Okay, so this isn't a black-or-white decision for some. But if you tally it all up and look at the bottom line, it's a resounding yes.

Is it an actual HD remaster? No, it isn't. But they clealry state it's an xBRZ upscale and nothing else. And there's an option to play the original style, which we switched to in a click of a button.

Would I have loved the graphic interface option? Sure, but it's not a dealbreaker.

But here are the main pro points:

Nobody buys the rights for an old point and click game and releases it with bonus material to make a quick buck. These guys love the game and made it available for old fans and new. Cease it.

There were several bugs and glitches post-release, and they were quick to address and resolve issues, with constant presence in the forums. This isn't a drive-by cash grab. Support is prompt and personal.

Paying for this is voting for more classic re-releases. And I want more.

Even with its faults, it's worth the reasonable pricetag.

יש אופציה לגרסה עם טקסט בעברית, וזה נותן לכל הורה גיק כמוני הזדמנות לשחק עם הילדים ביחד ולהכיר להם את הקלאסיקות האהובות.
התפריט של בחירת השפה בג'יבריש, אבל כל השאר לא, ולאור הדאגה והתמיכה שהופגנו עד כה בפורומים, אני סומך עליהם שגם זה יתוקן בסופו של דבר.

Simon the Sorcerer is a classic point & click adventure game from the 90s. This particular release is a 25th anniversary remastered edition. It comes with a legacy addition as a DLC and you can alter the settings to be more like the original or the more modern remake. Unlike most of the reviewers here, I never played it as a kid. I only discovered it much later in life after reminiscing with other P&C Adventure game fans. Being that I've only ever played this new remastered edition I can't really comment on how it compares to the original only how I feel about the current remastered edition.

The UI is essentially the same as old Lucas Arts titles like Monkey Island. It was a favored system for some as it allowed for a truly point & click style experience in lieu of a text parser. To be honest, I never liked having to select the action words then click it on the things I wanted to use/do. I prefer either using an actual text parser and typing it in myself or using an icon system like what Sierra games developed. Considering this was a remastered edition, I really wish the UI had been updated to not have to use that system. They made a bunch of new icons, could have even combined some of the actions under a single icon, and could have let select icons either by a right click scrolling action or an action bar or they could have updated it to the more modern left click action right click look type interface. I think that either would have been a better option for a remastered 25th anniversary edition. Instead they slightly enhanced the graphics slapped in otherwise mostly useless icons that are clunky and then added in hotspot highlighting (though a fair amount of pixel-hunting is still required and some hotspots easily missible). It seems like a wasted opportunity.

The music and sounds are interesting and the voice acting is good and all well recorded. My only complaint here is that it allows you to adjust the music and voice volume separately but not the background noises. Some of the scenes like the drilling in the dwarven mine, or the snoring dwarf are quite loud and annoying and the sounds detract from my ability to focus on what's being said and on exploring those specific surroundings. I really wish I had an option to turn down those background noises just like I did for the background music. I like hearing them I just don't like hearing them in conjunction with the main narrative being voiced. Fortunately it is both text and voice so I could mute those scenes and just read through it, but then you don't get to hear the voices. That sound balance, to me, wasn't well designed or thought out.

The story is decent, fairly well thought out and about as complex as most adventure games of that era. It does have a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor and makes references to several classic fairy tales as well as popular well known books series such as Discworld and The Lord of the Rings. Your character, Simon, is a boy from our dimension who through the use of a spellbook gets transported into another dimension to help defeat the sorcerer Sordid. While most of this other dimension feels a bit like a Medieval Renaissance type era, Simon comes across several things that are clearly from our 'modern' era in our dimension (or one similar to it). Apparently, it's not uncommon for Wizards there to visit other dimensions as evidenced by one of them visiting a tea party which seems to be referencing Alice in Wonderland. The story and writing are just fun and entertaining.

The puzzles in this game are all inventory and dialogue based. There aren't any other real puzzles or mini-games. You pick up pretty much anything you can interact with, you combine things in your inventory, you use them on items/people/places in the many scenes. It's pretty simple. A few puzzles are dialogue based. While most puzzles are logical and it's easy to understand what type of item you are looking for and how you might obtain it, there are a few points in the game that don't make as much sense. In these cases there is an in-game hint system in the form of an old wise owl but he gives random hints and not necessarily ones about your current predicaments. He might tell you hints for puzzles you already solved and he takes forever telling it to you. Essentially, its usually quicker to just randomly try things on other things till you find a combination that causes positive results.

The areas to explore can be confusing with many screens having exits from one side that have you enter the next screen from an unexpected angle. Part of the complexity is just in finding the various screens you need to reach. The game offers a quick travel map you can use to jump to a location you've already discovered but not every scene makes it onto the map so some level of wandering and exploring will still be necessary.

This game offers about 8-10 hours of lighthearted entertainment and is probably worth the ~$9 it costs. However, you can also buy this on-sale, alone or along with it's 2 sequels from time to time and those deals are worth watching for. I think most P&C fans, especially those who are fans of older Lucas Arts games will enjoy this game.

Rundown: Awesome point n click adventure game. BUT,

dont buy it if you have any previous version, there is no new content besides the option to play speech + subtitles at the same time. Anything else is a start screen with options and an upscale filter (which can be opted in in previous version as well via scummVM). Still, if you haven't played this game yet, buy it, it is totally worth it. (The same goes for part 2)

Don't listen all the haters here. Game works perfectly.
Just turn all settings to "original" and enjoy this classic gem.

I really love this game! I played it when I was a kid, and I just played it again with my partner (it's not multiplayer but its fun to put your heads together to work out what to do). I'd like to say, the music/design/narration of the trailer is absolutely awful, but the dialogue, acting, and music in the game are brilliant and you get very immersed in the quirky fantasy world they've created. The remastered graphics aren't very good, but I preferred to play it with the original graphics and sound anyway (which is also an option). Despite being ancient, it's still one of the best point and click games I've ever played.

It's good! And it's a little bad. And it's an interesting enough game to justify the time we spent on it.

It's a softly charming point 'n' click . . . when Simon isn't setting you on the bleeding edge of murder by refusing to pursue the most obvious freaking solutions! This was our last game of Click-a-Palooza '24, and it's good that nothing comes right after it, because boy! Beating this with only a single solitary hint about took all the adventure out of us for a bit! And that one puzzle I'm talking about was so insulting, so unfair: you have to acquire an object but there seems to be no way to do this without being spotted. The correct solution? To render said object unusable so its owner will throw it out, without any indication that something of the sort needs to be done! Simon is a pixelly 'n' pretty old game; sometimes it is an easy game. And sometimes it's so sandals-on-scalp illogical that you'll go mad mushing every item in your inventory against everything else in the game world!

The old-timey interface -- with separate listings for consume, talk to, etc. -- is pretty clunky to use, and it's a good thing that modern adventure-makers have (mostly) deemed this level of complexity unnecessary. Sometimes you even have to click a command multiple times before your cursor turns into the right one. It must be said that Simon lacks any kind of insidious game block, however; that is something that I will not abide in any adventure game, no matter how venerable.

I did say that it was softly charming, didn't I? That's because Simon is a fairly nice chap, a little snarky as teens tend to be, but a helpful fellow on the whole. He doesn't do malicious things to anyone, really -- and for some funny reason I was convinced that that was exactly what defined him! Like I thought you would have him dip his tadger into somebody's ale or something, or maybe set bear traps for the local children. It's not like that at all, and I don't know where I got the idea. This gentler humor works pretty dawgone well, and the voiceovers are naturalistic save for the blacksmith -- who sounds like a random pub selection recorded at the bottom of a rusty elevator shaft.

The dialog, while largely being clever, also does not waste your time (unlike some of the puzzles). Characters spit it out in a few brief lines with perfectly packaged sass, and surprisingly you've got just one chance to select a certain uniquely funny thing yourself -- and then the conversation moves on, permanently! No need to go through and click a million dialog options, sifting for a shred of clue. The key things they'll repeat; everything else, all the flavor, you'll have to catch on the fly. I like that, tremendously! I still have nightmares about Randal's Monday, wherein endless reams of awkwardly translated pop culture jokes fall on you like a verbal avalanche, crushing your spirit in a far worse way than Simon's occasionally dodgy puzzles could ever hope to.

I complain, I moan! I ♥♥♥♥♥ like a little spoiled girlie at times. But there's that saying about the hair of the dog that bit you, you know? I've just heard the sequel cranks up the nastiness a wee bit. I want to see what that's all about, plus I want to find out if the puzzle design got any sharper. Looks like I'll be playing Simon 2!

A classic of one of the best adventure games ever made back in the 90s, which brought back to life for modern platforms along with extra features which can either be turned on for the new experience, or to be turned off for those who wish to enjoy the classic with the original feel.

I'd highly recommend everyone to play a bit with the different settings in either "Settings -> Graphics" and "Settings -> Controls" so you'd choose the best playing experience for YOU! As a given settings combination may look GREAT for some people, others might prefer different settings to enjoy the game. If you're familiar with the classic and you don't like the new 'smooth filtered look' - the original game experience is STILL THERE(!) and you can play the game the way you used to by adjusting the varies settings from the main menu. The only classic things that you won't find here is the opening screen showing "Adventure Soft" and "Simon the Sorcerer" pixel art titles - instead you get a smooth "MojoTouch" title as the publisher. And you also won't find the "Saving / Loading" table after opening the postcard in the game. You do see the postcard when using it, but after selecting either "Save" or "Load" it takes you back to the enhanced main menu "Save / Load" screen. Which is a must since this version is designed to work on both computers and touch devices, and the original Amiga / MS-DOS Saving and Loading table would have been a terrible user experiene on touch devices.

Besides graphics, you also have the ability to enjoy the soundtrack of the game with the built-in Roland MT-32 soud module; one of the most expensive sound hardware modules used to papir with PC gaming back in the day. Whom ever had it back then was considred RICH $$$. Here you get it built-in and you can select either to use it or the traditional Sound Blaster sounds experience.

Overall, I think that this 25th Anniversary Edition is great, mostly because it allows users to tweek the settings according to their preference and to enjoy the game the way they feel right.

For those who would like to learn more about the varies settings in this version before they buy, I've elaborated a few notes below:

~ Resolution ~
The original game resolution is 320x200 pixels, which showed as doubled pixels on CRT monitors back in the day (640x400); that's the beauty of pixel-art that many Indie game developers and pixel-art artists are looking for nowadays. Though, these new games are designed in 16:9 aspect ratio in order to fill the wide screens correctly. Simon the Sorcerer however, was designed to be played in an aspect ratio of 4:3. And that's the first feature I really like that MojoTouch have added in this 25th Anniversary Edition; you can play the game in either the 4:3 ratio (Settings -> Graphics -> Aspect Ratio -> Original) which leaves black bars on the sides of the screen (this is the original classic feel), or in 16:9 ratio (Settings -> Graphics -> Aspect Ratio -> Modern) which streches the game horizontally. I personally don't like streched-out graphics as eveything becomes "fat". :) But some would prefer a streched image over black bars on the sides so it's a matter of taste really.

~ Original vs High graphics ~
This version is NOT a remake and it is important to mentoin this here. It never meant to be, actually. But it does include a filter that makes the bulky double-sized pixels smooth (Settings -> Graphics -> Original or High). Sure, "High" does not look as if the entire graphics were re-drawn from scratch, but it does give a smooth feel if you like it more than sharp bulky pixels. But this is again a matter of taste. You can either use it or ignore it and use the "Original" setting and to play the game the way it indended to be played; with bulky double-sized sharp pixels. :)

~ User Interface ~
You have 3(!) ways of user interface looks to choose from (Settings -> Controls):
1. You can choose "Classic" to enjoy the original experiene the game was designed to be played.

2. You can choose "Enhanced" to enjoy the new user experiene which moves the hot-spots text bar from above the actions area to the top of the screen, while also giving the cursor the ability to change its appearance according to the action you pick to do from the actions area - it is important to say that the hot-spots bar is not needed to be in the middle of the screen, since this mode was designed for touch devices. So players most likely won't use a mouse but touch gestures to navigate around. And there's no need for pixel hunting to locate hot-spots as there's a dedicated hot-spots icon at the corner of the screen where players could touch to highlight any hot-spot on a given screen.

3. You can choose "Enhaned With Original Actions" to activate the new cursor design that changes according to the selected action, but the hot-spots text bar remains in its original position.

Fantastic game i cant believe its 25 years old plus now :o you will love this if your into games like broken sword series etc Brilliant!!!!!

This is amazing! My best childhood game which gave me a lot of inspiration!
Thanks for the dev who bring it to Steam with cool features and many translations
now I can enjoy it once again but with my kids too!

I Played this game about 15 years ago and didn't complete it. Currently reliving my youth and enjoying the nostalgia. some glitches each time i try to save but using ctrl, alt delete and task manager to get around it. enjoying it so far though.