Sorcery

When the master is away the apprentice will play. Unfortunately, in Sony’s upcoming Move title, when the master is away the apprentice accidentally unleashes a dark force across the land. Now this apprentice, named Finn, and his magical cat must stop the Nightmare Queen from covering the Fairy Kingdom in eternal night. During the chaos of CES, I wrapped my hands around one of Sorcery’s wands and sent a few goblins off to an eternal night’s sleep.

Sorcery features some fairly streamlined controls. I freely moved Finn around the environment using the Move’s analog stick, while basic wand attacks were performed with the flick of a wrist. Basic bolt attacks don’t require any mana, but more powerful attacks depleted a mana bar that slowly recharged.

During my demo, I had access to three different mana-based spells: ice, fire, and wind. These elemental spells can be used in a variety of creative ways. The fire spell not only created a small area-of-effect fire attack, but I was also able to create a giant fire barrier by drawing a line in the sand with the Move controller. Ice spells also do area damage, but more focused attacks slowly freeze enemies. Once an enemy is frozen, even a normal bolt attack will send them skittering along the ground like a spilled ice cube tray. Wind spells don’t do any damage but push enemies back. However, twirling the wand in a lassoing motion created a small tornado that actually did damage our foes.

After clearing out a camp of goblins I began to understand how these elemental attacks can be used in conjunction. Normal bolt attacks that pass through a fire barrier will become fire bolts that do extra damage. Tornados also took on fire properties when they passed through a barrier or other sources of fire, helping them deal massive fire damage to anything that was stupid enough to stand in its path. I only saw the three elemental spells during our demo, but Sony says that the final game will have a variety of other spells for players to experiment with. Developer The Workshop is hoping that, by the end of the game, Finn will feel more powerful than Harry Potter.

I wasn’t blown away by my hands-on time with Sorcery. It’s a fairly inoffensive game, but given its simplified controls, story, and puzzle challenges, it’s clearly been designed with a younger audience in mind. Still, The Workshop might want to keep working on its spell book if it hopes to compete with Harry Potter in other areas when it releases later this year.