ve finally played a Simon the Sorcerer game – was it always this naff?

Permit me to take you on a journey back to 1994. As I’ve mentioned before, it was the year my parents finally relented (after a whole lot of nagging about how vitally important Microsoft Encarta would undoubtedly be to my future career prospects) and the benevolent PC gods squatted upon our household to birth a 486 DX2/66 into the world. But of course it was never about Encarta. Within days, I’d developed an insatiable hunger for PC gaming mags, poring back and forth through increasingly dog-eared pages as a hitherto unimagined world of digital wonder presented itself. LucasArts’ Sam & Max: Hit the Road was my inaugural purchase, slowly ballooning to include the likes of Theme Park, The 7th Guest, and Myst. But one game I never quite got around to playing was Simon the Sorcerer.

Which is a bit of a surprise given how vividly it exists in my mind. I can easily recall the magazine adverts and the cover disc demos; I remember coveting its sturdy, purple-edged box while prowling the aisles of GAME, lost in the promise of some thigh-slapping fantasy highjinks distilled into that image of Simon and his spellbook, surrounded by unlikely friends and foes. What whimsical marvels lie within?, I pondered, before relunctantly placing the box back on its shelf, never to revisit Simon again. And some 30 years later, I still haven’t satisfied my teenage curiosity, despite it being readily available through the likes of GOG these days.

All of which is to say the newly released Simon the Sorcerer: Origins – an extravagantly produced prequel to the cult-classic 1993 game – is my very first time with the series. And if I’m honest, I’m not entirely sure how to feel about it all. The original Simon the Sorcerer told the story of a snarky 12-year-old boy sucked through a portal into a fantasy world of wise-cracking characters while looking for his dog. And so began a quest to defeat the evil sorcerer Sordid and find a way home, all unfolding in classic point-and-click adventure style – think Monkey Island meets Discworld (which would get its own well-received adventure game a few years later) and you’re kind of on the right track.

Simon the Sorcerer: Origins, meanwhile, posits that Simon (who we see moving into his familiar family home at the start, after being expelled from school) actually had another adventure to the same universe prior to the events of the first game – which makes so little sense based on my scant knowledge of the original’s set-up, I might be missing something entirely. And so what we have here is a game of knowing winks (‘Haven’t we already met?’ Simon nudge-nudgingly asks the wizard Calypso early on after meeting him for what would technically be the first time) that really only serves to faintly bewilder the series newcomers developer Smallthing Studios was presumably hoping to attract by making it a prequel in the first place.

Simon the Sorcerer: Origins, I should say, is lovely as far as presentation goes. Its whimsical hand-painted backgrounds and well-animated characters look great; it’s got some pleasantly fitting music (although Rick Astley’s Together Forever over the title sequence was a bit of a surprise), and it’s solidly voiced too. That said, the faintly Disney-fied presentation is so awkwardly at odds with the snarky, irreverent tone, it takes a lot of getting used to. And hearing the now 65-year-old Chris Barrie’s voice come out of a protagonist who actually looks 12 this time, just doesn’t work for me at all – although series fans might disagree.

Where I’m really struggling most right now, though, is the script. In terms of story beats (Simon’s got himself wrapped up in some kind of prophecy, in case you were wondering) it’s absolutely fine. But its awkward gags and clumsy pop culture references are so laboured (“Praise the sun!” reads the title of one book, “Does my bum look big in this?” 12-year-old Simon asks after donning his wizard robes for the first time) they quickly bypass ‘endearingly naff’ into ‘intensely obnoxious’ territory. And Origins is so determined to remind you you’re playing a video game – whether it’s a character directly referencing the tutorial you’re currently embroiled in, or Simon referring to a passerby as an NPC – it’s a hard world to just enjoy.

Needless to say, I and my inner teenager are confused. Was Simon the Sorcerer, which enjoyed some decent acclaim back in the day, always like this? Is Origins an authentic representation of the Simon the Sorcerer experience I’d have had in the 90s, if only I’d opened that box? I genuinely have no idea, and so it’s entirely possible Origins is brilliant at what it’s trying to do, and exactly the kind of thing fans have been hoping for all this time. Or maybe 30 years later with a different team at the helm, Origins just misses the mark.

I realise this all sounds pretty negative, but there’s still quite a lot I genuinely like. Quite aside from Origins’ lovely presentation, the early puzzle chains I’ve played – all in the classic ‘find this to combine with this to use on this to do this’ vein – seem pretty decent, sitting at more or less the right intersection between the sensibly intuitive and intentionally obscure. And I’m almost starting to get used to its jarring tonal mishmash, even chuckling at a few of its less obnoxious gags amid its pleasant puzzle rhythms. But then I look at a gravestone in the churchyard and get a clumsy Bloodborne reference, and I want to smash it through a wall again.

So as far as introductions go, Simon the Sorcerer: Origins is a weird one. Whatever picture I’d painted in my head all those years ago, this doesn’t quite square up. It’s got some very nice bits and some decidedly irksome bits, but whether it works as part of the series’ legacy, I genuinely have no idea. Perhaps I need to go and play the original Simon the Sorcerer after all!