We're here on entry number three of May Maturity after two weeks, currently hobbling along at the all-too-fitting pace of an extremely elderly person. Since we're alternating graphic adventure games and CRPGs for the time being, our next port of call is Westwood Studios's mildly satirical 1992 point-and-click The Legend of Kyrandia. More or less their take on King's Quest, in much the same way Command & Conquer was their Warcraft or how Eye of the Beholder was their Dungeon Master, Kyrandia presents a fantasy world where a deeply insane and magically powerful jester (huh, sounds familiar) is upsetting the careful balance between the world of humans and the world of nature, removing any magically powerful force of good - humanoid or otherwise - to ensure his own mad gallivanting can continue unopposed. His only major obstacle is the wimpy young apprentice mage Brandon, who is forced into action when destiny comes a-callin'.
Usual King's Quest style pablum, but The Legend of Kyrandia has a reputation for having a slightly subversive sense of humor and genre self-awareness that elevates it above the usual Sierra imitators, even if the thematically similar Simon the Sorcerer and Discworld adventure game franchises would eventually come along and eat its lunch. I've heard tell this satirical streak would become more prominent in Kyrandia's two sequels Hand of Fate and Malcolm's Revenge (the title of which is sort of a spoiler, I guess), and so I'm mostly just playing the first so I can get it out of the way and move onto those successors. I'd never played a Kyrandia game before today, but knew of them well enough by their reputation. Ditto for Westwood, whose games have always been regarded highly - I especially like the first Lands of Lore game myself, and hope to see a lot of parallels between that and Kyrandia even if they happen to occupy separate fantasy worlds.
Kyrandia's Way More Fun Than Aynrandia
Welcome to The Legend of Kyrandia! Check out those hot 1992 pixels. Truly the golden age of DOS-era graphics.Gandalf the Indistinct here is actually Kallak, leader of the Mystic Council and the hero's grandfather. As you can imagine, he'll be a game-wide calming influence for the young appr-Nope, the evil jester Malcolm shows up and turns him into a rock. He had a good run.Here's the protagonist Brandon. All he needs is a goofy hat to complete the ensemble (he actually references his hat later, so I really gotta be careful not to play into this game's hands with my sarcasm).Gramps is a little under the weather, so in mournful deference we steal everything in the hut and head out. Ah, the walls are talking. Right. Kind of figured the old man might've laced some of his valuables with a lil' somethin'-somethin'. This is a representative of the "Other Kingdom" - beings of natural magic - who tells us we're the chosen one and need to save the world and etc., etc. At least this isn't one of those hallucinations that vividly describes how you'll die.Taking a few paces around, it's evident that the game has a touch of the King's Quest in its level design too. That is to say, a majority of the screens have no hotspots whatsoever, and just exist to make the world feel bigger than it actually is. This pond is an exception: by capturing one of the teardrops, we can heal a sick tree a few screens away.An oldie but a goodie, we can't move to the next part of the game without giving this yokel our grandfather's saw and coming back a little later. As in, after we've completed whatever it is we need to do here.This bratty kid is called Merith, which explains why he's lashing out at everyone, including us. By following him around in a certain set of directions, we can get the drop on him. He gives us a "marble" - a purple object distinct from the gemstones we keep finding everywhere.Brynn's the only other magically-inclined person around, and she's got kind of this Greek oracle thing going on. We give her the note Kallak was writing - it's enchanted, which is why it seemed blank to us - and she gives us directions for our quest. The first task is to find a lavender rose somewhere.I think we're supposed to believe Merith just "found" the small purple marble, but I'm inclined to think he broke it off this magical altar deliberately to screw with everyone. Whatever evil motives Malcolm has, they can't be worse than the pent-up rage any young boy called Merith must feel. Anyway, blondie wanted that lavender rose, and so we brought it back to her. This is part of the process of getting a new amulet, which we'll apparently need if we have any hope of defeating Malcolm. Figures that we'd need some way to cast magic to defeat a wizard, right? Though I imagine a gun would work too.Brandon has solved one (1) puzzles so far. Dig the confidence, guy, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. You can see the newly forged amulet at the bottom right: so far, we have zero spells for it. But that'll change.The carpenter, whose name I forget, repaired the bridge while we were running back and forth with flowers. I'd mock the contrivance of the broken bridge trope, but I can appreciate keeping the game contained to a few screens at once per puzzle.Our next magical mentor is the slightly senile Darm, who lives with a large talking dragon who, I'd assume, has long come to terms with never being able to leave this place without destroying the roof. Before he'll talk to us, he asks us to find him a quill. Easy enough, right?So here's the game's antagonist, just walking around while juggling knives as Brandon decides to fire a few zingers his way. Good thinking, pal. (Psst, Brandon. This game was made in 1992. They haven't switched to the "can't die in a point-and-click" standard yet.)Anyway, Malcolm lets us off with a warning, and then freezes the entrance to that rad looking Serpent Grotto so we can't follow him. Exploring a bit more, we find this ruby tree, but it's guarded by a venomous snake. Getting bitten and then walking around will actually kill you - it's the first game over I've seen so far, in case you didn't believe me about the dying earlier. It's going to be one of those games where I have to save frequently, huh.I've been picking up various types of seeds, so I drop them all in this hole to make this gregarious plant emerge. It kindly douses Brandon with a yellow dust, enchanting the amulet: it's a healing spell! I can use it to cure any snake venom I might receive while picking rubies, but I can also use it to heal others. Pfft, snakes. Nature's quitters.I realize what this looks like (also, ew) but I'm actually casting my new spell to heal this injured songbird so it can take its broken wings and learn to fly again. It learns to live so free, we hear the voice sing, but we also get a feather. So it's a win-win for Mr Mister Brandon.Darm's next objective is to complete the "birthstones" puzzle. This involves finding gemstones that represent the four seasons, rather than the twelve months, and place them on this altar in the correct order. It's a bit of a trial and error process, and also introduces us to how the game deals with consumable items: when an item is used up, it respawns somewhere in the vicinity. I'm not sure there are any cases where you can lose an item permanently, but I'm not risking it either way.The actual, and completely arbitrary, order is Sunstone, Diamond, Topaz and Ruby. The nearby Emerald, which I couldn't determine how to jimmy out of a statue base, is apparently a red herring. Green herring. Whatever. I neglected to mention the inventory bar is those ten slots: you can't actually carry more than that, but you can dump stuff on the ground and come back for it later if need be. It's why I scattered those gemstones all over the floor in the earlier screenshot.Placing the gemstones has given us a flute - essential for any adventure game, just ask the developers of BioForge - and by hitting a high note in front of the grotto's ice wall, we can shatter it and be on our way again. The cave promises danger, but with this healing spell, a flute, a tulip and a half-eaten apple, I seriously doubt we have anything to worry about.
So those are the opening acts of The Legend of Kyrandia. Standard, which I think is fair enough for the early chapters of an adventure game, but you can start to see how the magic and inventory systems offer a distinct variety of challenge most games of this genre hadn't yet attempted. At least it looks and sounds great for a 1992 game: the game has full voice-acting, and Westwood definitely knew their away around those MIDI keyboards.
We should also remark on the game's accessibility. Most adventure games made around 1992 had not yet emancipated themselves of the many verb commands that inundated early graphic adventure games, of the "open" and "get" and "talk to" and "sniff" and "play chequers with" variety. With its single contextual cursor, Kyrandia was one of the first adventure games I'm aware of to mitigate the amount of wasted time trying every combination of verb and object and hotspot whenever the player got stymied. In addition, using an inventory object is as simple as dragging it to and from the inventory bar and releasing the button on the intended target. You didn't even need to wait for Brandon to walk over to where the object was being used; it all happens instantaneously. The game also lets you adjust the walking speed, though it doesn't quite go so far as letting you skip screen transitions or provide a fast travel system, which are two conveniences from Toonstruck (and most modern adventure games) that I find myself missing.
At any rate, while it's a little dull, it's certainly not offensive. The goal here is to beat the game so I can understand what's going on in the sequels, anyway, so I'm invested enough to keep moving. I imagine once I get a few more spells and have more instant death perils to avoid, it'll start putting up a fight. I'm also hoping for a few more NPCs too: if this game is supposed to be known for its humor, I'd like a few more characters to bounce off than some doddering old men and a sarcastic daffodil.
