Sorcery Code

Well, I have finally played Inkle's video game adaptation of Steve Jackson's Sorcery!, a four-volume spinoff of Fighting Fantasy aimed at older readers originally published in the mid-80s and updated, revised and expanded as iOS games released between 2013 and 2015. And let me tell you, they are seriously impressive. They look gorgeous, they play well, they capture the feeling of the originals, they add so much to the original story and display a huge amount of ambition. Each game works as a standalone but you can also carry over your saved game to the next volume via the magic of clouds and local saves. Highly recommended.

As you might expect if you've read anything else this blog has ever done about gamebooks, the thing that intrigued me most is the changes that have been made from the previous books. The first game, The Shamutanti Hills, is a straight adaptation of the original book with virtually nothing changed. When we hit the second game, though, that's where things get interesting. I've highlighted some of the more interesting changes here. SPOILERS follow, obviously.

(NB: I would quite like to compare these games to my Broken Gamebooks article for the original books and see what was fixed. Unfortunately these games are BLOODY MASSIVE and, at time of writing, I still haven't seen an awful lot of them and can't comment on if some of the errors have been fixed.)

1. The spellcasting system.
I'll get the one change I really have a problem with out of the way first. In the original novels, you were forbidden to refer to your spellbook once you had started the adventure and had to rely on memory. Not only do the games allow you to refer to your spellbook at any time, it has a spellcasting system which, for want of a better description, gives you prompts for possible spells one letter at a time. This seems to really go against the spirit of the original books without explanation here, although admittedly the only way round it would have been to allow any of the 48 spells to be cast whenever prompted (the book gave you a choice of five in an encounter).

The game also introduces a "counterspell" mechanic in the third volume, allowing you to cancel out spells other people cast on you (for example, the DOC spell normally allows you to create medicinal potions in both the book and the game, but can also be used to disspell a fireball created by a HOT spell.) There are also one or two new spells in the game, such as ZOB, which creates a Rock Demon (similar to the spells for creating Goblins and Giants present in both the book and the game).

2. A gambling mini-game has been introduced.
The second book tried to do this by means of lines printed at the bottom of certain pages, but it was obviously constrained by the limitations of just being a book. The video game version makes full use of not just being a book by adding a recurring dice game, Swindlestones, which is a lot of fun and adds some nice continuity between volumes.

3. An increased role for Flanker.
In the first volume, you meet an assassin called Flanker and, if you spare his life, you can meet up with him again in volume 2 via special secret references allowing you to take an option not given by the text. The game expands his role to appearing in 3 & 4 as well - this is an idea I suspect Jackson may have had when he was writing the original books, but couldn't implement for reasons of time and book space.

4. One of the spell lines in Khare has changed location.
As mentioned above, Inkle's adaptation of The Shamutanti Hills pretty much reproduces the original book as it was. But beginning with book 2, it begins to switch things up, adding new encounters and moving the locations of some of the ones it's carried over. This is probably the best example - as in the original book, you have to find four spell lines. Three of the spell lines are found with the same characters they were originally, in roughly the same places, although some of the puzzles you need to solve are changed. The fourth spell line is changed completely so it's not even found with a person. In a genius move, the character who originally had the spell line is still a part of the game. (He appears to just be a red herring in the game version, but as I said there's still a lot of the game I haven't seen and I can't be certain.)

Another good example of things being switched up in Khare is the taverns. In the original book there was only one tavern, The Wayfarer's Rest, which carried both the risk of being captured by slavers and having a guillotine trap set up over your bed by the insane innkeeper.  The video game version splits these two different risks between two taverns (The Rest retains the slavers, whilst the guillotine trap is transferred to The Meat and Cleaver, and there's a third inn, The Crooked Finger, which is harmless.)

5. A new subplot in Khare.
Unlike the original version, you don't need to find all four spell lines to pass through Khare. However, there is a big subplot that again massively expands the role of a minor character from the original book, and you need to find all four spell lines to stop Khare from being destroyed by a goblin revolution, and you are penalised for choosing not to complete it. (The spell line quest is thus technically an optional extra in the game, rather than the entire point of it as it was in the book, but the penalty for failing to complete it is very harsh so I can't imagine someone not trying to do so.)

6. A new backstory in volume 3.
Oh boy. The Seven Serpents switches things up massively by introducing a time-travel element, where you constantly flip back and forth between the Baklands as they were many years ago and as they are today. Shamutanti was basically the same, Khare was still recognisable as the original book, but the third game has so much new content added (and a new goal concerning finding different towers) that sometimes it does feel very different to the book.

7. Farren Whyde's motivation.
This is similar to point 4 above. In the original version of The Crown of Kings, Farren Whyde was the Archmage in disguise (or possibly possessed by a netherworld demon... was never quite sure what was going on there). He's still in the video game version, but is a total red herring.

8. The ZED spell.
Bloody hell, this game is complicated. Anyway, in the original version, you got the chance to cast the ZED spell once and once only, at a crucial point in the game. In the game version of The Crown of Kings it's got the same effect, but has a totally different purpose relating to a new game mechanic: the Throben Curse, a sinister and hard-to-describe piece of magic which means every time you die you return to the same place in space and time the curse ties you to. Unlike the book, where casting ZED was absolutely vital if you were to complete the game, you want to avoid it in the video game.

9. Libra has been replaced by a spirit animal.
Your spirit animal then changes according to your actions, e.g. from whale to scorpion to bear, reflecting your morality. However, Libra does still make her presence felt in the final game, where it's revealed that your ability to rewind the game to any previous point (perhaps emulating the traditional tactic of keeping your finger on the previous section in case the next one kills you - incidentally, the game amps up the difficulty in the last book by removing the 'rewind' function once you get inside the fortress.

10. Gender flips.
In the original version of The Crown of Kings, nearly all of the characters inside the fortress were male. The game changes a lot of them to be female, although oddly, it still uses the original 1985 illustrations even when the character illustrated is clearly male and the game now claims they're female.