Simon the Sorcerer Origins Review

Thirty years on, Simon is back, and mostly still himself

Simon the Sorcerer Origins, developed by Smallthing Studios and published by ININ, released 27 October 2025 at NZ$35.99, is a prequel to the classic 90s point-and-click adventure saga, set weeks before the events of the original 1993 game and reimagined in a completely new hand-drawn art style. Players once again guide the sardonic, perpetually put-upon Simon through a school of magic and a world of "powerful yet mostly useless wizards," solving inventory puzzles, combining items, and unravelling an ancient prophecy tied to his own origins. After years of teaser announcements dating back to 2022, the game's 249-review sample lands at Very Positive, and reading through it in depth shows a genuinely loving tribute that succeeds at most of what it sets out to do, while stumbling on a few of the specific things that made the originals endure.

The single factor reviewers return to more than any other is the return of Chris Barrie, reprising his voice role as Simon decades after the character first appeared on screen. Multiple reviewers explicitly credit his performance with making the game feel like a genuine continuation of the series rather than a hollow modern reboot trading on the name alone, with one longtime fan writing that hearing Barrie back in the role, alongside familiar music cues, was enough on its own to carry them through the nostalgia. The new hand-drawn art style draws similarly strong praise, including from several otherwise critical reviewers who found the visuals gorgeous even where they had reservations about other parts of the game. Reviewers describe the writing as successfully recapturing the original's dry, sarcastic, fourth-wall-breaking sense of humour, and one detailed review specifically praises the newly introduced school-of-magic setting and its accompanying magic system as a fun, well-realised expansion of the series' established world, despite acknowledging a few too many pointed references to a certain other wizarding franchise along the way.

Against that, a meaningful share of the sample, including several detailed negative reviews from longtime fans, raises real complaints about the game's puzzle design and pacing. More than one reviewer describes solutions that require combining seemingly unrelated items through trial and error rather than being derivable from clues the game actually gives the player, with one citing having to open a trapdoor with a fork as a representative example of logic that only makes sense after the fact. Another detailed review goes further, calling the puzzle design "a master class in how not to design a point-and-click adventure," listing an unskippable intro, hotspots that require repeated interaction to trigger, and a fast-travel system they say wastes more time than it saves as specific, concrete frustrations rather than vague dismissals. A cluster of reviewers, including several writing in German, describe individual puzzles as unschlüssig (inconclusive or illogical), a complaint that recurs often enough across languages to read as a genuine design weakness rather than a handful of isolated frustrations.

Length is the other recurring sticking point. Multiple reviewers put the runtime at roughly six to seven hours, and while several say that's a fair trade for the asking price given the quality of the writing and art, others explicitly wanted more, with one wishing the game matched the scope suggested by its in-game map. That tension threads through much of the sample: reviewers who came in expecting a spiritual sequel scaled to match Simon 1 and 2 tend to walk away slightly disappointed by comparison, while those who approached it, in the words of one reviewer, "not as a prequel, but as a related cousin to enjoy on your spare time," tend to come away considerably warmer. World density draws a related but distinct complaint, with one reviewer specifically noting a shortage of interactive hotspots and NPCs willing to engage meaningfully with Simon's questions, leaving some screens feeling like empty filler between the game's stronger, more densely written locations.

It's worth weighing that puzzle-logic criticism against the series' own history, since several reviewers explicitly frame their complaints in exactly those terms. More than one review notes that the original Simon the Sorcerer games were themselves guilty of exactly this kind of illogical, trial-and-error puzzle design, arguing that Origins is, if anything, being held to a standard the source material never actually met. That context matters for anyone weighing the negative reviews here: the complaints about obscure solutions are real and specific, but they're also, in a strange way, a mark of fidelity to a genre and a series that has never been especially generous with in-world hints. Whether that reads as a forgivable callback to genre tradition or a genuine design shortcoming a 2025 release should have addressed likely depends on how much patience a given buyer has for classic-style adventure gaming in the first place, and prospective buyers should weigh their own tolerance accordingly rather than assuming the largely positive score means a frictionless experience.

Taken together, Simon the Sorcerer Origins is a prequel built with real care and evident affection for its source material, delivering the tone, humour, and returning voice cast that longtime fans specifically wanted, even where its puzzle logic and comparatively short runtime keep it from matching the highs of the games it's paying tribute to. For series diehards and patient adventure fans willing to accept some old-school trial-and-error frustration, it's a genuinely satisfying return; for newcomers or players wanting a lengthier, more forgivingly designed point-and-click, it's a more mixed and much more conditional recommendation.