Universal Sorcery! - (by inkle)

Nope, don't worry! You get one code to load up a list of all your saves in Book 2. (So you don't have to write down a list of different ones).

 

Awesome, off to start another play through

Btw, excellent work on making an old format feel fresh, great job.

 

So when can we expect Chapter 2? Will it be an update, IAP, or a separate game?

 

I love this game! It's beautifully done and well worth my Yen. I hope this will sell a bazillion times so that we will see many more games of that type and quality!

Two little bugs:
(1) At the Cantopani merchant, you can buy the jewel for 10 gold when you only have 6 gold. You end up with -4 gold! Either there is no check for how much gold you have or it doesn't work.

(2) When I went to rest outside of Khristatanti, the text said something about my "third day", even though the route I took (out of the gate, over the hill, to the bridge, captured) meant it was only the second day. Easily fixed with a variable in the background that counts the day. (Maybe there is one but the text doesn't access it there)

 

You guys are right this is awesome book adventure game ever!!!! U need to play fabled lands to understand how good this game is.. Fabled lands dev to be shot on spot

 

Not to be harsh here, but please use the search function to look for that kind of information before asking; it has been mentioned repeatedly in this thread that the four books will all be separate apps. The next one is due out in "late summer", but there hasn't been a firm release date given as it is still being worked on.

There are a number of typographical and grammatical errors (for some reason, the author liked to leave out the word "the" a lot), and a few logic/context issues, as you've noted.

The most glaring one I've noticed was located in the manticore's lair, where every single time I cast a spell it'd bring up a paragraph noting the fact that Jann wasn't with me any more. However, in my story he'd already gone off quite a while back to make sure the waterfall guard performed his assigned task, but the text in the lair would come up with things like, "You take a moment to remember the poor minimite," as if he'd died in my playthrough.

Between leaving the waterfall and reaching the lair, you also have a chance to cast a spell at Gaza Moon's house, and doing so doesn't mention Jann, so the contextual paragraphs in the lair probably shouldn't mention him (at all, let alone every time you cast a spell) if he left of his own accord earlier in the book.

 

While I love the combat system (it's quite tactical, actually, even though it looks simple), the magic system is annoying. The letter selection looks beautiful but it's a PITA to use. Several times, the letter I selected in the first slot got untuck when I tried to enter the second or fourth.
Right now, it's (1) Leave screen -> (2) go through spellbook -> (3) remember code -> (4) fiddle for 3 minutes to enter first letter -> (5) enter second letter -> (6) Redo first letter because it got unstuck ...

Please, if I select "cast a spell", just give me a list of all spells that are useful in the situation. Maybe make it an "easy casting" option.

Other features I'd love to see:

- Play as female character
- Unlockable art gallery. I love the 80ies RPG art style. It also gives an extra incentive to play again to unlock the pictures of all paths.
- Name the character. It would make dialogues nicer where the character introduces himself. It also helps to distinguish playthroughs.

One question: How do I cast spells in combat? Sometimes I get the option to cast before, but not always.

 

No, while the casting system could be definitely adjusted to make selecting the letters less fiddly, I really wouldn't want to see a huge change like this; it'd be a huge step backwards from the intention of this series. The physical books actually worked this way, but that system doesn't fit with the redesign of the game. Given the particular technology inkle are using to make these books, it also seems adding a system like that back into the game would take a lot of work, and would have very little payoff for the time/effort required.

In the original gamebooks, you were not allowed to look at the spells after starting your adventure, and so had to remember their names, costs, reagents, and limitations. The normal way a page entry would work is that if you could cast a spell, it would often list five or so (e.g. ZAP, FOF, WOK, POP, POO), with two that would work in the situation, one you could cast but wouldn't help, one you couldn't even have the reagent for at that point in the story (which happened less as you progressed through the books, naturally), and one which wasn't even actually a spell at all and would just fail.

This version of the spellcasting system is much more elegant, partially because it isn't a glaringly artificial "gamebook system" (something this series has taken great pains to move away from), and partially because it makes you think about which spells would be useful in a given situation.

For example, perhaps you've come across a locked door, and hear breathing directly on the other side. At that point your thoughts might go straight to casting DOP to unlock the door and confront the enemy directly, which would work, but if you thought laterally you might consider BIG instead, wondering if you could knock down the door to crush the monster on the other side with it. Having a plain list of obvious spells on the page would detract from those "A-ha!" moments.

A real example from this book would be the "thing" in the long grass at the very start, if you go cross-country. If you stand your ground you are given the option to cast a spell, and your first thought might simply be to take the H and cast HOT to kill whatever it is. This works, but it also sets the dry field on fire and completely eliminates travel through the field as an option. If you think things through and notice you can cast WAL, on the other hand, the "thing" turns out to be a giant serpent and lunges at you, weakening itself against the force field and ultimately ending up easier to beat if you choose to wait and fight it.

I think that figuring out which spells are available and which one is most appropriate to cast is best left up to the player, rather than handing them a straightforward and obvious menu of spells they can cast. I do agree with making the actual mechanics of the spellcasting system a little less fiddly, though, to make it easier to slot the letters into place.

I don't think the system inkle are using allows for simple pronoun changes and such, meaning that any such rewrites would actually have to be completely separate entries, bloating the game and taking a significant amount of time to implement. They'd also need new artwork, which would cost them.

I may well be misremembering, but I think there are also a number of elements in the overall story that are based on the fact that the player character is male, meaning that these would also have to be rewritten, and as such it's possible that they would constitute material changes to the original work that would need to be okayed before being allowed in.

The GA games do this, and it would be a neat addition here.

As with having a female character, this would likely be far too much work for too little reward, and you need to be careful about wanting things that actually start deviating and detracting from the original work. The player character was intended to be the archetypal nameless wanderer, not to mention that in-universe it's a spectacularly bad idea to go around constantly introducing yourself by name to ill-intentioned strangers when you're supposed to be on a secret mission to save the world (essentially).

You get the option to cast spells in the same places the original gamebook let you cast spells. Despite the dramatic overhaul, this is still supposed to be a pretty faithful adaptation of the original work, not a game that is just "inspired by" it.

 

Great spot on these, so thank you! We're preparing an update, so if anyone has any typos / logic errors you'd like to report, please drop us an email (info -at- inklestudios -dot- com) and we'll get them fixed. (We might miss them if they're posted here.) All appreciated!

 

@Appletini: Frankly, the argument "you shouldn't do that because it wasn't possible in the source material" makes no sense. If I wanted a faithful representation of the game book with all its limitations I can buy the game book. If there are options that increase the way the game can be enjoyed, why not include them.

As for offering a list of possible spells: I don't mind offering bad options for spells (like your example of setting the field on fire). The point is that the current system is beautiful but impractical. I'd love to have an option (meaning you can switch it off if you don't like it) to select spells more easily.

Maybe, after you have completed the game once, it would offer you to replay with different challenges:
1) no rewind
2) only 1 step rewind
3) no spellbook / no magic
4) no killing (not sure if this is possible - I haven't been able to avoid killing the elvin at the bridge north of Cantopani)
5) no sword (you'd have to avoid fights or resolve them by magic)
6) good alignment (game ends if you commit an evil act)

 

I think a happy balance was found by the developers of Talisman Prologue HD, where the mechanics of drawing cards and rolling dice were unmolested, but they added in missions for the player to play through. So perhaps that is what some players are asking for here, i.e. extra stuff that changes Sorcery! in newgame+, just like the Tin Man gamebooks...

 

It's the only argument that makes sense, actually, when you're talking about the actual content of a title that is intended to be faithful to the original work, and not just be a collection of random fanservice additions. inkle have rebuilt the original experience from the ground up in terms of presentation, but at its heart it is still Steve Jackson's Sorcery! through and through (The Shamutanti Hills to be precise), not Forest of Doom, mkill's Sorcery!, a platformer, side-scrolling beat-em-up, SRPG, or rhythm game.

I also suspect that when inkle licensed this particular property, they were also given and/or negotiated guidelines within which they were required to stay; depending on the type of agreement, there's a strong likelihood that there are things they're simply not allowed to include, remove or change.

Erm, you're clearly missing the irony here, which is that you are asking for the original gamebook's limited magic system to be shoehorned back into this completely redesigned, less-restricted incarnation. If you really want that old-school spell menu, you're absolutely right, nothing's stopping you from buying those books and going nuts, but it wouldn't fit here.

If you don't want a faithful adaptation of the core gamebook (in terms of the original content: characters/story/lore/overall direction, etc.), and feel you are likely to keep requesting elements be added, changed or removed, then it's more than likely that this incarnation of the series just isn't for you. To be very blunt, you don't get to have whatever you want just because you want it, especially when you haven't even established that what you want would make the game in any way better in the first place, and clearly haven't considered what would be involved in implementing what it is you're asking for.

inkle have rather obviously invested a lot of time, money, love and effort into reviving and rejuvenating a 30-year-old book series, marketing it in no small part towards those who grew up with those books, and your response to that has basically been, "Yeah, I don't really care about all of that: you should add this, change this, and how about achievements, magic in combat..." with complete ignorance of the source material and the developers' intentions. You sure you don't want them to add in a scene where you get chased by Slender Man, while you're at it?

Your comments have made it pretty clear that you're not actually familiar at all with the original gamebooks, so it probably should be spelled out that, "Hey, this isn't the original book, so just go ahead and throw in anything you want, whether it was in that book or not," is simply not a legitimate argument, and thankfully not how TMG or inkle are doing things either. I suggest you go look up the old Deathtrap Dungeon game (or pretty much any videogame-based movie ever) if you want an example of the abominations that eventuate when people decide to start doing whatever they want with the source material.

The reason most requests and suggestions are usually politely turned down (or, to be honest, pointedly ignored) by professional game developers/authors/filmmakers/other is because, "I'd like it more if you included X," then becomes ten requests for the same, then fifty, then a hundred, most of which are ill-thought-out, would add nothing of value to the work itself, and just generally dilute and detract from the original concept. Professionals adhere to their own vision, amateurs adhere to everybody else's.

Well, no, it's not impractical at all; there can be the occasional minor fiddliness involved in dragging the letters into the right place, but that's a matter of UI sensitivity. Addressing this minor issue doesn't require the drastic and completely unnecessary solution of fundamentally changing the related gameplay entirely via an implementation that would take a significant amount of work for the system inkle are using to make the game, especially when doing so would be completely contrary to everything they're doing with this series.

If you're only asking for a minor adjustment, e.g. just being able to tap on each letter instead of having to drag it into the middle of the "tear", that's reasonable. Casually demanding the old system fundamentally replace the existing one, or even be added as an entirely unnecessary "option", is not. People seem to absolutely love to constantly ask for things to be added as "an option", with no consideration of the suitability of this "option", let alone the resources required to implement it.

Yep, it would be quite important to limit these to the second playthrough and beyond, due to the way this series works; the player's first time through (and first saved game) shouldn't be influenced by an external carrot on a stick. A big part of this series is that your actions for better or worse can often come back to reward or haunt you later on, so an artificial "achievement" system that starts messing with a person's normal playstyle wouldn't be a good thing there.

For example, there are a couple of fights you can't completely bypass with magic, or at least shouldn't avoid if you want certain things to go in your favour in later books, so it'd be short-sighted and mean-spirited to actively encourage players to unknowingly act for instant gratification (by, say, chasing a "no combat" achievement) when doing so will actively hinder them - if not screw them over - several books later if they go with that saved game.

That one's a given, but is also how you should be playing by default, to be honest.

The division between warrior and sorcerer is definitely played up in the books, and avoiding the use of magic in this series certainly makes a run feel different - and more difficult - than using it, so that's a legitimate challenge to issue.

"No weapon" is less realistic, because while using magic is always the player's choice at any given point, it's not always possible to avoid using your weapon.

It is entirely possible to beat the whole book without killing anything, yes, but I think you do need magic to pull that off. You don't even need to run into that particular character at all, actually.

Some of the above are good, but this one just seems arbitrary and a bit stupid, to be honest, because at any given junction you know if you deliberately choose to commit a blatantly "evil act", the game will end, so clearly you're not going to choose that action. There's literally no challenge involved there.

In the end, though, it's not really important whether or not I convince you of anything, it's only important that inkle are made aware that they are on the right track in remaining faithful to the original work and directing these gamebooks first and foremost at fans of the Sorcery! series, rather than wasting time and money making unnecessary changes or throwing in everything and the kitchen sink to try to appeal to those who would ultimately be just as happy with Generic Fantasy Gamebook X.

 

Oh, I don't disagree that in second and subsequent playthroughs, players could be given additional goals to work towards (they shouldn't be pushed towards gameplay-skewing "achievements" in the first run, though).

While TMG have the "art gallery" and "see all endings" goals, amongst others, their achievements on the whole are more about seeing everything in the game, rather than making you to do anything that fundamentally alters the way you play the game. More importantly, the GA books are self-contained, unlike the Sorcery! series; a decision made in The Shamutanti Hills while in dogged pursuit of an achievement could potentially come back to bite you in the rear a book or two later, even if you don't know it yet.

Unlike the standard literal gamebook, though, this visual incarnation of Sorcery! makes it even easier (and more fun) to find places and events you may have missed simply by scanning the map for points of interest and large empty spaces. Depending on whether inkle are allowed to add whole new entries to the game, I'd quite like to see hidden "easter egg" locations on the map, perhaps, that are only accessible between certain stages, and don't show up until you enter them by dragging your character to certain secret spots.

 

It looks like what you're saying is that it was a perfectly reasonable idea, a good one even, but if you start pretending we're asking for spaceships and time-travel then suddenly the game is broken.

Well... yeah? But we weren't. It's inkle's job to sort out the reasonable requests from the crazy ones, you just need to have a little faith in them.

 

There is a way to beat the Manticore through sorcery alone, however you'll need quite a few things you may not have:

Light spoilers in here:

Spoiler

you'll need a giants tooth and pebbles

Heavy, exact spoilers in here:

Spoiler

first cast DOZ
Then YOB which requires a giants tooth, which can be bought for 3 gold in the first village or found in a statues mouth somewhere
Then POp which requires pebbles, found at Arianna by choosing a magic reward

If you don't have any rations to raise your stamina, you might be in trouble with only 6 stamina, though it can be weakened with sorcery that could give you a chance if you fight flawlessly

 

Those locations are in the heavier spoilers. Honestly though, I'd recommend just rewinding and giving it another go. Knowing what you know now, perhaps you can find yourself in a better position for the Manticore next time