IA's King's Quest 3 VGA

IA's KQ3VGA is nearly a 1:1 remake. They kept the waiting, the deaths and all, but at the same time, they simplified the spell process and added cut-scenes to expand on the storyline. Personally, I like the changes and I think they did a good job remaking it. It's not perfect, mind you, but they really took the trouble to enhance it while trying to remain true to the original and it shows. The voicepack also adds a nice touch to the game as there's not a single voice in there that sticks out like a sore thumb, unlike KQ2VGA+. (Not trying to praise myself here even though I voiced four characters in the game. Everyone else sounded good.) A few clips didn't seem to fit the scene very well, but that's probably a matter of scene intepretation by the IA team. The easter eggs on the other hand are rather difficult to access because they're put on a very high randomiser (only managed to see two after many repeated attempts and still can't access the third). I'll still examine this game anyway because there are some things worth noting.

Story Presentation

The introduction's been expanded on. We first see Gwydion (the protagonist) dreaming about his past, except he doesn't realize that it's more than a "strange dream". An old maid meets up with the evil wizard Manannan and hands him the kidnapped baby. Manannan shows gratitude by incinerating her. There's no loyalty among villains, is there? Gwydion wakes up and the Narrator explains that he's been Manannan's slave boy for almost 18 years. Manannan then enters the scene and orders him around, reminding Gwydion that he'd lost all his rights "since he cursed his poor parents the day he was born". Manannan then laughs cruelly and leaves Gwydion with unanswered questions about his past. Gwydion resolves to get to the bottom of things.

The manual and the website give more information on Mannannan. His first slave got too curious at age 18 and discovered his secret spellbook. Unfortunately for the slave, he got caught in the act and was killed. From then on, Mannannan swore that he'd kill his slave once he reaches 18. Gwydion's almost 18, so...

The story mainly progresses whenever the wizard is away or sleeping, as Gwydion can't explore very far if he's being watched. Once he's made a pair of ears to understand animal speech, he'll be able to hear rumours of his true past from the animals. Who would have thought that animals liked to gossip? Eventually, Gwydion would have collected all the items needed to defeat the wizard and leave the place for good, but if he hasn't defeated Manannan before the wizard makes his second trip, the player gets rewarded with a cut-scene.

During the second trip, Manannan visits Mordack, his brother, and both joke about dumping Gwydion's corpse at his parents' front door to add salt to the wound. Mordack notes that Manannan has a fondness of cats and that his slaves share the cat's curious nature. This proves ironic later on since Mannanan gets turned into one by Gwydion. This scene adds a rather nice touch overall and anyone who's played KQ5 would like watching this scene for the nostalgia. For the player who's not familiar with KQ5, however, it works well as a foreboding sign.

The second objective of the game is revealed through the Oracle once Gwydion visits the cave. The Oracle will show him the events surrounding his true family in Daventry, and we get to see a short exchange between King Graham and Princess Rosella just before she leaves as a willing sacrifice for the three-headed dragon that's plaguing the kingdom. "You, Alexander, are the only one who can save them!" The Oracle tells him, revealing his true name at the same time. This (and I say this with some bias since I voice-acted the Oracle) was a really cool scene and I liked how they expanded it and showed the dialogue exchange between father and daughter. They portrayed Rosella as a brave woman and gave the player a reason to like her and want to save her. This wasn't the case in the original as the player only got to see her damsel-in-distress form. Of course it helps that Rosella had an amazing voice thanks to Maghrabi, so there's another reason to sympathize with the character.

There's a slight twist to the scene where Alexander tricks Manannan into eating the magical porridge. Unlike the original, there's a delayed reaction here, which leaves both Alexander and possibly the player shocked and confused that "it didn't work", only to have Manannan reappear and mew before turning into a cat. After that, there's a beautiful closeup view of a scared cat with a congratulatory message from the Narrator. It's quite empowering to see a former tormentor and big bad turned into a scaredy cat, and as a glorious closeup. It'll be good to bear that in mind when making games with depressing introductions. It's also good to to throw unexpected curveballs in areas where one might take a scene for granted (but it has to be within reason, as opposed to something completely random).

The ending scene by far is the longest of the lot. The IA team attempted to explain why King Graham could never locate Alexander all these years, something which the original never really touched on and which bothered a lot of players back then. It's a decent attempt since it's a fairy tale-styled game, but its simplistic approach probably wouldn't satisfy the more cynical players. Rosella accepts her twin brother all too quickly, and her explaining that Graham searched everywhere for him with the whole town supporting would just prompt some to ask how a seasoned adventurer can fail to find him in a nearby land. Then again, this has always been a difficult question and the original hardly addressed it in a manner which pleased the fans, so the approach used for the remake is sufficient. They also focused on bonding time between father and son, something which the original didn't do either.

The bonus ending can only be viewed if the player scores the full points. In it, the player gets to see Mordack fetch his feline brother and burn down the house. The look on his face as he burns it down hints of the events that'd occur in KQ5. For the super hardcore KQ fan who has read the KQ Companion, this bonus adding also acts as an inside joke as a certain obnoxious character claimed to have moved into that house after Manannan was turned into a cat.

Game Design

As mentioned earlier, they made an attempt to stay true to the original, so death by falling off cliffs is very possible. The hardcore Sierra player would have no problems with that, but those who aren't familiar with that kind of style are likely to be turned off by it. I watched Perseus try to navigate about the cliffs and he didn't find it amusing to fall off that easily. Joshua stopped playing (temporarily) after being unable to get past that scene. The very first cliff scene (where both ran into troubles with) has a huge boulder blocking the player's view of the path, and so it also misleads the player into thinking that he/she has to walk behind it rather than around it. I don't recall if the original's path was exactly the same, but I do recall the large rock being there. Any original game should avoid using environments with ambiguous paths. I suppose this isn't something you can fault the IA team for since they were trying to following the original. As for me, even though I have played the original before, there were still some cliffs that I had difficulty navigating (not so much the first cliff scene as I played through that several times in the original).

The spell system has it share of fans and haters. The original was a copy-protection system that ensured supporters of pirated copies wouldn't be able to complete the game without the manual, and so players were expected to type out every step and spell line as listed. A typo meant death. Now, problem with that system is that there was a typo in the manual at that time, and so many people were stuck at a crucial puzzle. Oh joy. IA decided to simplify the spell system based on feedback from some of their testers, so the only way to cast the spell successfully is to have all the required spell components and items. Spellcasting is done through clicking the "Cast" speech bubble icon on any one of the spell icons in the spellbook. Version 1 also checked whether any of the items required were already used for something else before determining whether a spell was successfully cast. I don't recall if the original had that, but I do recall some players complaining about that aspect and so that condition was removed for version 2. Fans of this spell system liked it because they didn't like having to type everything from a book while hardcore players complained about the danger element being removed.

There was also another condition that was added in version 1 and removed in version 2. Version 1 made sure that Gwydion reads the spell description concerning cat hair before allowing you to get it from the cat. This wasn't in the original and so some complained about this. It's actually a logical condition to have since you usually shouldn't let players take what they don't know they should be taking yet, but this logic wasn't applied to every other spell item, so it was very contradictory. Like why would Gwydion not think of getting cat hair but would be willing to collect fly wings, for instance? Or chicken feathers? Once a certain logic is established, it needs to remain consistent with everything else, or it'll just be bad game design.

One problem that this game had (and was also present in the original) was the lack of a clear goal for the beginning. A new player who's completely unfamiliar with the King's Quest world wouldn't get what the slaveboy's objective is. Like the original, you have to explore the entire house when the wizard is away and locate the spellbook. Only then will your objectives be clear. Perseus suggested that the introduction could have shown Gwydion accidentally discovering the spellbook, and so the player would know what the objectives are and wouldn't be wandering around wondering what to do.

The bonus ending was a nice addition. It's a good idea to implement a reward so that players would strive to get the perfect score.

GUI

This game uses the standard Sierra interface, so there's not much to comment there. What's interesting to note is that the original had a timing on the top right corner of the screen which players had to use to time their travels. The remake however placed the timing in the options menu, and so some players thought the timer was removed and weren't happy with not being able to keep track of the time. While they did mention it in the manual, it was very easy to forget this, especially those who are used to playing the original. Even I forgot. I feel that unless there's a programming limitation, something as important as a timer should be placed in a prominent position.

One improvement over the original is the arrow function that allows you to keep all unsafe magical items underneath the bed while leaving the non-magical and safe magical items intact in your inventory. Another was the use of colour codes to denote which items were safe magical, unsafe magical, and non-magical so that you'd know which items are ok to carrying around in front of the wizard. A third was that they improved the map feature to allow players the chance to "cheat" at a couple of locations that previously could only be accessed through climbing dangerous cliffs/stairs. Not surprisingly, some people thought it was a bug. I considered it a relief.

There were a couple of items that were distinctly hard to find. The glint for the key occurs too few times for players to notice, and the key itself can barely be seen. I watched Perseus play and not once did it glint as he madly clicked everywhere to hunt for the item (because I told him that he missed it). The other "glint" is mentioned by the Narrator in the study, but there's no visual to indicate where the glint is among the many books in the bookshelf. While this still worked for the original as the game allowed Gwydion to instantly locate the lever through typing a command, it doesn't work with point & click as you have to click your eye icon on every book to hunt down the right book. A KQ3 veteran would have no problems with this since he/she already knows which book to click on, but someone who hasn't played the game won't have any easy time with this.

Zork Nemesis Review

I first started playing this morbid game in 1997 (I think) with my siblings. Wandering around alone in a monastary that's haunted by a demon and ghosts can be very terrifying. Having to visit the room with four dead bodies and talk to their spirits is another. Lying in a sarcophagus to retrieve an important item is creepy. Taking a dead body out of a morgue in order to decapitate it and then question its head on some machine was overdoing it. I heard that the previous Zork games were nowhere as dark or as gruesome as this, so I've no idea why the developers thought it was necessary for Zork Nemesis to stray so far from its predecessors. Still, if you ignore the gore, it's a fairly good game (even though it felt a lot like Myst) with a variety of interesting puzzles, and the visuals are pretty so long as there's no blood or corpses in the screen.

Story Presentation

It's played from a first-person perspective and the visuals are a remediation of film, just like Myst. There are books and letters scattered everywhere which serve to reveal the background history of the locations, the character motivations and how some of the puzzles are to be solved. The manual itself is written as a journal, providing even more background info on the characters, locations and certain special objects to take note of. It also provides maps and introduces the player to the mystery surrounding four alchemists, the temple where they were last headed for (and where the player will begin the journey), and the Nemesis.

The game begins with the player hearing the voice of the dead woman Alexandria, asking for his/her help to save them. After entering the temple, Nemesis will warn the player through his creepy yet booming voice to abandon the quest since all he/she will find is death. He's not kidding. There are four dead bodies in the main hall, each in its own see-through coffin. How and why they died is a mystery the player has to solve, but it's a no-brainer that the four are also the missing alchemists.

The player gets to wander around the temple and solve puzzles that are associated with either the four elements (water, fire, air and earth) or planets (Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars). Each of the elements and planets are associated with the four alchemists (Venus = water, Jupiter = fire, Saturn = air, and Mars = earth). Solving any of the group puzzles would allow the player to speak to the dead alchemist spirit associated with those puzzles, and the alchemist would reveal how the Nemesis murdered them and two young adults, Alexandria and Lucien, in an attempt to get the Philosopher's Stone. All four will talk the player into venturing to their homes and create the stone before he does, explaining that it's the only way to bring them all back to life.

Once the player starts visiting their homes, however, he/she will get to see flashbacks through touching certain objects which slowly reveal their true motivations. This part seems rather odd. There's no reason given why touching those objects would show flashbacks that the four alchemists wouldn't want anyone to see. Anyway, the player gets to realise eventually through reading the letters and seeing flashbacks that the only true innocents are Alexandria and Lucien, and that the four wanted to use Alexandria's blood to create the stone for themselves because she's special.

What the game doesn't explain at all is *how* Lucien became the Nemesis. While the player gets to see how Lucien killed all four one by one after arriving seconds too late to prevent Alexandria's murder, it doesn't show how he turned from a perfectly normal human being to a floating pink glow. Ooh, scary! A floating pink glow! The other flaw is that the way the four were killed by this one guy was incredibly lame. They just stood there and let him kill them one by one! And one of them is supposed to be an accomplished military general. All the years of plotting for immortality wasted just because they didn't think of ganging up against him.

The game forces the player to complete the mission for the four alchemists. Even if the player finds out later that he/she's really helping the bad guys, there's no way to advance forward except to do their bidding. Usually this is a bad thing and I normally get annoyed with this, but I wasn't really annoyed with this one. It's likely due to it being a puzzle-driven game rather than a character-driven one, and the twist isn't all that apparent until after you've uncovered a substantial amount of information. I was however annoyed that Lucien knew what was really going on but instead chose not to expose their deceit to me till after they've revealed their true intentions. There's no real reason why he wouldn't attempt to make the player realise what's going on apart from the "Let's not spoil the twist" reasoning, so I didn't like this part very much.

One difference between Myst and Zork Nemesis is that you aren't alone once you start venturing to other locations. The player always gets to meet exactly one living person in each of the four locations, and three out of four are connected to a puzzle each. It's hard to say whether it's a relief to see them or not. My sister always found it creepy that a place that's seemingly vacant actually isn't. I'm not even sure why those people choose to remain behind when everyone else supposedly left out of fear of being cursed.

Game Design

For a game with a linear storyline, it has a very non-linear approach to puzzle-solving because all the puzzles can be solved in any order. If you're stuck with one puzzle, you can move to the next puzzle as they usually can be solved independently. Sometimes you can choose to visit a completely different location altogether, and all the items you find in the different locations are meant to be used in those locations alone. Sometimes there'd be some literature telling you the recipe or the secret combination needed to solve puzzles, so there's usually enough feedback. The early stages of the game also has an in-game hint system (which can be disabled), where the player can touch Venus' painting after touching a puzzle in order to hear a hint. If the player can't solve it after getting a few hints, the painting will give the solution. Overall, the game handles the stuck-problem well since there's plenty of things to see and explore, and the player rarely gets completely stuck.

Most of the puzzles are logical enough to solve although some don't make much sense story-wise. Why would replacing a ripped poster with a brand new version suddenly make a concert appear out of nowhere, complete with a noisey yet ghostly audience? There are also a few frustrating puzzles, but the one I recall the most vividly involves clicking instruments in the right order in pitch darkness to play a tune in order to turn on the lights! Pixel-hunting takes on a whole new meaning in this puzzle, and it's very easy to miss the right instrument and click on the wrong ones.

I was quite impressed by the variety of puzzles used in this game. Each of the puzzles followed a theme that's associated with the characters, but even then they were presented in very different ways and solving them hardly felt repetitive. For instance, the Mars location had a painting with a hidden message and four strategy information speakers which had to be used together to key in a suitable military strategy code and win the war. It also had a pool table where keying in the right number would reveal a number combination. The player has to realise that the combination is meant for driving the tank and the clue to figuring out the right number to get the combination has to do with the titles associated with the numbers. For Saturn's place, the player has to figure out that the weird vision he/she gets from sitting in a creepy chair actually reveals a door that can't be seen otherwise.

Unfortunately, because those puzzles were interesting, the last puzzle was a letdown and seemed rather anti-climatic in comparison. You don't have to figure out how it works. Just click on all four, and you're bound to get the right combination quickly.

It is possible to die in this game, but death in this game is few and far between, which is rather ironic now that I think of it. A game that's meant to be gorey as well as creepy has fewer death scenes than the Sierra adventure games for kids. The game also usually makes it obvious when it's possible to die.

It's also possible to get into a dead-end situation. If the player hangs a lit torch before solving a puzzle, then he/she can't take it back and can't solve that puzzle, rendering it unwinnable.

The game has a ranking system that updates itself everytime the player successfully completes all the puzzles in their respective groupings. It's a useful way of seeing just how far you've progressed in the game since it only has nine ranks and lets you know which rank you're under during gameplay. It's not the same as the score system used in the Sierra games as there's no way to complete the game without getting the full score.

GUI

It uses pretty much the same interface as Myst. Navigation is done using a gold arrow, while interaction is done using a gold hand. The cursor highlights when you either encounter an object that can be interacted with or if there's another possible direction to look such as up or down.

The menu interface pops up if the cursor moves to the top of the screen, and all the options are in text only.

Right-clicking the mouse changes the cursor to an inventory item. You have to keep clicking on the right mouse button to cycle through all the items.

'Al Emmo & the Lost Dutchman's Mine' Demo

I must admit that I wasn't impressed with the artwork on Himalaya Studios' website, and the game sounded like a cross between Leisure Suit Larry and Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist. Not that there's anything wrong with those two games and those were pretty enjoyable, but I would have preferred something fresh.

Anyway, I tried playing through the demo, and was immediately turned off by the quality of the 3D cut-scenes. It was highly amateurish. The storyline wasn't engaging and the jokes fell flat. And if that wasn't enough, both the narrator and the protagonist's voices were terrible to listen to. Al sounded fake, and the narrator had this overbearing and sacarstic attitude. They were both over-the-top and it really wasn't fun listening to either of them, although there is an option to turn off the voice altogether. The 2D hand-drawn backgrounds were lovely to look at, and so it was a shame that the 3D character models were poor in contrast.

Story Presentation

The cut-scene first shows a group of people exploring a mine (which players can deduce safely as *The Dutchman's Mine* that will come into play later). One of them is the Dutchman, who's leading Rita's father and two people. Most of the exchange won't make much sense now since they didn't want to give too much away, but the Dutchman leaves after giving Rita's father some guns for protection. We would find out later during the demo that Rita's father later died, though the demo never reveals how exactly he died or where his body is (so he might not be dead in the first place). Two years later, a 40 something Al Emmo (typical balding, geeky loser) arrives in Arizona to pick up his mail-order bride in order to prove to his parents that he's not a total failure, but things don't go according to plan. As expected, the mail-order bride dumps him as soon as she realises that he's broke, he gets thrown out of the saloon and misses his train ride home, so now he's stuck for a week and is completely whiney.

The situation gets more interesting for Al the moment he laid eyes on Rita, the woman whom every male in town wants, and we'll see him trying to win her heart for the rest of the game. Why she's so special isn't exactly clear in the demo. She doesn't look attractive as a 3D model nor as a 2D portrait (but the same can be said of any woman in the demo). As for characteristics, I don't see a "smart, strong and kind" woman that the developers want players to believe, but an arrogant and shallow person who thinks she's "not like those other cows". I don't see anything in her that would make him want to work so hard to even get her to acknowledge his presence, but he spends the rest of the demo trying to figure out how to get her favourite flower off a very tall cactus, only to fumble in his "Will you go out with me" speech and watch a suave (and possibly evil) Spanish prince waltz in and sweep her off her feet. Why a Spanish prince would come all the way to Arizona to date her, who knows? Anyhow, she promptly drops the flower that Al worked so hard to get for her, walks with the prince to the door, and then thanks Al for the flower (not caring that it's still on the floor).

My sister noted that the narrator's dialogue (which sometimes serve to give descriptions of everything in the game) was often superfluous, and stated that the writer shouldn't have tried to throw in so many big words in an attempt to sound smart. She also felt that the game was trying too hard to follow Sierra's style by having comments for every single thing in the game and ended up being a poorly-done clone.

Dialogue is handled by clicking the mouth icon on the NPC, and you have no control over what conversation topics to talk about. This would be fine if there isn't much to say between the characters, such as in the KQ series, but the conversations in this game tend to be a bit too long for my liking, with characters rambling on or sharing one gossip after another (eg. the Bartender and Koko). I would prefer having more control over what topics Al wishes to discuss, and perhaps even the ability to repeat certain topics that might be crucial (like the very easy to miss hint for the drinks puzzle).

The ending was one of the better features of the game. Instead of using 3D cutscenes like what they did for the intro and Rita's performance, this was done using a comic panel. The drawings were rather well done and the timing was good. Apparently this comic approach will appear in several parts of the game.

Game Design

The puzzle logic could use more work. One puzzle involved Al finding a spare key to get into his room. Right at the moment where Al breaks his first key, the pianist goes "Darn that key!". That's actually a hint to the player to talk to the guy and find out that the pianist is using the spare key as a substitute for one of his piano keys. Can a room key make music? Also, the pianist couldn't be spoken to before the first key was broken, so there's very little reason for the player to *want* to talk to a character he/she couldn't speak to earlier. After finding out that the only way to get the spare key is to distract the pianist with a drink, Al has to learn how to make one from the bartender, but the hint he gives is also very easy to miss and doesn't get repeated once the puzzle starts, so if you missed it the first time, you'd be stuck and have to redo the puzzle in order to hear it. And after all your trouble, you get an item which has no use in the demo.

Solving this spare key puzzle also triggers the next game event which has no relation with said puzzle at all, and that game event is required to get the necessary item to solve the main puzzle. There's no reason why solving this puzzle would trigger this event, and it shouldn't be the case.

Rita only appears a second time if Al gets the flower she likes. If Al has another flower, he can't show it to Rita then to find out that he should have gotten the difficult-to-reach flower. A few player had wondered how they were going to show that flower to her, not realising then that it was the wrong flower.

There are no dead ends in this demo. It's supposed to be one of the game's selling points. Player death isn't available in the demo, but it's possible to die in the full game, but I hear that it's rare and the game will have its own measures to ensure that it won't frustrate the player.

GUI

The developers tried to come up with their own menu system whereby the options appear at the top left of the screen when the cursor is in that area, while the other player controls ("Hand", "Mouth", "Eye", "Inventory") appear on the top right. They didn't use any icons at all for the menu system, which is rather surprisingly. Instead, everything is in text. Someone pointed out that it makes no sense to label the controls as "Hand", "Mouth" and "Eye". The LucasArts' labelling method is more intuitive, he says.

The Quit option isn't easily accessible, unlike Save and Restore. Instead, it's found under "Settings".

The hand, mouth and eye cursors have a small white circle, which is suppose to help make sure that players would be able to click exactly where they want to, provided they even notice the pixel and understand how to use it. There were no smart cursors, and LucasArts fans actually complained about this, while the Sierra fans didn't seem to have any problems.

The walk icon is in a shape of a x, with a hole in the centre.

There isn't any exit highlighting in this game, and again, this was something that the LA fans took issue with. Because of that, the team is now working on creating exit highlights.

An in-game map will appear in the game, but it's not available in the demo. This map will allow players to teleport around, so those who complained about having to walk from place to place will at least be happy with this.

The inventory appears at the bottom of the screen at the click of the wheelmouse button. It's a single row with arrows at both ends for you to scroll through your list. You can't see all your inventory items immediately if they exceed the screen's length.

They still have a long way to go, though the fact that they managed to produce a non-remake at a much faster pace than Hero6's is quite an accomplishment.

A Note About Spoilers

This blog isn't designed to inform potential consumers whether a certain game is worth playing, so there will be lots of spoilers. I may even go so far as to record themes I noticed from the game and character motivation. If you don't wish to have the game spoiled for you, it's best not to read what I write.

King- Errrr.. I mean "The Silver Lining" Demo Review

The Silver Lining (TSL), formerly known as King's Quest 9, is one of the most anticipated Adventure games to be released this year, or at least the first part of it, Shadows. The team behind it has a lot going for them - VU gave them permission to continue production after their fans fought for the C&D order to be removed, they've been interviewed and mentioned by several online and print magazines (including MTV), and they've made it on TV. They've gotten their PR and marketing skills down pat, but in terms of game designing, they still have a long way to go, and here's why.

When I first discovered the script excerpts Caser Bittar posted to demonstrate the quality of TSL, I was both underwhelmed and apprehensive. It really wasn't comforting to read that the game boasted "1500 pages script", especially since the examples he posted weren't at all funny. So when the demo finally came out, I didn't have very high expectations about its quality, though I tried to remain somewhat hopeful. I guess it was the foreknowledge that kept this game from being a complete disappointment. If you haven't tried it out yet, here's the link. Bear in mind that this was the demo made specially for VU to try to negotiate talks with them in removing the C&D. VU probably saw potential in it, or maybe they just couldn't stand the KQIX fanatics trolling their forums and spamming their emails with "BRING BACK KQIX!!!". :P

Story Presentation

I was expecting a video clip for the introduction, but what appeared instead were a bunch of words detailing the tragic events of the Royal Twins' birthday party at the Green Isles, followed by Graham's short mission. The game starts with Graham in his royal clothes, and he has to get changed in his famous red and blue adventurer's garb and visit the Oracle to find out how to save his family (again). Since this demo was slapped together in only three weeks, the story itself in the game was very short as well as straightforward, so there's very little to comment on. You can talk to the NPCs to hear their take on the tragedy, though it doesn't add very much storywise. What's worth mentioning though is Hassan, the ferry captain. When Graham approaches him to use his ferry, Hassan objects. Not sure *why* he doesn't make use of the opportunity to simply make a quick buck from it, but he does. Graham then reveals himself to be King Alexander's father, and therefore a king, but Hassan doesn't believe him. Silly Graham, that's what you get for walking around in those peasant adventurer's clothes instead of that royal attire you wore earlier, and I'm pretty sure Hassan wouldn't have doubted your story if you didn't change your clothes. Why Graham doesn't think of changing back, I don't know either, but lucky for him, he has a coin with his face on it, and Hassan believes him right away... except he still refuses to grant Graham's request. Hassan, you're dealing with a king here, and kings are usually loaded. Instead of being difficult and reject the request because you have to feed your crew, why not offer your services for a high fee? Graham offers him a sackload of gold, and Hassan greedily accepts right away. The game ends with Graham visiting the oracle, who proves to be ultimately useless in giving out information because the great evil clouds her vision, but knows someone who might be able to offer more help (read: less cryptic). Even my Oracle in KQ3VGA gave information more freely than theirs.

Dialogue and messages weren't all that interesting, and apparently also riddled with typos and mispronunciations. The same few messages got old pretty click whenever you clicked the hand, eye or talk icon on yourself or on any area that isn't important.

Game Design

Again, not much to comment here, but there are some notable bugs and one design flaw. Hassan's conversation was not thought of carefully enough. When Graham has paid for his passage and Hassan asks if he's ready to set sail, there is no way for Graham to say "Yes" or "No" with the talk icon. Instead, Graham must click his hand on the ferry in order to leave for the oracle. Apparently most didn't have a problem with this, but for those of us who respond with our talk icons than with our hand icons, we were stuck. It was because of this that I stumbled onto a bug. Sometimes previous conversation options that shouldn't be there would appear, and Hassan would develop partial amnesia by either not recognising you or forgetting that you've already paid. For those who thought of using their hand icons, but forgeting to pick up an item along the way, the game would prevent them from leaving. That's good in a way, because at least you know that you've forgotten something, but said item is found in a place that isn't exactly on the way, so there were people who got stuck and wondered where it was.

Conversation was done using branches, a first for a KQ game. As noted earlier, there were bugs in Hassan's conversation tree (and I read that they're still trying to debug it).

Travelling between the islands was done using a large ship sprite to travel on a map. Travelling this way would be fine as long as you go to the proper destination. Try any other, and the game would crash.

At one point during the game a tree trunk would fall and block one of the paths. Problem with this move is that the trunk itself didn't appear large enough to be an insurmountable obstacle, and fans have asked why Graham simply couldn't climb over or walk around it.

Perseus brought up a good point about the 3D environment. For a 3D game, it didn't make use of its environment. There's really no gameplay reason for it to be in 3D other than to look cool in today's world, and would have worked just as well with 2D.

GUI

(Not too sure if some of the things I write here fall under GUI or under Game Design, but whatever)

The menu is pretty similar to the traditional Sierra menu. It hides itself at the top unless the cursor enters that area. The design is rather pretty, but there's still much to be desired. There were no tooltips. While most of the icons were self-explanatory (footprints = walk, bubble speech = talk, hand = use, eye = look, bag = inventory), the options button and the few blank squares next to the bag icon weren't. The options was in the centre of the menu, and its symbol could have meant anything, so having tooltips for that would have been good. I had no idea what the few blank squares were for, and they didn't seem to have any purpose. What were they even doing there?

I noted three misleading exits in total. The first was in the starting room, where you can't tell whether there's any room to the right of the screen. It turned out that there's supposed to be a wall, which I had deduced from Graham's restricted walkpath, but visually, you couldn't see any wall, so there's no way to tell at a glance whether the area can be explored or is blocked. The other two misleading exits are probably that way because they're meant to be explored in the full game.

The inventory has a finite number of small squares on the left where the items are placed, and a closeup view of the selected item on the right. I don't recall if every single object rotates, but the coin certainly did. I thought that was ironic, because Roberta Williams (the original KQ designer) felt that objects shouldn't rotate around uselessly unless there's a reason for it. It's a strange way to honour Roberta, but meh, it's their game.

For a game that's supposed to be heavily inspired by The Longest Journey, I'm surprised that they didn't think of bringing over the helpful smart cursors and exit highlights that Longest Journey had. This would have at least made it easier for the player to see which areas he/she can and can't explore, without having to click on so many doors and find out that Graham's not supposed to enter them. It also would have made it easier to find the exit hotspots, since they weren't large enough for players to click on to exit the area.

The cursor icons and the words were very small. Personally, I would have liked them to be bigger, especially the words. It wasn't always easy reading them, especially against a translucent textwindow. The yellow words against the yellow floor was the hardest to read, and the translucent textwindow provided very little contrast.

It's hard to say whether the full game would be worth playing. Critical as I am of their demo, I do understand what it's like to be rushed into producing a game in three weeks, thanks to "Hero of Infamous Kingdoms". I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best, nonetheless.

Purpose of this Blog

I've been playing a number of adventure games over the past few months, and I want to note down the good, the bad and the ugly. It'll be useful to know what they did right, and how they could have improved so that I'd know what to do when I design my games. I'll examine them mainly in terms of story, game design and gui. I'll also note down what feedback the fans from the forums provide and which elements I'll want to borrow/explore further in my game projects.