We really do live in an age where every seemingly forgotten IP has a chance to be raised anew. Now it’s the turn of Simon the Sorcerer, a series of point and click games from the 90s onwards starring a young lad pulled into a fantasy world. While Simon never enjoyed the same level of success and fame as Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island, his games did find a healthy audience. And now, like an amateur stage magician, Simon has reappeared in an underwhelming puff of smoke — but bless him, he’s giving it everything he’s got.

Available On: PC, Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
Reviewed On: PS5
Developed By: Smallthing Studios
Published By: ININ Games

Review key supplied by the publisher.

Developed by Smallthing Studios and published by ININ Games, Simon the Sorcerer: Origins aims to bring the cheeky charm of the original 1993 classic to a modern audience. It’s a tall order, especially when you’re juggling nostalgia, dated design sensibilities, and players who expect a smoother ride these days.

As the name Origins implies, this is actually a prequel that takes place a few weeks before the events of the original game. The tricky thing is that Simon the Sorcerer makes it fairly clear that it was Simon’s first foray into the magical realm. Origins, therefore, has to conjure some weird story nonsense to make this new tale fit without overwriting what happens in the first game. The good news is that it does manage to do this, but the bad news is that it’s a clunky.

Really, though, I can’t imagine this is a series that has ever been overly concerned with keeping its timeline perfectly intact, so while I think it wasn’t handled well, it also isn’t really a big problem, unless you’re very serious about your Simon lore. More serious than Simon himself, that is, who stares straight into the camera and comments on this game’s existence as a prequel.

We open with Simon and his parents moving to a new house, where Simon immediately starts causing some mayhem. As before, he’s a bit of a menace. A few of the prior games leaned too heavily into this and came very close to making Simon unlikeable. The writing here strikes a better balance: he talks back and doesn’t have a lot of respect for the world around him, but it’s clear that he still has a good heart. Mostly. He’s a cheeky scamp, rather than an arsehole.

After a brief tutorial, a portal opens and drags Simon into a world of fantasy tropes and wizards that is ripe for some light-hearted, 4th-wall-breaking jokes. Sure enough, there’s a classic “Chosen One” prophecy and the evil Sordid needs to be stopped before he can do whatever evil, nefarious thing he’s up to this time.

Chris Barrie, best known for playing that smeg-head Rimmer on classic British TV show Red Dwarf, reprises his role as Simon for the first time in three decades. Obviously, Barrie is a bit older these days (65, actually) so his voice has changed. You can very clearly tell that it’s an older male trying to imitate a pre-pubescent boy. Once you can push past that, Barrie delivers a solid performance, with all the snark and flat sarcasm you would expect from Simon.

And yet, the game doesn’t really nail the humour. Sure, there are plenty of dry quips and jabs made at fantasy tropes, but the witty dialogue and snappy one-liners aren’t quite there. The game drew a single chuckle out of me, but the rest of the jokes mainly got faint smiles. Part of the issue is that Simon’s whole shtick isn’t as unusual as it once was. The 4th wall breaking and pop-culture references that once made Simon the Sorcerer special are now overused tropes. Poking fun at fetch quests? Sorry, man, but that’s been done to death and back again. Breaking the 4th wall to remind a character that this is a prequel so they shouldn’t remember Simon? Again, it has been done. A lot. The various side-characters you encounter along the way don’t stick in your memory, either, except for Swampling. He’s pretty cool.

Graphically, the game has two distinct styles going on. Simon himself is drawn almost like a Saturday morning cartoon character, and I love his moody stomps across the screen, like a petulant kid wearing shoes that are too big for him. The backgrounds are done in a painterly style with plenty of bright colours. At a glance I think it looks beautiful and the interiors look especially good. However, there isn’t a lot of detail in the style which is most obvious in the exterior locations. It means that some scenes lack depth. This is doubly obvious in a couple of the game’s filler scenes that exist purely to make the world feel slightly bigger but otherwise have almost no points of interaction or anything of interest going on in the background.

As a massive fan of the point and click genre, I have gone on record multiple times discussing how we’ve reached a bit of an evolutionary dead-end, it seems. I’m saying this so that you understand that I won’t really be criticising Simon the Sorcerer: Origins for following the standard adventure game template. You make your way around the world, clicking on every hotspot in the vague hope that it will either provide a clue or hand you yet another item to store in your magical hat/inventory until you inevitably try to combine it with other stuff or use it on every hotspot in the game out of sheer desperation.

So if innovation isn’t the key, then what is? Execution, pure and simple. A great adventure game doesn’t need to reinvent the spellbook — it just needs to cast the classics with confidence. The puzzles should feel sharp, the writing witty, the characters worth clicking on. It sounds so damn simple on paper, but in reality it’s difficult to pull off.

The puzzles here mostly stick to the tried-and-true formula of combining increasingly ridiculous items to solve increasingly ridiculous problems. It’s old-school design through and through, and while a few solutions make logical sense, others feel like you missed a hint that wasn’t there. There’s a bit too much trial-and-error for my liking, though a handful of puzzles do land that satisfying “aha!” moment when you finally work them out. It’s never bad, just rarely brilliant or memorable. There are adventure games from years ago that I still recall thanks to a clever puzzle or barmy scenario, but Origins doesn’t really have any of those. You’ll spend more time wandering between screens than actually feeling clever. Speaking of which, Simon also moves at a snail’s pace, and a few screens feel like filler. Thankfully, there’s a fast-travel system to save your sanity. Although even with that in place, one “puzzle” about hunting owls across the game’s small selection of areas involves way to much footwork. I’m a sorcerer, nor walking enthusiast.

Simon remains a fairly naff sorcerer, but he does get a few basic spells at his command such as Flambergo, because what self-respecting kid doesn’t want to set things on fire from time to time. There’s also an initially intriguing mechanic where Simon can swap his hat, turning it into a white hat or a dark hat and thus altering all the guff you have stored in it. That’s an awesome idea, so it’s odd that it barely gets used.

One modern creature-comfort Simon the Sorcerer: Origins doesn’t have is a hint system. A lot of new adventure games use this as a good way of keeping players moving instead of getting frustrated, usually as an entirely optional system. There’s one or two moments when I would have greatly appreciated one, and since Simon is a sorcerer (competent or otherwise) there’s an in-game justification for having one – a hint spell!

I went for the peculiar option of reviewing the game on PS5. At this point, adventure game developers have had the control scheme locked down for a while, and Origins wisely decides not to ruin the magic trick. There’s a classic control method if you’d prefer it, complete with on-screen cursor, but moving Simon around with the sticks felt fine. The bumper buttons can be used to quickly swap through all the interactable points on the screen. Of course, PC is the way to play, but if you’re on console you’ll still have a good time.

Performance-wise, the game is pretty much flawless. There’s not much going on under the hood to tax the PS5 or whatever other platform you decide to play on. And it was bug free, with just one exception: the Marathon Runner trophy/achievement doesn’t work properly right now, which stopped me from getting the Platinum trophy. This seems to be effecting all platforms, but the developers have acknowledged it, so expect a fix fairly soon.

At around six to eight hours long, Simon the Sorcerer: Origins doesn’t overstay its welcome. It moves along at a steady pace, though the backtracking between areas can start to wear you down near the end. There’s little reason to replay it once the credits roll, but for a single nostalgic trip, it feels about right.

It’s a flawed adventure that never quite recaptures Simon’s old magic, but it’s also a lovingly made one, full of charm and nostalgia.

While it is fantastic to see Simon return, his grand comeback isn’t an impressive display of point and click magic – it’s more like an amateur magician’s routine; kinda simple, but you can’t fault the heart and enthusiasm that went into it. It’s an absolutely solid adventure game that leaves me hopeful we might see more from Simon. If you love the genre, pick it up and give it a go.