King's Quest

Kings Quest is an early PC Adventure game. The player navigates Sir Graham through dozens of brightly-colored 2D game screens, collecting items and interacting with strange characters. Most of the encounters and quests are based on classic fables and fairy tales: Jack and the Beanstalk, the Billy Goats Gruff, and Rumpelstiltskin are among the stories depicted.

The player can move in any direction using the arrow keys, and is occasionally called upon to do some tricky climbing of irregular surfaces. Interaction with NPCs and objects is done via text inputs - i.e. "pick up pebbles", "talk to gnome". Sierra published a remake of the game in 1990, the first of several such remakes of their early games. Unlike the other remakes, though, it did not use Sierra's 256-color point-and-click interface introduced later the same year, and retained a textual interface while introducing higher resolution 16 color graphics, an enhanced storyline and some changes to puzzles.

Quests are free-form, and often an item found near the beginning of the game would come in handy near the end. Progress is recorded using a points system, with simple tasks like taking an item granting a few points, and more complicated tasks like solving a major puzzle granting many more.

Availability

The game is available at GOG.com or Steam.

PC System Requirements

• OS: Microsoft® Windows® 2000/XP Operating System
• Processor: Pentium® III 800 MHz processor or equivalent Athlon™ processor
• Memory: 128 MB RAM
• Graphics: Microsoft® Windows® Compatible Video card
• Hard Drive: 815 MB of Hard Drive space
• Sound: Microsoft® Windows® Compatible Sound card