Profoundly impactful on the graphic adventure genre. This game basically started the second phase of the adventure game by integrating the player into the world in a third person perspective. The story and art are simple, but serviceable.
Kings Quest is one of the OG point and click adventures, and while it is certainly rough around the edges today it is very much playable and offers a story book experience for those who don't mind some obtuse puzzle solving.
The King of Daventry has had a hard life and it's up to Sir Graham to recover the kings magical artefacts - a magic mirror, a shield, and a magical chest of gold. Along the way you'll explore the region around the castle, encounter various quaint sights, some silly and mischievous characters, and a handful of murderous monsters. The graphics are certainly dated but they give the game a characteristic charm unique to it's time period akin to the CDi Zelda games - though I was fortunate enough to be playing the SCI remake with enhanced visuals. Music is sparse, there's no constantly looping track thankfully, and what little there is adds to the character of the game similarly to the graphics despite it's low quality.
Gameplay is a mix of point and click with text input to perform actions. The clicking part of the control is still somewhat rudimentary however, as you need to click on the edge most pixels to transition between screens - I ended up using the keyboard for most of the game besides a few twisty sections. The text input wasn't obvious at first but once I got in the routine of using it it became quite natural - though there are of course many non-obvious interactions you'll need to make progress at various points. It's hard to tell if the lack of intuitiveness is another product of it being out of time, my lack of experience with the genre, or a sheer fault of design.
Gameplay itself is built around puzzles. You search the environment, collect items, and eventually the interactions get you towards a goal. I started pretty strong and had a lot of fun mapping out the game even though there are a handful of cheap deaths that you're forced to learn and avoid. I managed to get the chest without resorting to guides but after that I was badly stuck and when I finally resorted to a walkthrough I knew I was never finishing this game without instructions. From interacting with specific scenery unprompted to interactions I had no idea were even possible and many red herrings in between, the game design is very unintuitive so I doubt I would have made any progress any time soon.
Overall, while it has retro charm and stands as one of the classics I feel it's too roughly hewn to be enjoyable by modern audiences. Perhaps I'm just too impatient? After all the first relic was fun to discover but the dagger and several other steps required to get the other relics would certainly have eluded me for some time. When players had less game options and more time I can see how this may have kept a person occupied, but that's simply not the case now days. It's nice to experience gaming history but not always necessary to live it, maybe just watch a youtuber do it in 20 minutes.
The King of Daventry has had a hard life and it's up to Sir Graham to recover the kings magical artefacts - a magic mirror, a shield, and a magical chest of gold. Along the way you'll explore the region around the castle, encounter various quaint sights, some silly and mischievous characters, and a handful of murderous monsters. The graphics are certainly dated but they give the game a characteristic charm unique to it's time period akin to the CDi Zelda games - though I was fortunate enough to be playing the SCI remake with enhanced visuals. Music is sparse, there's no constantly looping track thankfully, and what little there is adds to the character of the game similarly to the graphics despite it's low quality.
Gameplay is a mix of point and click with text input to perform actions. The clicking part of the control is still somewhat rudimentary however, as you need to click on the edge most pixels to transition between screens - I ended up using the keyboard for most of the game besides a few twisty sections. The text input wasn't obvious at first but once I got in the routine of using it it became quite natural - though there are of course many non-obvious interactions you'll need to make progress at various points. It's hard to tell if the lack of intuitiveness is another product of it being out of time, my lack of experience with the genre, or a sheer fault of design.
Gameplay itself is built around puzzles. You search the environment, collect items, and eventually the interactions get you towards a goal. I started pretty strong and had a lot of fun mapping out the game even though there are a handful of cheap deaths that you're forced to learn and avoid. I managed to get the chest without resorting to guides but after that I was badly stuck and when I finally resorted to a walkthrough I knew I was never finishing this game without instructions. From interacting with specific scenery unprompted to interactions I had no idea were even possible and many red herrings in between, the game design is very unintuitive so I doubt I would have made any progress any time soon.
Overall, while it has retro charm and stands as one of the classics I feel it's too roughly hewn to be enjoyable by modern audiences. Perhaps I'm just too impatient? After all the first relic was fun to discover but the dagger and several other steps required to get the other relics would certainly have eluded me for some time. When players had less game options and more time I can see how this may have kept a person occupied, but that's simply not the case now days. It's nice to experience gaming history but not always necessary to live it, maybe just watch a youtuber do it in 20 minutes.
I love how the title "Quest for the Crown" implies that Graham's goal was specifically to kill the king by making him wait long enough so he could rip the crown off his corpse and claim the throne for himself.
As I have mentioned previously, back in the early days of PC gaming, Sierra was seen as the king of not just that platform, but also the point ‘n click adventure genre, with King’s Quest in particular being their most prominent property. It may have been a simple game series, occupying a simple medieval world, but it was enough to capture peoples’ hearts, managing to last quite a while, getting many different titles, each evolving further and further in terms of both presentation and gameplay (for better or for worse). In terms of the first game in the series, King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown, it was quite revolutionary at the time for computer games. Most adventure games beforehand were text-based, which are great in their own right, allowing the player to use their imagination to take them on a journey, but this game gave players a full world to explore and interact with, something that was quite rare at the time, and would since become the staple for many different games afterwards.
However, of course, for being the first true game in the series, the original King’s Quest has aged significantly, as one would expect. Not only is it pretty primitive in comparison to all of the other titles later down the road, but in terms of the content, setting, and functionality of the game, it is as basic as it gets. That being said, for 1984, it is still pretty impressive, and it is an alright game, even if it did invent all of the trappings that these early Sierra games fall into.
The story is spelled out right in the title, and it is executed about how you would expect, the graphics are extremely dated, but they are… serviceable for the time, the music (and by that, I mean the one or two songs in the game) are fine, even if they don’t sound that good anymore, the control is exactly what you would expect in this kind of game, and the gameplay is incredibly simple, but that is to be expected from being the first game of its kind.
The game pretty much established the point ‘n click adventure genre for a good while, where you walk around many different environments, interact with things by typing in commands or clicking on them, gathering items to help you along the way, and solving puzzles and scenarios to help you push forward towards your ultimate goal. Even if it is all stuff we are familiar with, it is important here, seeing as it is the game that popularized this style, so how did it execute it? Eh… I’d say it did it well enough, for the most part. There are enough environments that can be seen throughout the game, with enough differences between them to where they don’t feel too samey, and if you don’t have a guide on you, you may be at it for a while figuring out what to do and what not to do, even if every puzzle and situation can be more simple then you think.
With that being said though, along with popularzing this form of gameplay, it also stapled the problems that the genre had for a bit. It’s basically all the stuff that I mentioned in my LSL reviews, where you will definitely need a guide to get far into the game, the commands you type out aren’t always as clear and concise as you would want it to be, and the movement of your character can be pretty weird at points, leading to unneeded frustration. There weren’t too many points with this happening for me during my initial playthrough, but one thing I do remember is one section where you have to climb up a giant beanstalk to gather one of the treasures, and the movement on that beanstalk is so fucking finnicky, that if you aren’t dead-set on where the game wants you on that beanstalk, you are falling and dying. Believe me, it happened A LOT, and while I did have a save on standby at that part, it still got annoying.
With all that being said though, I can still say that, despite how primitive it is nowadays, it does a pretty good job at what it set out to do, and providing a foundation for not just the King’s Quest series, but for many other different adventure games to follow. If it wasn’t for this singular game, we probably wouldn’t have plenty of the other adventure games we would get later, such as Space Quest, Broken Sword, The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam & Max, and plenty of others. Not to mention, you can see the charm of Sierra throughout the game, such as with the description of the events that happen in the game with its text boxes, as well as it clearly not taking itself too seriously, which is always nice to see for the type of game it is.
Overall, while it is definitely not something I would recommend going back to unless you wanna see where it all began, the original King’s Quest does still hold up somewhat over time, and it is a game that I can definitely appreciate more than I actually like. Sure, I could’ve easily just played the remake of this instead for a better experience (which I would recommend you do as well), but for what it is worth, I am glad I checked out the original game for the first time.
Game #229
However, of course, for being the first true game in the series, the original King’s Quest has aged significantly, as one would expect. Not only is it pretty primitive in comparison to all of the other titles later down the road, but in terms of the content, setting, and functionality of the game, it is as basic as it gets. That being said, for 1984, it is still pretty impressive, and it is an alright game, even if it did invent all of the trappings that these early Sierra games fall into.
The story is spelled out right in the title, and it is executed about how you would expect, the graphics are extremely dated, but they are… serviceable for the time, the music (and by that, I mean the one or two songs in the game) are fine, even if they don’t sound that good anymore, the control is exactly what you would expect in this kind of game, and the gameplay is incredibly simple, but that is to be expected from being the first game of its kind.
The game pretty much established the point ‘n click adventure genre for a good while, where you walk around many different environments, interact with things by typing in commands or clicking on them, gathering items to help you along the way, and solving puzzles and scenarios to help you push forward towards your ultimate goal. Even if it is all stuff we are familiar with, it is important here, seeing as it is the game that popularized this style, so how did it execute it? Eh… I’d say it did it well enough, for the most part. There are enough environments that can be seen throughout the game, with enough differences between them to where they don’t feel too samey, and if you don’t have a guide on you, you may be at it for a while figuring out what to do and what not to do, even if every puzzle and situation can be more simple then you think.
With that being said though, along with popularzing this form of gameplay, it also stapled the problems that the genre had for a bit. It’s basically all the stuff that I mentioned in my LSL reviews, where you will definitely need a guide to get far into the game, the commands you type out aren’t always as clear and concise as you would want it to be, and the movement of your character can be pretty weird at points, leading to unneeded frustration. There weren’t too many points with this happening for me during my initial playthrough, but one thing I do remember is one section where you have to climb up a giant beanstalk to gather one of the treasures, and the movement on that beanstalk is so fucking finnicky, that if you aren’t dead-set on where the game wants you on that beanstalk, you are falling and dying. Believe me, it happened A LOT, and while I did have a save on standby at that part, it still got annoying.
With all that being said though, I can still say that, despite how primitive it is nowadays, it does a pretty good job at what it set out to do, and providing a foundation for not just the King’s Quest series, but for many other different adventure games to follow. If it wasn’t for this singular game, we probably wouldn’t have plenty of the other adventure games we would get later, such as Space Quest, Broken Sword, The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam & Max, and plenty of others. Not to mention, you can see the charm of Sierra throughout the game, such as with the description of the events that happen in the game with its text boxes, as well as it clearly not taking itself too seriously, which is always nice to see for the type of game it is.
Overall, while it is definitely not something I would recommend going back to unless you wanna see where it all began, the original King’s Quest does still hold up somewhat over time, and it is a game that I can definitely appreciate more than I actually like. Sure, I could’ve easily just played the remake of this instead for a better experience (which I would recommend you do as well), but for what it is worth, I am glad I checked out the original game for the first time.
Game #229
Very important game and filled with charm! That being said, it just does not age well and is pretty tedious. Mainly only recommended if you want to play a piece of adventure game history.
i hate sierra so much its unreal
Played this chiefly when visiting a friends home. Due to their very specific computer, I believed this to be only a green monochromatic game for years.