Sorcery! Part 4 takes up this very successful setting of the third episode, albeit in a more moderate way. Also thanks to this enormous amount of material to draw from, the third Sorcery! had presented itself as a kind of book-game open world, which allowed the player to proceed in any direction as he pleased, rather than channeling him along an obligatory path interspersed with choices or crossroads.
If it is true that the first two episodes of the series were quite faithful to Jackson's books, starting from the third chapter we saw a massive re-adaptation with numerous portions written from scratch, albeit with style and quality almost indistinguishable from the original ones. Once again it is amazing how the Inkle developers have managed to translating the concept of a book-game into a videogame, transforming pages and pages of narration into small blocks of description, which accompany every action of the gamer. Again we find ourselves with the representation of our avatar as a pawn on a map, accompanied by the omnipresent descriptions that illustrate every landscape, every event and every character. Even the audiovisual setting and the game system are exactly the same as seen in previous episodes, to reinforce the idea that maybe Sorcery! it should be seen as a single title, divided into 4 parts. Players who have completed the Baklands Traverse in Sorcery! 3 can in fact import their character with a simple cloud save system, also working between different platforms. Once again Sorcery! picks up exactly where the previous episode left off. Only one obstacle stands between him and the Crown: the perfidious Archmage, with all his armies, all his magic and all his deceptions. After traversing hills, mysterious cities, and wastelands, the player's avatar, Analander, has finally arrived at the Mampang fortress. Based on the homonymous series of game books written by Steve Jackson between 19 and known under the title of Sortilegio, this epic four-part adventure saw us on the trail of the legendary Crown of the Kings, magical artifact able to bend everything and everyone to the will of its owner. In the meantime, you can pick up the game on Steam if you don’t have a Switch.Churning out four titles in just under 4 years, the new masters of interactive storytelling loom finally close the cycle of adventures of the Analander with the expected Sorcery! Part 4: The Crown of Kings.
Previously released on PC and mobile, all four chapters will be available at launch, sometime in Q3 2021. This Steve Jackson’s Sorcery collaboration with Inkle, who recently released the excellent Heaven’s Vault, also for the Nintendo Switch, focuses on Sorcery! Parts 1-4, allowing players to ‘determine the flow of the plot and the gameplay’. They were fantastic stories, and Jackson was, and is, a top raconteur.
Steve Jackson’s Sorcery… anyone who grew up with Livingstone and Jackson’s ‘Choose Your Own Adventures’ will be relishing in the knowledge that Inkle and No Gravity Games will be releasing this for the Nintendo Switch.