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)

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

Swampling Stew. Swampling Stew. To your bog, your swamp be true. Swampy be true. Swampling Stew.

The Good
Simon the Sorcerer 2 ended with Simon being separated from his own body and placed into Sordid's, thanks to Runt, Sordid's evil apprentice. That was way back in 1995. Now Simon the Sorcerer 3D, made seven years later, continues where the last episode left off. So what took Adventure Soft a bloody long time to make it? Well, they were sick of Simon for once and went on to produce The Feeble Files. How did they remember how Simon 2 ended? They must have written notes on how it ended or just referred back to their saved games.

Simon 3D begins with Runt announcing that he has just made Sordid a new body suit, as appreciation that his last experiment was successful. Meanwhile, Simon is knocked out while his friends put his lost soul back into his body. But when he wakes up, Simon must prove himself worthy by solving a series of obstacles. Simon 3D consists of six chapters, and the first one outlines how Simon overcomes these obstacles.

In each of the six chapters, you have missions to complete. These missions range from getting to the town of Poliganis to finding a way to gain entry into Sordid's fortress. All of the chapters feature stunning graphics. In the second chapter, I enjoyed walking around the meadows, while exploring sights like the waterfall, lonely hut, and the many rivers. From chapters three through to five, I enjoyed walking around town, seeing what there is and whether I can enter the establishments. The chapter opening, where the chapter that you are about to begin, is well done. Of these, chapter one features Indiana Jones-style graphics, while chapter two has graphics similar to Forrest Gump (but instead of Forrest sitting on the seat, it's Simon).

You will be interacting with a lot more characters than you did in the previous two episodes. Most of the characters from the previous two episodes make a return in this game. Some of the characters are hilarious to listen to, especially Coneman the Barabrain (obviously, a parody of Conan the Barbarian), where he plans to knock the living daylights out of Simon because Simon is always rude to him. Then there's S.I.G.N., the Signal Integrated Golem Narrative, who is one minute happy to give directions to lost travelers, but becomes an aggressive drunk the next. One of the most memorable moments for me is learning the “Swampling Song”. I always found it funny to hear Simon screw it up.

I loved the mini-games that you can play in the fifth chapters, which you can only play at the carnival. Most of these mini-games are easy to win, but then there's the Shooting Gallery, where you don't use a gun to shoot the targets, but your little yo-yo. To make matters worse, I got in the situation where I was “too close, but not close enough”. But with a little bit of practice, I manage to hit all the targets. You win a prize if you manage to win a game, and that prize helps you in your adventure.

The musical score is so wonderful and is easy to listen to. They reflect the environment in which you are walking through. I enjoyed listening to the music that is heard when you are traveling on a rainbird, that enables you to fly between lands faster. I also like the music while you are exploring the meadows and Poliganis. And I forgot to mention the music while you are running to another area within a strict time limit.

As with every adventure game, you have the option of saving and loading games. You can save up to 42 games, and when you load each one, the game tells you what chapter you are on – useful if you are in the middle of one and have forgotten what chapter you are playing. After having whinged about it for so long, I can understand why adventure games like Simon 3D no longer use the mouse for game control. Clicking on various commands or icons is time consuming, whereas you only have to press a key or two to perform actions. According to the game, you use the “Action” key to pick up or manipulate objects, and “Use” to combine objects, both inventory- and non-inventory-based. [Caps Lock] and [Left Shift] keys are reserved for “Sprinting”, “Jogging”, and “Walking”.

The Bad
If you already have heard the same dialogue before, you press the [Backspace] key to bypass that dialogue. The problem with this is if you do press [Backspace], the dialogue still goes on and does not stop unless it is cut-off by sound effects or other dialogue.

At some points in the game, you have to combine inventory objects by selecting one object, and then double-clicking another. This does not always work, and you have to repeat the procedure until they are actually combined.

The fairy godmother appears and tells you how to accomplish a task. The first instances that she pops up, she tells you some useful information that is already outlined in the manual, as if people can't read manuals at all. It didn't help when her information just confused me.

From time to time, I pointed out the fact that different actors are always playing the same roles, and that just does not sound right if it is this way. Except for the swampling and Simon himself, nearly all the original actors, including Calypso, Goldilocks, and Sordid, are voiced by different people.

The Bottom Line
Simon 3D is a much, longer game compared to the first two episodes. It will take you more than an hour to complete each of the six chapters. It will take you at least ten minutes to explore the meadow in chapter two fully, and another ten minutes to get through Poliganis, without the use of a phone booth, which you can use to travel between places faster. Still, you have to get there on foot before you can use the phone booth to travel there faster.

The short ending of the game makes me hope that there will be a Simon 4.

Windows · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2005

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

[ 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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Game added by Unicorn Lynx.

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

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