The game's story focuses on a boy named Simon who is transported into a parallel universe of magic and monsters, where he embarks on a mission to become a wizard and rescue another from an evil sorcerer.

[3] Gameplay involves players moving Simon around locations in the game, interacting with objects and other characters at each site.

[6] The game's story takes in a parallel universe to the real world, in which magic and monsters exist, though with some modern items and elements being found within.

The game's world features elements that are parodies of those from popular fantasy novels and fairy tales, including Rapunzel,[7] The Lord of the Rings,[8] Discworld,[9] The Chronicles of Narnia,[3] Jack and the Beanstalk,[8] and the Three Billy Goats Gruff.

Unknown to Simon, his parents found the dog at their front door without warning, wrapped in paper, and possessing a book that nobody could read and which was eventually dumped in the loft.

After Simon escapes a group of goblins with Chippy's help, he soon finds his way to a village with the dog's help, and brought to the home of the wizard Calypso.

Inside the house, Simon finds a letter addressed to him from Calypso, who reveals he was responsible for bringing him into his world in hopes he could help defeat the evil sorcerer Sordid.

[13] Carrying out a task set by them and paying them a small fee, Simon is made a wizard, and works to find the items needed to breach Sordid's mountain lair.

Woodroffe believed that Adventure Soft were able to rival more experienced studios due to their small team, all of whom had the same goals and passion for the game.

The ability to use clips in multiple locations, and the colour information being stored separately and used on an as—needed basis meant that the art took much less space than was usual.

[15] Simon the Sorcerer used the visual and interface designs from LucasArts' games, and Woodroffe stated that this was because they had set a standard, and that Adventure Soft's focus was humour and story-telling.

CU Amiga's Dean Evans was impressed with "sumptuous" backgrounds and the animation, and believed the main selling point was the digitised speech, especially Chris Barrie as Simon.

[45] Jonathan Nash of Amiga Power liked the "gorgeous" graphics, but thought the dialogue was annoying, and he also criticised the puzzles as "spread thinly over the pointlessly large playing area".

[36] The reviewer of Amiga CD32 Gamer was impressed with the soundtrack, describing it as "top notch", and thought the story had plenty of wit.

[47] Chris Barrie as Simon was believed by Amiga Computing to "greatly enhance" the game by giving the speech a new appeal.

[34] In a later review, Andy Smith believed that Barrie's voice acting livened the humour, and concurred with Evans' evaluation of the graphics as "sumptuous", but said that it was difficult to get the game working on an Amiga 1200.

[42] Tawny Ditmer of Gamezebo lauded the story as "hilarious" and the scenery and music as "wonderfully colorful and cheery", criticised the lack of side-quests and pointed out that the original graphics looks outdated in 2009.

[38] The script and dialogue were praised as "fantastic" by Rob Franklin of Adventure Gamers, and complimented Chris Barrie's "brilliant" voice acting, but criticised the plot for being vague.

[30] Zoltán Ormándi of Adventure Classic Gaming thought highly or the puzzles' originality and Simon's humour.

He claimed that the game's popularity caused a term, "Simonology" to be coined describing the humour of an adventure's protagonist.

[43] Damian Chiappara of AppSpy believed the iOS version's graphics are improved over the original, and liked the "quirky" humour, but thought that it can take time for players to familiarise themselves with its controls.

[53] The iPad and Android versions appeared on Pocket Gamer's Top 10 point-and-click adventure games for their respective platforms.