1999 Chris Pigas
Platform: Game Boy
Our next entry into the archives is a title that was being created by Chris Pigas called Sorcerer. An early and simple platformer, featuring a protagonist looking rather like Miner Willy from Manic Miner, where you can roam freely around a single level and fight with enemies.
Within the game, you can advance your magic levels and increase your experience, mana or health by picking up bonuses left after the destruction of enemies. Picking items – an important feature of the game play – is not implemented at this stage. As a result, harder enemies are not placed into this build. Transition from level to level is also not implemented, nor has different element firing.
Chris left a story line for the game which gives more background about the game and the intentions for it:
“Sorcerer is trapped in the world of the mighty mage Abraxis. Abraxis is half human and half demon. He lays in the safety of his castle and the process of approaching him is complicated and dangerous. Sorcerer’s goal is to reach Abraxis’s lair and fight with him to the death. But the lair is behind a door with 3 locks. Each of the three keys has been broken in 3 pieces and scattered in various places at his world. Each piece is guarded by a mighty monster.
Sorcerer’s magical abilities are enough to kill the ghosts that appear when traveling through the various levels. He can shot the file element and this is enough to bring down the various ghosts. Each enemy that is killed by the sorcerer advances his experience points. After a certain level, his magic level is increased.
This means that his firing is more effective and also that the maximum number for both health and mana is increased. At higher magic levels, the sorcerer can also learn how to fire the other three elements (air, water, earth), at enemies, providing that he finds the scrolls that describe the process.
There are many different enemies the sorcerer must confront. The easiest to kill are the casual ghosts that appear at any time in the screen. There are harder enemies too. To kill them the sorcerer needs an advanced magic level and on several occasions a different element when firing. These enemies usually guard magic scrolls, magic crystals, level keys, or magic items.
There are 9 magic items. Each of them allows the sorcerer to kill the corresponding monster that guards a piece of the keys to the Abraxis’s lair. Without these magic items and an advanced magic level, the sorcerer cannot defeat these monsters. Magic crystals are bonus items and can increase health, mana, or experience.
Sorcerer can travel freely from level to level, providing that he has found the proper keys. Once a door is unlocked, it remains such and the corresponding key disappears. Sorcerer can return to levels that he has visited before.
Sorcerer can carry at most three objects. There are objects that need to be combined in order to be effective. To combine them sorcerer must pick them and the rest of the process is automatic.”
Sadly it seems that interest was lost with the development, and Chris would go onto working on Color Game Boy games. There is potentially more of the game out there to find, and we hope to learn more from Chris sometime about it.
With thanks to Mark Greenshields for making it possible to preserve this early demo.
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