Last updated on November 29th, 2025 at 08:05 am
Sorcery! 4 – Books Game Review
Sorcery! 4 is a Books/Adventure/Roleplaying game from inkle Ltd, first launched in 22nd September 2016.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 85+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Sorcery! 4 Stand Out
An epic adventure through a cursed citadel of monsters, traps and magic. Begin your journey here (Parts 1-3 not required) – or conclude your epic adventure.
"One of the finest RPGs ever made" – Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Best RPG of 2016
"Sorcery! pushes and exploits both genre tropes and limitations, not as mere parody but in order to provide a better role-playing experience. A masterful work." – TechRaptor 9/10
Praise for Part 3:
Editors Choice, Apple; iPad Best Game of the Year selection
"One of 2015's best iPhone games" – TIME magazine
"An amazing adventure…" – TouchArcade 5/5
An open-world narrative adventure into a cursed Citadel of monsters, traps and magic. Fight weird creatures, cast powerful spells that shape the story, cheat death, and explore everywhere. Begin your journey here, or conclude your adventure from Part 3.
- Explore freely – go where you want through a hand-drawn, 3D world, creating your own unique story
- Totally dynamic storytelling – the story adapts itself around everything you do
- Thousands of choices – all are remembered, from the big to the small, and all will shape your adventure
- Disguise yourself – adopt different disguises as you infiltrate the Citadel. Characters react differently depending on how you are dressed
- Uncover the secrets of magic – secret spells to discover, and new forms of magic to master
- Multiple endings, and hundreds of secrets – the game is stuffed with secrets and hidden content. Can you enter the vaults? Will you find the grave of the invisible girl?
- Cheat, swindle, deceive, or play with honour – how will you win the trust of the citizens of Mampang? Remember, every choice matters…
- New enemies, including mutants, guards, merchants and the undead – each with their own strengths and weaknesses
- Adapted from the best-selling gamebook series by legendary game designer Steve Jackson
- Swindlestones is back! The game of bluff and deceit is back, with the toughest opponents yet – the Gambling Monks of Effe
- Seven Gods, all with different quirks and powers
- Start your adventure here, or load your character and all your choices from Part 3
- New music from "80 Days" composer Laurence Chapman
- New 3D hand-drawn maps to explore by Mike Schley
You have reached the gates of Mampang, the ancient Fortress of Sorcerers. It is guarded by Birdmen, mutants, traps and ancient, wild magic. But inside is the Crown of Kings and the only hope for peace in the Old World. You must make your way past chasms, guards, walls and evil magic if you are to face the Archmage – and survive.
From the creators of TIME's Game of the Year 2014 and four-time BAFTA nominee, "80 Days", comes the final part of the epic, acclaimed Steve Jackson's Sorcery! series, co-creator of Games Workshop and Fighting Fantasy (with Iain Livingstone).
Using inkle's unique ink engine, the story is written in real-time, built around your choices and actions. Every action is remembered, and every decision, however small, can make the different between life and death, success and failure, humiliation or triumph.
Sorcery! 4 is our most complex story to date, featuring over half a million words of adaptive content which incorporates all your choices from previous parts.
The Sorcery! is true epic, interactive storytelling – and it concludes here.
This Books game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Sorcery! 4 is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 21st September 2019
Recent improvements include:
Bug fixes for iOS 13
Download & Availability
Sorcery! 4 is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Once again, the developers find ways to innovate and entertain by driving a deep interactive experience with a fascinating storyline. This might be the best one of the four.
We played the first two games when they came out for free, and when then we waited hoping the third to be free as well, but oh well we love playing them because they're a choose your own adventure stories almost.
We went over the four apps in our review of the first book, Ill just add a few things. This is even more complex, tricky and fun than the previous work. Having the rewind feature disabled is a questionable choice. We understand it is frustrating. We would have given the choice to the player, between perhaps a beginner/weakling mode where rewinding is still possible and the full adventure as it is now. Or by giving the player the incentive to give up the rewinding. Or by giving a limited number of rewinds, etc. In the game books, after all, whether the rules forbade it or not, you coud always go back to the previous chapter or to the previous intersection. If you put that reservation aside, the app is again one of the best games out there and the whole series deserves high praise and success.
Don't listen to the 1, 2, 3, or even 4 stars. This is the best game we have ever played. The adventure and action mixed with the design is incredible. We have played and completed this game series twice already. However, get the bundle of the sworcery! Games or it won't make sense. The description has a quote saying one of the best RPGs on a Appstore. No, it IS the best RPG on the Appstore.
This series has become one of our favorites in such a short time we love the characters the story the action the play style the open format we love every thing about it we love this game.
Punishing repetition. Games are supposed to be fun or at least compelling. Going through the paces over and over again is neither. Ill read a walkthrough to find out about the possible endings.
We agree with another reviewer, make it an option to not have, but dont make this great series of games into a frustrating ordeal. Please, please bring the rewind function back for this game.
We loved this series. LOVED it! Until this one. Removing the rewind function, that the previous entries were built around and that facilitated the joy of exploration and experimentation, was unnecessary and poorly executed. Compensating with a "hard reset" that sends you back to virtually the beginning of the story, and unlike sorcery!2 doesn't let you choose a reset point, forces you into a decision making process of simply "which option lets us NOT die so we don't have to redo the entire story". It's not enjoyable at all. Most in depth reviews point out this "repetition" as a negative, but still give it a good score. Yes it is a quality product, just not fun.
After going through this last final adventure… Oh, what am we saying? You never get everything right the first time through with Sorcery! – and that's part of the fun! The story is more intense than ever, new gameplay elements once again appear to help or hinder you, and it all blends together into a worthy finisher to the Sorcery! Series of mobile games. (these were books, apparently; perhaps that's why this is so good?) If you haven't played the first three, we would highly recommend playing them first. Stay far away from your journey's end until you've taken the journey first. And one final note: sometimes, the end of your journey is just the beginning of another.
A terrible finale that betrays the very foundation that made the series great. It is advertised from the very beginning that "no decision is permanent" but that quickly turns out to no longer be the case. We can understand that they were trying to do something interesting but all it did was cause endless frustration that made us quit playing the game. Didn't bother finishing it and uninstalled, choosing to watch a stream instead. Was far more enjoyable than this waste of money.
We loved these books as a kid in the 80's, and these apps transported us right back. The text leaves enough room for your imagination to work. Perfect if you like rpg's or D&D without all that mucking about with dice and character sheets.
This is the greatest game we have played. Having played every sorcery, we can officially say we have experienced the greatest exploration in such a complex world that feels so alive. We recommend this to anyone who wants a game on their phone that is both rich in content and true to the real art of a grade-A adventure game.
Playing through all of the endings has been a blast! Our only suggestion is to allow the rewind button to activate after the player has played through part 4 from start to finish (x) amount of times. We are at the point with Sorcery! 4 where we have played through quite a few times and would like to see what happens when we make minor adjustments to our selections, but we have to do quite a bit of replaying and remembering prior selections to be able to see minor changes to conversations, etc.
An amazingly well written end to a glorious adventure. If you've enjoyed previous Sorcery! Games them you will love this. A must have for any true fan of Sorcery.
Inkle, amazing work! We have thoroughly enjoyed your Sorcery saga. Just finished it yesterday, will now play again! Definitely recommendable purchase.
This was our first time playing a sorcery game and we loved it!! Don't listen to the whole "rewind problem" it's part of the story, that's why it was taken away. 10/10 with rice again.
Truly one of the best games of any platform we have ever played, and that's saying a LOT. The sheer amount of work that went into each and every scenario and choice is staggering. We felt pure joy every time we played this game for the 30 or so hours it took us to win (we know we're slow, but we like to explore EVERYTHING).
A fantastic game from fantastic developers! Thanks.
This game is simply-put, amazing. You continue the story from where you left off in the third game. The game introduces new mechanics and brings back old stuff from the previous games. Unlike the other games there is a point where you can no longer rewind. We thought that this was great, no longer was we mindlessly playing this game, we were now fully considering our decisions and it is a mechanic that actually proves to be pivotal for the story. The game ends with a tear-jerking ending that brings back nostalgia from the previous games. All in all an awesome game. Highly recommend it and totally worth the money.
Great ending to a great game. For those complaining about the rewind they need to re- read the dialog in the game. There is an important in-game reason rewind can't be done after a certain point. That said you respawn after death keeping everything you had. So it isn't that big a loss. Plus you are reliving the same day over until you defeat the Archmage. Context people. Context. Inkle did a great job with this game. 5 stars.
This was created based on a famous series of adventure books, very old-school. This series was just so well done in the translation to iOS. Get these, they are so worth it. Start with Sorcery! The first game. It's not nearly as good as Sorcery! 2 but they build on each other and they're all fabulous. Sorcery 4 is shaping up to be very fun so far. Already got our money's worth, not yet half way through.
We've been so stoked for this game to come out and it's finally here! It's gonna be EPIC.
We've seen a lot of people complaining about the rewind being turned off. To solve this problem we think the developers should put something in the settings to either disable it or enable it. Personally we think it would solve that problem but not sure, just an idea.
The end of the series was not a disappointment. That is quality praise. It's not easy to create an ending that is satisfying in the least bit. That said, it feels like there is a lot less content here, sadly. Less dynamic interactions. Not much depth to the effects of your actions. Sorcery 3 had plenty to experience but the way it was woven each play through didn't give you 85% of what is there to adventure through. The time dynamic meant missing done if the content to avoid time penalties. Sorcery 2 had a decent bit of content and allowed backtracking. It allowed you to experience all the possibilities and paths, at a small price. Sorcery 1 was straightforward and short but it had great atmosphere and theme, like a legendary manticore boss fight, 2 great supporting character introductions, and emotional stuff here and there sling the road featuring displays of cruelty cunning and greed. As a finisher to these, sorcery 4, could have been better. The Archmage doesn't seem to be such a worthy opponent. We would have imagined going back in time thousands of years, acting as a supportive friend, but really plotting and scheming his destruction many thousands of years later. No, we don't get negotiations, nothing much. He seemed very out of it. The orcs mining for gems in the first story and the manticore didn't make an appearance surprisingly. Nothing really connected. Well written But not a combination of all the best stuff in the first three. Not legendary. Still good. Still a satisfying end.
It is understandable that they disabled the rewind but replaying the whole story past a point just because of some silly instadeath is not positive in any way.
Once the game disables the rewind, every move becomes one of extreme trepidation. There are too many unexpected insta-deaths that force you to replay the vast majority of the game over and over again. This forced repetition loses its charm fast. Meanwhile, the now useless rewind button still retains its prominent place on screen, reminding us of how much fun this series used to be.
We loved the sorcery games and finishing this one we're so glad that they exist however, one of the reasons we liked it was due to its rewind system, for example now it's not letting you rewind anymore but in certain areas (Warning semi-spoiler) After dying we were reduced to an alley at the start of the game rather than letting us rewind to a save point we found, this alone ticked us off as what's the point of saving at that area if your going to screw us anyway. Thus we love the sorcery games but this lost us with that.
We've put in a lot of hours in the Sorcery series , and have enjoyed them. Not so much with this one. Forcing you to redo redo redo and re read text over and over isn't fun. The rewind button prevented that, allowing you to try something different right there if you messed up. They decided to take out the rewind button. If the challenges were more fair , fine; But they are brutal and illogical, forcing you to lose your stamina every time you restart. After many hours of effort, we just deleted the game. This is a character playing all the way from the first Sorcery who was well stocked with stamina, weapons, magical items, rations and gold. We were reduced to nothing, except for magical items. Our stamina was down to a paltry 9 when we deleted the game. We didn't enjoy this game. The other reviewers seem to have some kind of a weird cultish reverence. We would like to punch each one in the face. Maybe someone casted the "illusion of worship" spell on them.
As other reviewers have pointed out the rewind button has been removed from the end of the game, presumably to punish fans who had been looking forward to an exciting climax of an epic series. The end has been turned into a boring slog of trial and error.
Have been patiently waiting for this and was not disappointed. The depth and variety of this game leading back to the first one is so much better than any telltale story game.
Well worth the wait, and another winner. Congrats guys:) we've been playing for hours -enjoying and replaying the different mountain paths and still haven't even reached the tower! We're not going to give away anything, but suffice it to say: this has already surpassed our expectations, and actually improved upon one of our all time favorite fighting fantasy books from our youth. Thank you, inkle:).
The music, artwork, and ambiance this game book (and series) creates is amazing and we feel like there isn't anything else quite like it.
Finally after so long time we are come at you with new Sorcery.
We've played this game and all the ones before it and every thing the game has advanced in quality and length, so this game should be absolutely perfect.
THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER! Us and Dilan have been waiting for ever to play this game! WHOO it came out we're so happy!!!! It's awesome 10/10 :).
Based on they other games if it is half as good as them we would still give it a five star.
A stunning end to the series, and worth every penny. We love Sorcery! And inkle's other games. If you hesitate to purchase, let us advise you: Buy this. You won't regret it. The story arc comes to an end perfectly, and the no-rewind trick is great for a hardcore experience. In short: Inkle, you've done it again. Thanks for this series. It's been great.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.1.2
- Size: 446.59 MB
- iOS: 8.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Infrequent/Mild Simulated Gambling, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
- Developer: inkle Ltd
Last updated: 21st September 2019 | Genre: Books, Adventure | Developer: inkle Ltd