Sorcery: Gameplay Analysis

Posted June 15, 2010 by (66)

Sony’s E3 press conference definitely brought the "Wow" factor to their dedicated fanbase, and it was inevitable a good portion of the conference would showcase Playstation Move. To take advantage of the imaginative setting E3 gives companies, Sony decided to showcase a live demo of Sorcery, a new IP from developer "The Workshop".

With Move in hand, and nunchuck in the other, Christian Busic from The Workshop began a live demo of a young boy donning a cape and flicking a wand, reminiscent of an early Harry Potter. At first glance, this game seems quite simple from a game play point of view. The Move controls your wand in what appeared to be nearly perfect 1:1 timing, though a couple instances seem to have a delay. The nunchuck has your joystick and allows for free movement around the levels. It’s unclear whether the ability to change spells and potions is controlled by the buttons on the Move or the nunchuck.

The start of the demo begins with an eerie voice narrating the story of how the sorcerers apprentice must go on a quest to stop the Nightmare Queen. Christian demonstrates the use of the wand and emphatically shows you have to move your arm back and flick forward in order to get a spell to be cast. He comes upon some little goblins and with a few flicks of the wrist, he easily defeats the foes. At one point in the demo, the only way through the wold is to drink a shrinkingpotion to change our heroin into a rat. Christian selects the potion and must shake the Move to make the potion bubble, and must tilt the move up to his mouth, as though drinking from a real bottle. This was a nice touch to a pretty straightforward demo, and sort of made the audience believe there is much more to this game than simple wand flicking.

The best part of the demo was watching Christian demo various spells, but nothing was more impressive than using the fire spell to create a barrier of fire in front of you, then selecting the whirlwind spell to move through the fire and throw the charred goblins around. All of these were nice touches, and being able to multiply your spells to create a massive problem for you enemies was exciting. At times, Christian was bombarded with enemies, and this is where those compounding spells will be of great use.

Sorcery is a game hard core fans will enjoy, while the younger, casual gamers can pick up and have fun with as well. Sony did a good job finding a healthy median to transcend the generational gap, and found a game to be a good starter in the Move library.