Steve Jackson's Sorcery! is here

It's celebration time at inkle: as Part One of the Sorcery! saga is now available for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch from the App Store. The Shamutanti Hills await!

An epic journey

It's been our most complex and challenging project to date, and when we started we didn't really know what we were letting ourselves in for. That we were going to expand on the original we knew, but we didn't realise that would mean adding whole new routes and locations, new puzzles and traps, and writing whole scenes of dialogue to expand on the original. And we definitely didn't know we'd need a 3D engine, a system for mixing sound effects, a server back-end to save your finished game to the cloud, a procedural text generator and, as they say, a fez...

In the six months since we began work, the scope of the game exploded, as we tried things out, developed our ideas, and discovered new elements that just had to make it into the game. But as always, there are a few ideas that didn't make the final cut, so there should be some surprises for Book 2.

But despite everything that's new, we've worked hard to keep to the spirit of the original: it's quirky humour, the emphasis on brains over brawn, and its many tricks, traps and puzzles.

The map

We had some ideas for a map-based interface from the start, to control your path through the story, but it wasn't until we got Mike Schley on board that we realised quite how important that world map was going to be. It's not just the way you choose your route - it's also a living, breathing graph of the story. A lot of people were fascinated by the Frankenstein story-map - in Sorcery!, that map is built right into the app, hinting at the paths and branches you have still to explore.

The 3D relief effect was a big risk: could we get it to work smoothly? Would it slow things down? Would it cope on older devices? Big images ("high-res textures") are one thing that even major consoles are afraid of and here we were, trying to make them run on an iPod. At one point, we even considered turning the 3D effect off on slower models - but with some code magic, and some clever games industry techniques, we've managed to get things both silky smooth, and gloriously pointy.

The art

Almost the last feature to make it into the build was the original art by John Blanche. In fact, it wasn't even in the build sent out to reviewers! But we didn't leave it to last because we weren't sure whether to include it: rather, we kept it back because we were absolutely certain that we wanted it in the game - we didn't need to test it out early; it absolutely had to go in, and we're glad it did. The images look great, particularly on super-sharp Retina screens, and we've kept them in the original black and white.

The images for the combat sequences went in a bit earlier, and were a particularly difficult challenge for our character artist, Eddie Sharam. His brief was to produce images of the various monsters attacking and defending, staying true to the original illustrations but bringing these strange characters to life. We weren't sure if it wold work - until we saw the Sightmaster, in all his detail, coming to life (as he beat us up with his staff).

The combat

We could write a whole post just about the development of the combat system, but most of all, we want to hear what people think about it. Moving away from the dice-roll system of the original books was a big decision: we wanted something new, but as with everything else in the app, we didn't want anything too new. The most important thing was that the system played like the old system gave the same kinds of outcomes - but with the player taking decisions, and taking risks, on every turn.

We spent a long time trying out different mechanics, and testing different rules, and the final system is an unusual mix of the Prisoner's Dilemma and Rock, Paper, Scissors. Two opponents each pick how much power they're going to attack with and the highest choice wins. But! A high choice this turn means you'll have less power to play with next turn (and a low choice means you'll get more). And more than that - if you lose the turn, the higher your choice, the more damage you'll suffer. So sometimes, it's worth defending completely - rebuilding your power and taking minimum damage. Other times, it's worth risking an all-out attack, to be sure of overpowering your opponent. But a lot of the time, it's worth trying something in between...

At the same time, we wanted to make sure the combat fed right back into the story, and wasn't just a mini-game. That's what gave us the idea of making a system to procedurally generate combat narrative based on the fight. That was a lot of work to get right, but we're pretty pleased with the results.

Then he is diving forward for your throat! Your own stroke is overpowered. The Assassin's sword is punishingly deep. You move quickly to deflect the blow as best you can with your shield.

'My duty is to sever your head from your neck,' he declares, in a voice as cold as polished marble. 'You will not hold me from it.'

The story, the Spirit, the spells...

There's lots more crammed into Sorcery! - the text of the story adapting around you, the Spirit Guide which changes to reflect how you play, the Spellbook with its 48 spells, with strange and weird effects as you journey through the world... but this post is long enough and you'll have more fun, discovering for yourself.

So if you're intrigued, please pop along to the App Store: Kakhabad is open for visitors.

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Hear all the latest news on inkle's projects.

Highland game updates

A Highland Song - development blog

Hear all the latest news on inkle's projects.

Hear all the latest news on inkle's projects.

Highland game updates

Hear all the latest news on inkle's projects.

A Highland Song - development blog

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It would be great if this game/book adventure was on the Kindle Fire. Inkle would make a huge amount of money!

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B

Is there any chance we can get some sort of "Adventure Chronicle" after we finish the game? Just have a book that tells the story we experienced.

After my first successful run through if the game I have this desire to read it as a book.

All in all, an amazing title, waiting eagerly for part 2!

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S

LOVE the game! I've only ever read one choose your own adventure story and I think it was goosebumps, lol. This was a really great way to start! I've played it twice through and starting a third- can't wait for the next one. :)

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CN

hello again,

on 2nd play through i had no music?

also the music is amazing, could we have more....its really good, is there an album or a talented chap behind it?

how do i inow if it saves to cloud? it clearly says when you press reset to prologue all date lost....:(

i hope this sells really well and you can support it with a patch and get the sequel out asap. and more music and sound and a spell index then it be perfect lol

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CN

hello, good app, quite lovely but it needs to be better otherwise it is a missed op.

things which could improve sorcery.

fight sounds! why is there no clash of a blade and a grunt? u have a lovely fighting system which works buy u oeave out that which would bring it to life.

a record of choices for multiple play throughs.

an index or rest for the spell book. a serious drag to drag so many pages and ruins the tension...this is a must yave fix pls.

option for colour illistrations on 2nd playthrough. they r lovely in b&w but in 2013 it be nice on my £600 ipad lol

please make the ending clearer and reset options as i was scared to replay as there is virtually no help with navigation etc. still not sure if it even saved and calling all spells the same name is going to make it difficult later on when deciding which is which?

the only errors i encountered were the dreams getting the info ofmthe day wrong such as you killled the badger when i ran away etc. and some items were used but ended up unused.

brilliant but short game book and i want to give u more money asap for the sequel please.

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L

Will there be an Android release for this? I'd love to see one - it seems like the perfect thing to while away a lazy afternoon (Or three), but being iOS only is rather limiting...

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F

I recently made 2 play throughs w/ cloud saves and both of the cloud saves have the exact same spell names. Will this be a problem in part 2?

Absolutely love this iOS translation and think the high level of craftsmanship in only 6 months of work is astounding. Bravo guys!!

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JH

Thanks, really glad you're enjoying it! We use the same spell name for multiple endings - when you begin part 2, you'll be able to choose which ending you want to start from :)

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K

I was really excited about this and had high hopes for it, and yet somehow it managed to exceed all my expectations. The way it expands on the book and adds a lot of little choices everywhere is great, and the new combat system is really fun (once you get the hang of it). I was particularly impressed with the amount of polish and attention to detail that went into the app: little things like the names of the spell having a different colour in the spell book when you have the required items, etc.

There's just one thing I've missed: a persistent annotated automap. If you're familiar with the Fighting Fantasy apps that Worldweaver did on Kindle, that's what I mean. (See http://bit.ly/124pZqB) Basically, that's the modern version of the map you'd draw on paper 20 years ago and would use to plan your way through the book as you replayed it, letting you remember the paths you have yet to explore and where the important items/encounters are. (Obviously, it has to persist if you restore/restart, otherwise that defeats the purpose.) It's not absolutely essential for The Shamutanti Hills because it's easy to reach the end whatever path you take, but I found myself missing such a feature when replaying and trying to plot a "perfect path" through the game. And I can't even begin to imagine how it's going to be possible to find the 4 verses (+ the name of the goddess of Having-numbers-in-your-name) or the seven serpents without something like that. I'm not sure how it should work with the current 3D map, but I feel that it would be a nice feature, and one that will be pretty essential in the next books. Is there a chance that might happen?

Finally, one minor bug report: it seems that some items do not get properly removed from the inventory. I finished the game with the key to Allianna's (sp?) prison and the spell book page, despite using them / giving them away earlier.

Anyway, I hope the app is as successful as it deserves and that the rest of the series will come soon!

(Once you're done with Sorcery, is there a chance you'd do something similar for Blood Sword, a.k.a. the best gamebook series ever? That'd be cool.)

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D

I picked this up today for my iPhone. I've only just started it, but I'm really enjoying it. I think you handle the combat really well (based on the tutorial, anyway). The procedurally generated text describing how the Sightmaster was gripping his weapon, looking fatigued, etc., was surprisingly vivid and effective. It reminded me of the combats in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones with its gritty realism and blends seamlessly with the rest of the text. I only wish I had an iPad so I could see Blanche's illustrations and the (very pretty) map at a larger scale. (Not a complaint, since it works quite well on the iPhone.) All in all, I have to say, I'm really impressed so far. :)

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N

Thanks for the clarification. Great to hear, I'm definitely going to do another playthrough after I finished my first one then. :)

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N

This is definitely the best and most polished digital gamebook I have ever seen. Great work!

A minor annoyance I found though is the spellbook. There's no "table of contents" there, right? So you always have to go through all the spells, one by one. But that's not a big thing really.

A question: How will the save state at the end of the game be handled? I see, you can go back to any point at any time and revert your choices. So I assume at the end your game will be saved with the current set of decisions (to continue in book 2). Now what if I want to try to go a whole new way, but don't actually replace my save game. Are there multiple save slots or will my old save just get overwritten with the my most recent playout of the story?

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J

Hey there!

When you reach the end of the game it saves your progress, items and everything else to the cloud, giving you a "spell" you can cast at the start of Book 2 to load that data back in. You can make as many of these saves as you like, under the one spell; in Book 2, you'll be able to browse through your saves and pick the one you want to continue with.

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