The Steam Spring Clean event gave me some motivation to spread out into my library further than I have been. While I wait for physical games to arrive in the post, why not download digital games to play right here and now?
First up are some suggestions from the 'Another Chance' category, with a selection of games that I've played for less than one hour and should think about playing again.
This is an interesting list because, so far as I can recall, I've played none of these for less than an hour, because I've played none of these for more than a second either. I suppose, technically, they count for being played for less than an hour then, in that case...
Anyway, knowing that a couple of those will be coming up in the 1001 list (A Boy and His Blob and Shadow Complex), and knowing that some are bound to be pretty similar to games I've already played (can't imagine the Quake Mission Pack or Tomb Raider II being too different from Quake and Tomb Raider), I eventually whittled down my choose to Aviary Attorney or Sorcery!.
So, the first game played could have been about birds solving crimes or a reimagining of a childhood game book. As much as one sounds interesting, the other hit my nostalgia alarm bells, and I'll be having a bash at Sorcery!, thank you very much.
No, I've no idea where or why I purchased it in 2016, but I'll be interested to see why it's in my library and to find out whether it'll stay there. Let's turn the page and found out.
Steve Jackson is the man behind a lot of games, and along with Ian Livingstone - also a man behind a lot of games - he wrote series' of gamebooks which I collected as a child. Fighting Fantasy had you taking a character through an adventure where the decisions were yours to make, and the consequences were yours to live with.
Do you explore every nook and cranny, hoping to find something to aid you in your encounters with the monsters that inevitably lurked around the corner, or would you charge into combat and let a roll of the dice decide your fate?
The Sorcery! line of books was, to my recollection, more hands-on and perhaps for older readers. They involved magic spells and other things that you'd really need to keep track off, as opposed to earlier, simpler books where you could just turn to the paragraph of your choice until you were rewarded with being able to read entry number 400, which was the end of your quest.
Being more in-depth, it sounds like a good choice for a video game adaptation and being a choose your own adventure game, it also sounds like a nice way to spend your time, reading and responding at your own pace, rather than fumbling with a controller.
The story is presented to you almost line by line, with decisions popping up quite often, asking for how you'd react to villagers, what activity you'd like to do, whether you'd like to cast a spell and so on. Each decision will matter, to some degree, but perhaps not in the same way as a Telltale adventure game, for example. I'm sure there are some absolutely pivotal choices to be made in Sorcery!, but they don't appear to have arrived yet.
Your adventure is spent by tracing a line for your character to follow across the map, and then reading and reacting to the story that you get afterwards. Every now and then, scratchy ink drawings of monsters and whatnot are displayed, I'd imagine coming straight from the pages of the Sorcery! books, which is a nice touch although it feels a little out of place with the rest of the presentation.
The presentation as a whole isn't too bad, but it does look like it was done on a budget, and sometimes the layout doesn't show you everything you need to see. It's nice that it fills out an ultrawide monitor, but isn't so great when I need to scroll down to see my options for how to progress, for example.
The options come in three flavours: Talking your way out of (or into) trouble, progressing the story through simply choosing a dialogue option or action; fighting an enemy one on one; and using spells to try and influence something in the world before then choosing one of the other options - it really depends on the spell.
Talking is self-explanatory, just pick an answer and read on. Fighting drops you and your opponent into a mini-game of power-levels and outsmarting each other.
You can slide your character left and right to determine their attack strength. All the way to the left defends and conserves energy. All the way to the right unleashes your strongest attack but costs a lot of energy. Both combatants decide at the same time, then compare results, with the highest number winning the bout.
Here, I perhaps used a little too much energy to damage this bat. I may have reduced his stamina by a couple of points, but I've now left myself open to getting hit myself, because my next attack with not have as much energy behind it, and the bat only has to beat my input by a point in order to win the duel.
Last man or beast standing wins, and the story continues.
You could alternatively try your hand at some magic. Every spell in your spellbook is cast by choosing a string of three letters, and so long as you know that string, and/or have the components needed to cast the spell, you can see what happens. You'll need to expend a point or two of stamina to successfully cast spells, the stronger spells requiring more, but a guaranteed loss of stamina in a controlled fashion is probably easier to manage than an unknown amount of stamina loss in a fight, so it's worth a shot.
FOF! ZAP! LAW! SUS! There are spells for forcefields, healing, lightning bolts, unlocking doors, even for giving yourself a better sense of what to do. One spell I cast revealed that one path down a mine felt safer than the other, another spell ended combat before it began by showing my would-be opponents that I was much more prepared than they were.
There's a whole spellbook to read through and cast from, but only certain spells can be used in certain circumstances. I find it more entertaining and interesting to use the spells than to go into combat, but both systems have had thought put into them, which is nice.
Eventually, after adventuring for a day or so, I found a town and settled in for the night, my first session of Sorcery! complete. Would I play it again? Yes, probably. Until the death of my character from some stupid decision making, I suspect. Any further, I'm not so sure.
There's certainly some depth here, but it's still a game based on a book, and it doesn't pull off that adaptation perfectly. I'm glad to have finally played it after a couple of years, but I still can't say why I have it in my library. Maybe it was just for the curiosity. In that case, consider me somewhat impressed - but no incredibly so.
If you're a fan of the books, you should look into it and see if it's something you'd want to try. If you're not a fan, then I can imagine other games doing the whole choose your own adventure thing better. Well, I don't need to imagine - as mentioned earlier, Telltale adventure games seem to have dominated this market, in big name recognition at least.
A leaisurely, interesting time was had with Sorcery!, and I can't complain too much.