Sorcery! – The Shamutanti HillsSomething a little bit different, this time. I don’t have Talisman of Death (or the next 11 FF books!) so I’m going to start Sorcery!, the FF companion series pitched at older readers. The first book, Shamutanti Hills, was released in 1983, around the time of City of Thieves, so I should actually have played it a while back!
I’ve got all the Sorcery! books (the rather nice Wizard box set) and I’ve had a run at Shamutanti Hills before
I died in the field of flowers. I’ve been tempted to give the smartphone versions a go for a while, and flying to Glasgow a few weeks ago on a stag do was the perfect excuse to download one – not only would I have something to do on the flights (without having to mess around with dice and pencil) but I could see how it compares to the dead tree version. I’ve held back some of the surprises in store, but, as always, spoilers follow…
The Playthrough[
There’s no rolling for a character as there aren’t any stats in this version – just a stamina value, and even that’s out of my control. I am given the option to play as either male or female; I hadn’t given much thought to my character’s sex either way so far, but I’ve imagined all my adventurers as male. Let’s see if this time a bit of female intuition can’t get me a win where male intellect has (mostly) failed.]
So. The legendary Crown of Kings – which can bring unheard-of peace and prosperity – has been stolen from the King of Analand (no sniggering at the back) by birdmen from the Fortress of Mampang. Everyone seems to think getting it back is a fairly hopeless task, but the kingdom’s future looks so bleak without the Crown that I’m given the job anyway – just on the offchance that I
don’t die horribly. The first order of business is to wend my way up through the Shamutanti foothills to the infamous cityport of Kharé, a weeping sore of a metropolis that makes Port Blacksand look positively cosmopolitan…
In retrospect, I make a bit of a mistake with virtually the first choice I’m given, although it does set out the stall for my character as a bit of a would-be paragon. The Sightmaster Sergeant who sees me off offers me a purse of 24 gold for my travels; virtuously, I give him back half, telling him the King ought not to spare so much. I’m going to spend plenty of time cursing that decision on my travels! The first encounter of note happens as I leave the town of Cantopani, when two BANDITS accost me. Knowing I definitely can’t spare the gold they demand, I offer them a taste of steel instead – all 28 inches of it. In the first of many examples of Sorcery’s moral ambiguity, I afterwards find the bandits were too poor even to have anything worth looting from their bodies - which makes me feel just
super about killing them.
[
Combat in the app works similarly to rolling dice, but with a bit more nuance – you and your opponent each (blindly) choose an attack strength. Whoever turns out to have chosen the higher is the one who does damage that round; but the higher you go, the less attack strength is available to you next round, so it’s always good to hold something back. If you pay attention, the flavour text also sometimes drops clues about what your opponent’s going to do next.]
Above Cantopani the road forks around a massive oak tree. As I stand debating which road to take, a voice calls to me from up in the branches, begging for help. It’s a little old man, who claims to have been whisked up into the boughs by a mischievous race of Fey called Elvins. As something of a gamebook veteran at this point, I’m immediately wary – the old man’s just as likely to be baiting a trap for some horrible demon angler-fish or something, but as it’s early into the adventure I decide to take him at face value. I’ll try to take everyone on trust until I start having reason not to. Having helped him down, he
seems to be exactly what he said he was, and rewards me with a riddle and an incomplete page from a spellbook, either of which might be useful later. I shinny back up into the tree to collect some honeycomb and beeswax from a beehive, (the former food, the latter a reagent for a new spell); all in all, I’ve not done too badly here.
With a further choice of routes opening up after the fork at the tree, I decide to follow the road toward the Schanker mines – there’s
always loot to be found in mines, right? This particular one’s run by a horde of goblins. Waiting for a moment when the entrance is unguarded, I slip inside for a little opportunistic plunder. Soon I’ve stumbled upon a GOBLIN GUARD who is none too pleased about being woken from his nap. I can’t say fairer than helping him down into a deeper, more permanent slumber. Things start to get seriously tricky in the tunnels he was guarding, as supports start to crumble around me and the whole mine nearly comes down on my head! Bloody goblin workmanship. I
eventually emerge blinking into daylight again, better off to the tune of one silver key and a pair of furry boots. Hardly the sort of riches I was hoping for…
On the third day I travel down into the shade of the Mediki forest, curious about a lonely building I’ve seen nestled among the trees on the map. Soon a chocolate-box cottage comes into sight – roses around the porch, painted designs on the door – but it’s seemingly abandoned. I tentatively enter, braced for danger, and a voice calls eagerly for help. There’s a young woman locked in a cage. She claims to be Alianna, the owner of the cottage, another victim of those pesky Elvins. I cast
DOP to open the cage – although part of me is braced for this to be a horrible mistake. The old man in the tree was the exception to the rule that this sort of thing rarely ends well in an FF book, and Alianna’s probably going to turn out to be a witch or cannibal who was locked away for a very good reason… She rewards me with Ragnarista’s Armband of Swordmasters, to bring skill to my sword arm. And a bag of 8 gold. And we sit and have a very pleasant lunch together. After a while, these books do something to you. You lose all sense of trust; start seeing boogeymen in every shadow. Sometimes, you have to just – Ah. Here we go. She
is a witch, it turns out, and brings one of her chairs to life to fight me as I try to leave.
A few splinters seem a small price to pay for the goodies I got here, as I leave the cottage a lot better off than I went in – for once, it was worth springing the trap! Climbing up into the Shamutanti Hills proper, I go through a few more little villages. One of these, Urrustanti, is a strangely gloomy place, full of pale, limping townsfolk with haunted eyes. No prizes for guessing why my Spirit sent me here. These look like people who could use a hero… Keen to know what their ailment is, I approach a village elder and shake his hand, to show I mean them no harm. He’s surprised at this – didn’t I
know that Urrustanti is riddled with plague? I look at my hand with horror, but it’s too late – already, I’m breaking out in purple boils. My trusting nature has doomed me. I only have a few days before it claims me… (which doesn’t quite make sense, to my mind. If that’s the life expectancy, the village can have only been suffering – at most – for two days, or everyone in it would be dead. But this is clearly something they’ve been living with for some time…)
Thankfully, it’s not something I have to worry about for too long. Staggering out of the village, I’m already feeling sweaty and feverish – this is absolutely no way to run a quest. So I fall to my knees and pray to The Monkey for salvation… [
In the original book, you could call on Libra, your personal Goddess, for help in really sticky situations – a sort of once-per-book Get Out of Jail Free card. In the app, you instead have a guardian spirit who takes the form of an animal. You can call multiple times for help or healing per adventure, but it’s fickle, and might not always
listen…] My prayer is heard, and the plague cured. I only wish I could do more for the poor citizens of Urrustanti.
The next town is Birritanti, and on the way in I’m suddenly adopted by a little pixie-like chap who calls himself Jann. He asks to hitch a ride, and – having established he’s not a sort of Elvin – I can’t really see the harm. Frankly, it’s nice to have a bit of friendly company. The local innkeeper is a man called Glandragor, with a face that might best be described as ‘lived in.’ He’s solidly built, and as he pours me a flagon of ale I can see his arms are corded with old muscle; here’s a retired adventurer if ever there was one. Having passed the time of day very pleasantly, I head out of the town, a drunken Jann burping gently in my ear. There are signposts to a Crystal Waterfall, which sounds intriguing – supposedly it has magical healing powers – and after grudgingly paying a ruffian 2 gold for the privilege, I’m soon washing off the dust of the road. The waters really do feel fantastic. Local legend has it that they can even cure disease…
Suddenly, I’m rushing back down the path to Birritanti – thankfully having remembered to get dressed again first! Back at the inn, Glandragor can see immediately where I’m going with my excited talk of Urrustanti and the waterfall, and pours cold water on my hopes – not only does he not believe the waters are magical, but given that the village is only a day’s walk or so away, don’t I think
someone must have tried the cure before now? Well, I’m a hero – I just can’t take the chance. If I can’t get anyone else to go, I’ll have to do it alone. Jann isn’t best pleased, but as I tell him, he doesn’t
have to come. I’m halfway back to Urrustanti when Glandragor overtakes me – I’ve shamed him into doing the right thing! To my even greater surprise, Jann elects to go with him, too. Minimites are apparently immune to plague, and he thinks he might have a nice place to live if he has a grateful village behind him. Well, that’s the way it is with friends in a gamebook – whether they get a happy ending or ‘do a Mungo’, you can’t expect any of them to stick around for long. It’s just a shame that I won’t know – in this adventure, at least – how this subplot ends, and whether I saved Urrustanti. Virtue will have to be its own reward, this time…
Things suddenly get serious on the far side of Birritanti. I’m on the edges of a small copse when a blade slides with silken smoothness across my neck, stopping me in my tracks. A voice in my ear warns me that he has his life in my hands, and ‘invites’ me to turn and face him. One of the many shadows among the trees detaches itself from the others, and becomes the shape of an assassin. He quickly learns something about the wisdom of testing a sorcerer, as I
ZAP with a lightning bolt to soften him up before the swordplay. FLANKER – as he calls himself – is soon on his knees, bloodied and panting. ‘Honour must be satisfied. Finish me.’ To teach him a lesson about picking fights with strangers, I spare his life instead – and to drive the message a little deeper, I even treat and bind his wounds. The shamed assassin declares himself to be in my debt, and promises that – if I should live so long – he’ll do what he can to help me in Kharé. For whatever reason, I feel I can take Flanker at his word. To take a foe and make him a friend is an even nicer feeling than (maybe) saving a village from the plague.
But I’ll never know if Flanker’s an assassin of his word until I make it out of the hills, so I press on to the final village before the city of café. Torrepani is a village of svinns – half-orcs. Look, I’m no racist, but you can hardly blame me for going especially warily down into the hamlet – and wouldn’t you know it, I end up thrown into a cell overnight. Next morning the chief himself comes to visit me – and to apologise. His daughter was recently kidnapped by goblins, and they’re hopeful that I might be just the girl to help. An adventurer’s work is never done! So before I know what’s what, I find myself being lowered down into an abandoned mine tunnel in a wicker basket. They are at least good enough to throw a torch down after me…
I stumble for a while through the tunnels, horribly aware of… something else… down here with me. A distant roaring. An occasional scratching. I blunder into a pit of snakes, but a quick cast of
LAW has them all dancing to my tune, and the reptiles obligingly form themselves into a ladder for me to climb back out. Later I trigger a trap – an immense boulder, perfectly sized to the tunnel, begins to roll after me. In a panic, all my spellcasting knowledge seems to fly out of my head, and I drop to my knees to pray instead. It’s probably the single riskiest thing I’ve done since leaving Analand, but my Spirit comes through for me and stops the boulder before I’m crushed. And eventually –
eventually – I find the svinn girl, playing despondently with some stones in a corner. I hardly have time to tell her that I’m here to rescue her before a bloody MANTICORE stalks into the cave chamber…
This must be what the goblins had sacrificed the svinn girl to – but as it stalks toward me, poison dripping from its teeth, I don’t think I can count on it being too picky about where its next meal comes from. I’ve just got time to cast
WAL against myself – it costs 3 stamina, but I now have a forcefield protecting me. Every time I choose to defend, I won’t take any damage for that round – so it’s only when the manticore beats my attack strength that I’ll take damage. And then the mighty beast is upon me, and boy does it give me the toughest fight so far… [
In fact, if I was playing the paper version, this would have been the end of my adventure, as we battled each other down to a mere one health apiece – and then the manticore killed me. But the app asked if I’d like to try the fight again, and having gotten so near to the end of the adventure it seemed rude not to!]
With the beast dead, I take the girl back to Torrepani. There’s naturally much rejoicing. Like most everyone in the foothills, the svinns are a poor folk, but I’m feted and fed until I can’t eat another bite. They spare me a little gold, and most importantly of all, the chief gives me a key to the South Gate of Kharé (I choose not to ask how he got it). This stage of the mission is at an end, but I still have a long way to go…
The Verdict – Shamutanti hillsGosh, this was good. Sorcery! is a fantastic series. ‘Fighting Fantasy for grown-ups’ seems a bit of a trite description, but… it really does feel like ‘Fighting Fantasy for grown-ups’. It’s familiar, but there’s so much more to it. The prose is much more evocative and descriptive; there are little jokes and asides, historical details and background info that make the Shamutanti foothills feel like a living, breathing place.
I was impressed at how relatively little fighting I had to do – with only 6 kills, this run was my lowest kill count since Citadel of Chaos. The emphasis is definitely on exploration, conversation and clever spellcasting. Speaking of which – unlike Scorpion Swamp, or even Citadel of Chaos – the spell mechanic doesn’t feel like an afterthought. It’s been really well worked out, and it’s totally integral to the narrative. You can just about get through without casting spells, but the game is so much more satisfying when you do. It also means you’ll be combing voraciously through the wares of every last shop and merchant you find, hoping to find one of the items that might open up a new spell…
The Verdict – The appSo, now the app specifically. Is it better than the print version? No, I’m not sure it is. There’s a lot to be said for the print experience; sitting down with a book in one hand, making notes and maps with the other. You
could do the same with the app version I suppose, but it’d feel totally redundant – and the app taking this admin stuff over feels a bit of a loss, to me. I also preferred the book’s really clever mechanic of having to memorise the spellbook, and the way it gently punished you for getting your spells wrong; having it all at your fingertips to check at any time can feel a bit like cheating. Similarly, you can re-do any fights you lose (or even just re-attempt fights where you lost health), and even rewind to previous points of the game if you decide you’ve done badly. You don’t
have to use those functions, of course, but it’s pretty hard to resist…!
So is it
worse than the print version? Absolutely,
definitely not. The interactive map is
amazing, and gives such a strong sense of place and progress in a way that the gamebook just can’t quite manage. The music is superb, but the ambient soundtrack might be even better – the calling of crows, the distant howling of wolves, the trickling of rivers and susurration of trees really plunging you into the world of the game. The battles are so much more satisfying than just rolling a couple of dice; the text and the music make it a much more immersive experience. And while I was never the biggest fan of John Blanche’s artwork, I do love that the game has kept all those original illustrations, as well as using them as inspiration for all the new additions.
It arguably perhaps feels a bit short for a game that costs £4.99, but then it’s only one part of a 4-part adventure that gets bigger and grander with each installment, and the replay value is huge. Shamutanti Hills sticks very close to the parent book, but the later installments apparently expand the adventures quite a bit. So not better, not worse – just very, very different, in all the best possible ways. A complimentary experience to the book. I’d heartily recommend either.
8.5 combat dice out of 10
