There once was an evil sorcerer who terrorized the land with an army of terrible minions until one day four heroes of good set out and sealed the sorcerer away in a magical artifact. Sounds pretty straight forward so far, right? Except that in Paper Sorcerer, by one-man studio Runaway Games, the roles are reversed and *you* are that evil sorcerer. Now, trapped inside a magical dungeon, your task is to break the bindings of your prison and free yourself. Along the way you will summon a troop of followers with unique abilities to aid you in your goal and defeat the heroes that imprisoned you within. Drawing on dungeon-crawling RPGs of yesteryear, Paper Sorcerer is a mixed bag that is sure to appeal to some players a lot more than others.
The first thing you will notice about Paper Sorcerer is its visual style. The graphics are hand drawn by one person, which is a pretty impressive feat by itself, and almost the entire game is black and white, with a few splashes of color thrown in for effect. It sounds simple, but when you start moving through the dungeons in first-person perspective there’s something very pleasing about the contrast of pen-and-ink artwork and 3D environments. It’s difficult to describe, and even gameplay videos don’t quite feel the same as being in control, but it’s a pretty great effect. Combat switches to 2D, with hand drawn monsters and battle animations in the same black and white style. While some of the monster sprites look a bit silly, for the most part it’s a pretty good effort and some of the battle animations look pretty cool. The game aims for a retro style, which it captures really well while still offering an updated and pleasing look.
Combat is a classic first-person, turn-based battle system reminiscent 8 and 16-bit RPGs. The PCs can attack, use skills and items or defend. Each Player Character has a skill set that gives them a unique role in your four-person party, meaning that the way you fight will be considerably different depending on the followers you choose. The game doesn’t have random encounters in the main dungeon and each level contains a finite number of battles, most of which will require some time and strategy to complete. At first the deliberate pacing feels pretty good and in the first half of the game or so it’s pretty enjoyable, but after a while the seams start to show in a pretty bad way. The combat menu, and in fact all of the game’s menus, can be pretty cumbersome. While you can select commands using either the keyboard or the mouse, both feel just a little too sluggish, and when returning to a previous menu you can’t simply tap Esc, but have to hit the menu’s internal BACK button. While these aren’t huge issues, it contributes to the game’s biggest problem – Combat is just too slow. In addition to the clunky menu, each combatant takes an inordinately long time to on each turn, where one attack with the regular battle animation lasts about three to four seconds. This doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up pretty quickly when each encounter is guaranteed to last at least three turns and usually quite a bit more. I experienced encounters that took over ten minutes to complete and that’s just too long for battles that play out like these.
Paper Sorcerer does have a few twists to combat, but they don’t really add much to the overall gameplay experience. In addition to hit points each combatant, both friend and foe, has defense points which siphon off HP damage when attacked. The key to defeating most enemies is in lowering these defense points, which also depletes when attacked. While I like this idea, it has a couple of issues in its implementation. Only a few of the PCs have skills which specifically lower an enemy’s defense, and in the case of characters like the Troll, it actually seems to deplete defense less than his regular attack (More on this issue in a bit). What this means is that you basically just have to pummel enemies to lower their defense like a second set of hit points, and for enemies with a high defense (And there are a lot of them) it drags out combat even further. And speaking of skills, as PCs level up they develop a glut of skills, and like the Troll, most of them don’t seem to be of any use. The Sorcerer’s skills are mostly good, but my summons only seemed to have two or three skills with any real value. My impression was that most of the attack skills seem to be less effective than a straight up attack and most buffs didn’t provide a noticeable benefit. This contributes to another problem which is that once you’ve figured out the best strategy for your assortment of PCs, there’s never really any reason to deviate it from it. Aside from the strength of their defense and their number of hit points, each enemy feels pretty identical to the last. This felt especially wrong when I can beat boss battles quicker and with less difficulty than standard encounters.
Get cozy, you’ll be here for a while.
There are some other problems with combat, such as the lack of ability to run from battles or cancel a command given to a PC once it’s chosen, and for the average gamer I think this laundry list of issues will make the game pretty unappealing. That said, Paper Sorcerer is trying to appeal to an audience that loved the deliberate, fiercely difficult dungeon crawling RPG of consoles past (Appropriately the game’s highest difficulty setting is “1980s”), and if you’re a fan of games like A Bard’s Tale or Might and Magic then I think this game is right up your alley. And despite my take on the game, there are definitely some good aspects to it.
In addition to the game’s great style, it has a fantastic soundtrack. Each track is a great piece of ambiance and is good enough that you could listen to it on its own. The battle music especially is a great piece of 8-bit sensibilities re-imagined in a fresh, exciting way. The game’s story is also lighthearted and cheerful in a way that pleasantly breaks up the dungeon crawls with a nice bit of humor. The main story lasts over ten hours, and there are some side quests and additional puzzles which you can take on if you feel inclined, adding to the play length. Honestly the first half of the game is pretty enjoyable and well-paced, it just stays too long and gets bogged down with battles that last too long.
At a mere $5, if Paper Sorcerer appeals to you then you can probably get your money’s worth out of it some way, but its problems makes it very difficult for me to recommend. As I said, if you like old school dungeon crawlers this game is a good dose of what you love with a fresh style that’s definitely worth checking out. The average gamer will probably enjoy it for a while, but the overall experience is less than stellar.
Paper Sorcerer can be purchased here at the Ultra Runaway site.
This game was reviewed using retail code provided to us by the publisher.
