Simon the Sorcerer 3D

aka: Szymek Czarodziej
Moby ID: 6401
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Description official descriptions

Continuing the series after seven years, Simon the Sorcerer 3D marks the return of the young spellcaster. The game is a direct sequel to Simon the Sorcerer 2, and starts precisely where the second game ended: Simon is imprisoned in Sordid's body... At the beginning of the game, the evil wizard Sordid is free again. He is now selling a mind-changing cola and you must stop him, and this time, unlike in the first two games, also save the world.

Many familiar characters from the two previous games are back, and so is Simon himself with his red cloak (and not the violet clothes from the first game). The classic adventure gameplay is based mainly on wacky puzzles, like the first two games, but the game is now entirely rendered in a 3D world. There are some action sequences, less linearity in the plot, and Simon can die. Besides, some puzzles can only be solved in a 3D environment and require extensive exploration.

Spellings

  • 魔法师西蒙3D - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Credits (Windows version)

33 People (22 developers, 11 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 62% (based on 22 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.8 out of 5 (based on 27 ratings with 6 reviews)

"He's back, and this time he's in 3d"...

The Good
After being one of the most delayed and long-awaited games in gaming history (Still didn't take as long as Duke Nukem Forever is taking, but onwards...), Simon 3d ACTUALLY came out. Was it worth the wait?... Hell, yes!

Continuing from the cliffhanger set up in the last game, Simon is soon restored to his body and back to his "good" old mean-spirited, adolescent and teenage self, and with Chris Barrie's voice back, too! Simon is instructed how to get around by his new fairy godmother ("Don't I just point and click?" -Simon). The humor and basic adventure game elements are still the same, and the spoofs and innuendos remain (THANKFULLY!), but adapted to 3d. Later on, Simon becomes an actual sorcerer, but ends up being relegated to "fashion magic", basically meaning he can only change the color of his cloak...but this is a fun waste of time, and an advantage of having the 3d graphics.

By the way, yes, you can die in this game, but you are just restored to right before your death...you even NEED to die at one point. But this is worth it...for the games longer length, as this Simon game takes more than a weekend to finish.

The Bad
The designers at Aventuresoft got a little bit overwhelmed with the advantages they had in 3d...and didn't even think about putting mouse look in! This makes a few of the puzzles in the game just plain difficult and frustrating, such as the menacing run from a falling boulder.

The game was unfortunately delayed too long, and was out of date by the time it came out in many ways. However, it also felt rushed...there were a few deadly and damn irritating bugs, so download the patch before hand. The ending of Simon 3d felt quick and a little rushed, but with the [SPOILER]cliffhanger last scene involving Simon's evil little "clone"[/END SPOILER] there had better be a Simon 4!...I hope...

The Bottom Line
Continues the proud tradition of fun Simon the Sorcerer games...now, let's just hope it isn't the last one...

Windows · by Mr. Me (28) · 2003

A huge failure

The Good
I consider this one of the worst games I ever played, the only ray of sunshine in this game was the writing. Fortunately the writers continued to write Simon with the same excellent dialogs that we saw in Simon 2. I really enjoyed Simon's cynicism. This is about the only good thing I have to say for this game.

The Bad
Where to start? I really loved the two previous games - especially Simon 2 - which to this day is my favorite quest game. Needless to say I was impatience to see the release of the sequel.

The control interface was completely changed from the classical point and click mouse control, now we control Simon via the keyboard in a very uncomfortable way and there are control bugs which cause Simon to run against the walls almost every time you try to move him.

The puzzles also changed for the worst, while the two previous games were pure quest games with inventory based puzzles, this game chose to add mini-games. Those mini-games are extremely boring and tedious and had nothing to do with the adventure game and it seem they were merely added for the sake of using the 3D environment.

The new 3D look is the major area that the game creators really screw up, the characters look extremely ugly and so is the rest of the game environment, it really looks like the game's programmers didn't know what they were doing.

Another blunder of the new 3D look was the game environment, it's simply huge and empty, so you find yourself spending a great amount of time running in empty fields or streets looking for something that Simon could interact with, this get very tedious and contribute to your feeling of boredom from this game.

The Bottom Line
Despite being a huge Simon fan I found this game simply unplayable, by level three the control bugs got worse and worse, so that a simply task like walking the streets became a chore (running into walls would cause that...) and this made me abandon the game.

I think what made this game a real disappoint is that it has the great plot and writing of the previous games, but horrible controls. If the creators would have invested more time programing a better and bug free 3D environment, or if this game was made in 2D it could have been an excellent game.

Windows · by Ingsoc (1366) · 2011

Offensive piece of trash

The Good
It functions, at least!

The Bad
This game was clearly written by a hopeless bunch of disgruntled, belligerent, intolerant misfits everyone used to laugh at. Not to mention racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic... how this game scraped an 11+ rating is absolutely baffling! Even if it wasn't, it looks bad. Remember this was two years before Half-Life 2. The blocky models and blurry textures are hard on the eyes.

The Bottom Line
I hate this game... I really do. This is, hands down, my most hated game of all time!

Windows · by Frank Tiberius (2) · 2023

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

In November 2000, the game went gold and press copies were sent to various magazines. I played that version and various reviews appeared. A few weeks later, the word was out that publisher Hasbro's QA department was not pleased with the game (especially the graphics) and developer Headfirst lost its publisher.

The search lasted until 2002 when AdventureSoft picked up the game and released it with small improvements. In an interview on Quandary, Andrew Brazier, assistant Designer at Headfirst, responded to all the critics saying it was their first step into 3D, which was very hard, but necessary to get funds as (in his own words) "2D is pretty much dead now".

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Unicorn Lynx.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, Sciere, game nostalgia, Kola256.

Game added May 17, 2002. Last modified March 21, 2024.