Dungeons & Dragons Games Vol. 29: Silver Box - Shadow Sorcerer (MS-DOS)

Developer:

U.S. Gold

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Release Date:

1991

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Systems:

DOS, Amiga, Atari ST

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This week on Super Adventures, I've reached the last of the Silver Box games: Shadow Sorcerer. Well, it's the last game included in the Silver Box Classics collection anyway; the box was actually brown in the US and blue in Europe.

The US box calls it "An animated fantasy adventure", which is maybe promising a bit much. The game isn't Dragon's Lair. The European box calls it "A Dragonlance Role-Playing Adventure Vol. 1", which is also a bit weird, because it's not. 

U.S. Gold made three games set in the Dragonlance universe, starting with Heroes of the Lance, based on the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop module DL1 Dragons of Despair. A year later they released Dragons of Flame, based on DL2 Dragons of Flame. Finally we got Shadow Sorcerer, which is apparently an adaptation of both DL3 Dragons of Hope and DL4 Dragons of Desolation. I suppose putting "Vol. 3 and Vol. 4" on the box wouldn't have helped sales.

I can already see one big difference between this and the other two games: it was only released on three systems, none of them Japanese. Plus anyone who'd been playing through the series on 8-bit machines was entirely out of luck here, though that was true in general at this point. The NES held on for one more year and a few C64 and ZX Spectrum D&D games were still waiting for their European release, but I'll not be needing to boot any of those systems up again going forward.

Okay, there will be some SPOILERS below for this and the earlier games, which will also be spoilers for the books. But I don't expect to get very far in it.

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Here's the game's launcher, so you can see what's included with it. You can almost see the cover art in the background as well.

Unfortunately for U.S. Gold, other developers were churning out D&D games so fast at this point that DL3's cover had already been nicked by DragonStrike and DL4's art had been claimed by Champions of Krynn! They ended up having to give Shadow Sorcerer the cover of DL5 Dragons of Mystery for its box art instead. It's a good thing that this was the last Silver Box game, as this is getting too confusing.

I think the art actually suits it though, so maybe it worked out for the best.

This isn't the first Silver Box game to start by introducing its characters, but last time there were only eight of them! Also they were viewed from the side, while this game seems to have an isometric perspective.

I wish I could say I recognise all the heroes right away from the previous games, but the sprites are a bit too small for that. There's some decent pixel work here though, lots of detail.

And the bad guys get a page too.. I guess this is every monster I'll ever encounter in the game. They're clearly hitting a colour limit with those dragons in the back and it's a shame because the art's pretty good otherwise.

Here's something the three U.S. Gold games all have in common: they all show off a really low-colour version of the box art at the start but it never includes the title.

All they had to do was write "Shadow Sorcerer" on it somewhere and I could've used it at the top of the article, but nope.

One way the Silver Box games are different from the Gold Box RPGs is that you don't get to make your own characters. They're more like a movie or TV show adaptation, featuring the heroes and villains from the original stories.

I don't know who that Darth Vader-looking guy in the background is, the Shadow Sorcerer maybe? At least I can recognise all the heroes at this point... wait, hang on, no I can't. The two women weren't even part of my team in the other games, though they would've fit right in with those swords they're holding. It was a very fighter-heavy party. Still is I suppose.

Okay, here's the story so far:

Damn, if I'm understanding this right then Dragons of Flame ends with the heroes failing to defeat the bad guys at Pax Tharkas. I suppose that makes sense though, considering how I failed at everything I did on the way there when I was playing.

They have successfully freed the slaves though, and seeing as the entire population was enslaved, I guess that means they saved everyone. Now they're in a Battlestar Galactica scenario where they have to take the survivors to a new home. Check Journal Entry 1 for further information! 

Uh... that's just the same information. Some of it is word for word the same.

Though there is a bit after this saying that the Companions sealed the draconians inside their own fortress and when they break out they're gonna be mad.

I feel like the folks who wrote the manual assumed that players must have already tried one of the Gold Box RPGs, as it doesn't warn you that you're not supposed to read journal entries until the game tells you. But you are supposed to read the bit at the start of the manual where the heroes talk about how they need to find Thorbardin, the kingdom of the Mountain Dwarves. Four of them go ahead as scouts while the rest of the group stays to look after the refugees.

Hey, this is different. I haven't seen a D&D game with an interface like this before. I suppose it is the right era for drop down menus.

Alright, what does the game want me to do here? I'm assuming the gold figurine represents my team, but how do I move them? The timer on the top right is ticking so I really need to figure this out quickly.

Ah, it's a hex grid, and I need to click an adjacent tile to move into it. Alright, I'll follow the road for now, that's usually the safe plan.

This message box that just popped up has got me thinking about those massive highways in the Dragon Age games. I wonder if I still have Dragon Age: Origins installed...

No, I can't get distracted with a 58 hour BioWare epic right now, I need to keep my focus on Shadow Sorcerer. Actually I'm going to jump back to the first two games for a moment.

Dragons of Flame (MS-DOS)

Heroes of the Lance and Dragons of Flame both feature side-view brawler-style gameplay where you control one party member at a time and can switch to whoever's most useful. The other party members also function like extra lives, though you need to keep the Raistlin the mage and Goldmoon the cleric alive if you've got any plans to cast magic in the future.

Dragons of Flame added an overworld (not entirely unlike Shadow Sorcerer), and you have to get your heroes down the road to Pax Tharkas. Though it switches to the classic side-view gameplay whenever you encounter something, and then monsters chase you into a lake.

Now I want to see what Shadow Sorcerer switches to.

Hey it's gone isometric! The game looks pretty good for 1991 I reckon. Those walls remind me a lot of Syndicate, but that actually came out a couple of years after this.

Now that I'm not playing from side-view my characters have room to all come out at the same time... and I just noticed how familiar those portraits are. It's almost like the games keep using them. I can see that Raistlin and Goldmoon are back, along with fighters Caramon and Tanis, so this is a pretty balanced D&D team. They can hit things, hit them again, zap them and heal them.

I clicked a character and a tray full of cryptic icons popped up. Now I'm wondering how many years I have to get through before games start showing tooltips when I hover the mouse cursor over something.

I assume that the left set of legs means 'walk' so I'm going to start looking around to see why the game stopped us at this particular section of the road. That doorway on the top right seems like a good place to begin the investigation.

Pools of Darkness (MS-DOS)

Here's a shot of the most recent Gold Box RPG, Pools of Darkness, so you can see how the graphics compare. Shadow Sorcerer definitely has the prettier levels, plus you don't have to look at them through a tiny 7x7 tile window. Though Pools has much bigger areas to fight in, as they scroll, while Shadow Sorcerer's battles seem to take place within a 10x10 diamond.

These weren't the only two D&D series being made at the time though, as there was also Eye of the Beholder and... hang on, I'll just show you.

I had to make everything really tiny because there are too many games (most of them in gold boxes), but you can see where Shadow Sorcerer fits in at least. You can see it even better if you click the image and view it full size.

Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance are practically neck-and-neck in releases at this point, but that's going to change in 1992 when Dragonlance reaches its final two games and Forgotten Realms just carries on going. Forever.

There were a few D&D games released in 1992 that aren't included on the image, but that's because a mysterious third setting is coming soon (it's Mystara).

Hang on, it turns out that they were all standing on something!

It looks like, I dunno, the end of a giant pencil? The game has no labels or descriptions for anything. I tried looking it up, and failed, but my best guess is a quiver of arrows, so I should give them to Tanis as he's the only one with a bow. I clicked the hand button to pick it up and now I'm going try dragging it into a bag.

I've already sent a couple of my heroes through the door, but I can't switch to them. It seems I only get one screen at a time, so I need to go through and follow them inside with these heroes before I can see what's in there.

Oh damn, giant spiders! That was a surprise.

I clicked the sword icon and I was about to click on the spider, but I'm pretty sure Tanis did the rest of the work all by himself. He did a great job too, killing them both in one hit each.

Afterwards I tried moving the heroes onto each of the conspicuous grey tiles, but nothing happened. Though it did teach me that I can get multiple characters moving simultaneously. Also, I can hold the mouse button to make them walk towards the cursor, which is useful when they're getting stuck on each other.

I've made a little guide to remind me what all the icons do. Though I probably should've just written down the keyboard shortcuts instead, because they're going to be a lot faster.

Alright if there's nothing else in this cave then I think I'm done here. How do I get back to the hex map?

SOON

Okay this pop up is new. The refugee Council wanted me to talk to them and now I have to choose an option that will persuade them to continue following us. This is the closest the game's come to having dialogue options, but it's more than the other games had.

I will try to reason with them, because I like reason and we're pretty obviously their best option. It seems to me they can either a: follow the heroes who'll slay the monsters and find them stuff, b: wander around aimlessly on their own until the bad guys hunt them down, or c: go back to the bad guys to be punished and enslaved.

Okay, I get how this works now. As I walk around the hex grid I clear away the 'fog of war' to reveal roads and buildings, and the world gets a bit more colourful.

Fortunately there isn't an isometric level to visit on every hex tile, as that would take forever, but I'm about to enter the third one now. I've found a strange tower with a viewing platform on the top, so this should be a bit more interesting than broken roads and caves.

Oh, the only enemies here were a few dudes that Caramon and Tanis sorted out automatically (while Raistlin was running away). Though I have found some litter, along with a letter, which is sadly illegible.

Okay game, I'm curious, what does Journal Entry 3 say?

It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who struggles to come up with names.

So I can use the Eye to find the dwarven city. The catch is that I can only use the Eye at dusk and I really shouldn't be wasting time waiting around. The refugees have limited food and the draconians are going to break out of their fortress in a couple of days.

Oh hang on, I forgot. Time still progresses on the tactical view, but the clock has frozen because the heroes can't see the sun and they don't wear watches. Seriously, that's how the game works, you can't tell the time indoors, so the time is always going to be later than the game says it is. Okay, let's use the Eye now.

Well I found Thorbardin! That was surprisingly easy. I'm not sure that the icon being a skull is a good omen, but that's where we're heading.

Though I'm going to check the manual for a moment to see if it mentions anything about finding food and shelter. Because I've been sent on a mission that I don't know how to do, with 800 lives depending on me, and a time limit. It's giving me anxiety.

Maybe it's like the Oregon Trail and I'm supposed to stop and hunt for food. Maybe I'm supposed to recover food from dungeons. Or recover loot from dungeons and trade for food. All I know is that I've got a big grey map and a lot of hungry people.

Okay, I'll start by checking the data card.

Ironically the data card doesn't mention that the box includes a data card. Also, it seems that there's only one manual this time, no separate adventurer's journal like the Gold Box games.

Wait, hang on, I was supposed to get a paperback book? I bought the game online for actual money, where's my copy of Wanderlust - The Meeting Sextet • Volume II? 

Well, the Steam version did throw in the cluebook as a free bonus, so I suppose that's a fair trade. Also there's something else I've just read on the data card that's way more important:

NEVER save the game if one of your party members is off the screen (i.e., in a different room of a dungeon than the rest). REGROUP before saving, otherwise when you LOAD that particular game again the game will eventually crash, requiring you to re-boot and re-install the game, destroying your saved games.

Bloody hell, that's not the kind of bug you want to stumble across accidentally! And that's a really easy thing to do as well. Still, at least it's not as bad as Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor deleting your system files. Hey, that's getting a Steam release soon as well.

I got into a random encounter and figured it'd be a good time to test the range of Raistlin's fireball spell. Well, now I know!

Hang on, that's not how fireball is supposed to work. Well okay, I have no idea how it works in the tabletop game, but in the Gold Box and Infinity Engine games the explosion is centred on the place that you select, as if a fireball fell from the sky. In this it works like a rocket launcher, exploding when the projectile connects with something.

This was a best case situation with the enemies starting way over by the edge of map, I fired the spell immediately, and two of my heroes still got singed. It doesn't seem like a very practical spell.

My next couple of battles didn't go so well, and I chose to load a save instead of bringing out the next set of heroes. This place is working out a lot better though, as the battle ended before we even got here, and all that's left is the loot.

Trouble is, I have no idea what I'm picking up. Are these bracers? Rings? Gold slippers?

The game doesn't even tell me if a weapon is +1 or +2 etc., though I can find that out by dragging it onto a character's portrait so it replaces what they're holding (with the old weapon going into their bag).

Is this trash I just found better than the legendary +3 blade Wyrmslayer that I started with? Surprisingly, no. I did find a bow to give to Caramon though... but he wouldn't use it.

It's funny how these Silver Box games seem determined not to tell me a character's ability scores. All I get in any of them are bars. Incidentally Tanis' dexterity has gone way up since the first game, as it used to be his lowest stat. Though his constitution has dropped.

Those buttons underneath the stats adjust the character's AI. I've got it set so that all the characters will use regular attacks, but not spells, and they'll flee if their health is low. Raistlin's not much of a fighter, so I need him to avoid getting killed so that he can keep casting spells.

Oh damn, I actually found food on the map! More than the you could ever carry! That has to be enough to keep the refugees alive for a few more days. 

I've also got 800 Christmas trees, I don't know what that's about.

The thing is, there are apparently only three of these caches of food in the entire game, so you really don't have time to screw around. I'm only exploring up here because the refugees sleep at night and I didn't want to stray too far from them. (They're indicated by a silver figurine that usually trails a step behind me as I walk.)

Wow, I didn't even stand a chance here. These enemies just destroyed my whole team in seconds.

I really wanted to see what was in the treasure pile though, so I sent in another team... and another. Whenever heroes are defeated they go back to the refugees to rest and the next heroes in the list come out to replace them. I've read that dying reduces their maximum health, so you can't do it indefinitely, but it's nice to know that the game's not as punishing as it could've been.

And on the plus side I finally got to see some of the other characters, like the woman with the helmet from the cover. Hey I bet she could've used that +2 bow I found.

Oh no, not trolls, I hate fighting trolls.

The trouble with trolls is that they regenerate, so it's like fighting Wolverine and Deadpool. I just don't have the damage output to kill these guys. Though I could try a fireball...

No, what I should do is just run to the edge of the screen and flee.

SOON, A FEW TILES SOUTH

Uh... okay then.

This seems to be a 'come back when you've got the right item' situation. Or maybe it's a 'don't come here at all' situation, and I'm supposed to find an alternative route to Thorbardin. I definitely can't beat the dragon in combat as it wipes my whole party before I'm allowed to move.

I went off exploring instead and found a mysterious chest... guarded by a troll. Yay!

At first I tried killing him, which didn't work out so well for me. Then I tried a different approach: I moved three of my heroes back out of the door before they were killed so I could focus on steering the fourth one around. The troll can't hit me if it can't touch me! Hang on, is this the first D&D game with kiting?

Unfortunately the plan hit a bit of a snag: I don't know how to open chests, and picking it up to carry it out with me didn't work.

A few tries later I discovered that it was trapped anyway.

A few more tries and I'd killed the troll and magically disarmed the trap. So I'm getting better at least. Inside the mysterious chest I found a mysterious green key. I have no idea what this is for.

Okay this cave's done, back to the overworld and onto the next point of interest.

Whoa, this new cave I've found is already creeping me out. I hate giant plants.

At least the enemies seem to be pushovers (the orange lines in the two black boxes at the bottom of the screen are their health bars). Also the room has two other exits, so that's new. I've never found a dungeon I can explore before. I might even need to get out the notepad for this one, as the game's not going to map it out for me.

I should probably be exploring dungeons at night when the refugees are asleep, but I can't be bothered worrying about that anymore. They've still got some food and there are a dozen other heroes with them, they'll be fine.

I figured that the plants could probably be cleared with a fireball, so I got my heroes out of the way and fired one over. Turns out that there are invisible walls everywhere, including right in front of where Raistlin was standing. So now I know.

On the plus side, I have a cast of 'detect invisible' memorised and ready to fire. The game follows AD&D rules in that I can only use spells that I chose to memorise earlier, but I can always memorise more as long as I'm not in a battle. The catch is that it costs time, so I can't be reckless.

Goldmoon also has healing spells, but 'cure light wounds' is as useless as ever, and even the higher level cure spell has a chance of wasting my time. Fortunately there's a 'Heal' option in the drop down menu that handles the magical healing process automatically. There's also a 'Regroup' option there, which is handy for when I've sent one guy through a door and I want everyone else to follow them.

Oh come on, not more trolls!

I tried to shuffle my heroes around to get Raistlin and Goldmoon behind my fighters, but the space is so cramped it was like solving a sliding block puzzle. That's okay, I can just reorder them before I go in the room. But how the hell do I kill three trolls? You've seen what fireball does at close range... to me.

In a lot of RPGs you can walk away from a problem and come back later when you're stronger. But you don't level up in this and it doesn't seem likely that I'll find any equipment good enough to change the outcome of a battle, so I think this is a puzzle I need to solve right now.

I could start by casting buffs like 'Bless', that can only help.

I did it! I figured out how to beat all three trolls and now I'm making progress again. Wait, there's a boulder blocking the path. Were the trolls guarding a dead end? And why are there four enemy health bars...

Nine times out of ten, my two fighters can take care of basic enemies automatically, the trick is getting them to where they need to be. So once I removed the boulder with a fireball they were able to rush over and take care of the invisible enemies. Well, one of them did anyway, the other one was struggling to get around stuff.

The cave continued for a couple more rooms, which my fighters thoughtfully cleared out for me once I got Raistlin out of their way, and then this suddenly appeared on my screen:

Turns out that I was saving someone! I had no idea.

Journal Entry 19 explains that the green dragon only lets the lizard men past, so that's actually an important clue... that I can't do anything with right now.

At this point only 624 out of the 800 refugees are still alive and they've got about a day's food left. Also the bad guys have broken out of their fortress and are coming after us. In fact there's one of them over there on the left right now!

This particular run is starting to feel a little bit doomed, but that's fine as I was going to turn it off now anyway. The game's given me a bit of a headache.


CONCLUSION

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To be honest, if I was browsing through Steam or GOG, reading game descriptions, and I saw something like "Don't waste a moment! In 48 hours your gang of refugees will begin to starve and die, and the draconian monsters will start hunting the survivors," that wouldn't be a selling point for me. I'm not saying it's flawed game design, plenty of games have been built around exploring the unknown while staying ahead of the bad guys, and people love FTL. Personally though, I don't need that stress.

In some ways Shadow Sorcerer is Dragons of Flame 3D, which makes sense as they're both adapting  Dungeons & Dragons modules from the same series. The switch from side-view dungeons and battles to an isometric view was a smart move, as it means that your whole party can come out and combat can be much more tactical. Like you'd expect from D&D.

It's superficially similar to the Gold Box games, but there are major differences. Like you only get four units and the whole battlefield fits on screen in a 10x10 tile box. But the biggest difference is that this is an early real-time strategy game, giving you four people to manage as the enemies rush at them. If you hesitate for an instant they'll be too close for you to use fireball, then a second later they'll be close enough to put an axe into your mage. The game does pause while you're selecting spells, but not when you're trying to tell units where to move, and the interface and pathfinding aren't on your side. Even steering them through doors took me a couple of tries. So for most battles I just let them do their own thing and hoped for the best.

Actually the biggest difference might be that there's no levelling up. There are no skill trees, no stat upgrades, no experience points. Okay it does have XP, but it's just your score. It's not a crime for a game to be missing RPG elements, no one would ever complain if a Super Mario game or a Doom game didn't give you XP (unless it was Super Mario RPG, or Doom RPG), but when it's an isometric tactical game based on D&D it's kind of expected. And random encounters are even less appealing when you're getting nothing for them.

I did keep finding loot around, but like in the first two games it was never anything to get excited about. The main team starts off with some pretty legendary gear already and I wasn't going to try equipping my reserve characters with the other swords I found. Not with that UI. Though the way the game has extra characters spare for when the main heroes are knocked out reminded me of XCOM, in a good way. Plus the manual mentions that you can pair up certain characters for bonuses, for example Goldmoon is more effective if Riverwind is in the team. The political side where you have to keep the refugees happy is a bit XCOM as well I suppose.

There are a lot of ideas in this and it's fairly ambitious for its time, to the point where machines would've struggled to run it. But I don't have the patience to keep replaying it over and over until I know where the food caches are, where to find the key items, and how to make it to Thorbardin before everyone starves. So I'm going to have to give Shadow Sorcerer a thumbs down I'm afraid.

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Now that I'm finished with the last Silver Box games I've finally got an excuse to use this picture. I put it together back when I was planning to cover the four games in one article, before I played them and realised that wasn't going to happen. But it works just as well at the end.

(I don't know why it says Shadow Sorcerer is the first game, I took that bit from the launcher).

The hardest game for me to play was War of the Lance, because I instinctively wanted nothing to do with it. It's a proper grown up wargame with really basic graphics, and gameplay I needed to watch videos to understand. But it might also be the best of the four, if it's what you're into. I'm not really sure why it counts as a Silver Box game though, as it's got nothing to do with the other three except for being set in Dragonlance, and if that's what got it included then why isn't DragonStrike here as well?

U.S. Gold's Heroes of the Lance and Dragons of Flame were the only two to actually have silver boxes, though Shadow Sorcerer continues the plot and it's by the same developer, so it makes sense to put them all together. The core problem with all three of them is that they're action games with rubbish action, though Dragons of Flame goes above and beyond when it comes to crappy gameplay. It makes Shadow Sorcerer look like a fun, competent video game by comparison. Though on the surface Shadow Sorcerer did actually look pretty good for its time. It's just a shame its ambitions were a bit too ahead of its time and it couldn't pull off the mouse-driven real-time gameplay.

Are any of them worth playing in 2026? Probably only to satisfy your curiosity. You could read the book though, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. I hear that's pretty decent. Maybe I should read it myself.

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Next on Super Adventures: a short bonus article! Because I want that Article Archive panel on the right to say "August (4)" and I've only got a day left to make it happen. It's a pretty safe bet that it's not going to be a Silver Box game, but can you identify what it will be? 

Also what did you think about Shadow Sorcerer? Have you played it? Would you want to play it?