#KQI_Log

[theadventurerslog]

King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown | Part 1

The Adventurer’s Log

King’s Quest I: Quest for the Crown Part 1

Release Date: 1984 (original version)

Introduction

Ahh, King’s Quest, the well-known series from Sierra, but while it’s a series I’ve known of for a long time, it’s a series I had never played nor even seen played until these past couple months.

I came across the Youtube channel, Such Minutiae, and started watching their Lets Plays of the series. Come King’s Quest V and VI I decided I was interested in at least giving those two a play. On GOG they come bundled with KQIV and I figured, why not? I could give IV a shot too. Then this idea to start blogging my efforts struck and I thought, you know what? Why not start right from the beginning and grab the first three games after all, too? Throw in them being on sale and here we are.

Now, as noted, I watched a Let’s Play, so this won’t be a blind play. However, this particular game is a different version from what I watched. They played the Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI) version which was a sort of remake/remaster. I’m playing the older AGI game and aside from graphical differences there are other differences as well. I probably won’t be able to spot a lot of them, but there is one different puzzle solution I’m aware of and I’ll make note of it when I come to it along with anything else that sticks out to me.

Having already watched the games be played I expect this will go a lot smoother than it otherwise would, but that I will still have some hangups. There is some real bullshit in these games, so it’s nice to go in prepared, accept that and enjoy the ride. And die a lot. I intend to keep a death counter. That will be noted at the end of the posts.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

The first thing I noticed when I loaded it for a simple quick test, was that unlike the SCI version there is no intro scene. It dumps you right into the game and you gotta go into the castle yourself and talk to the King yourself to know what you’re doing.

So the first step is to go see the king and so the quest begins.

And so the quest ends

Come on now, I couldn’t not throw him in the moat. Also, the death music! It’s different in the SCI version. I know this music because it was also used in KQ II. It starts sombre with Chopin’s Death March and then… oh and then it transitions to I don’t actually know what it’s called, but it sure clowns on you. Please just go to this link https://youtu.be/AWvZNAv4_B8?t=527 I have it timestamped to the right place already and know my suffering. The most taunting thing ever. I love hate it.

Okay back to it for real. Go see the king and be told what your quest actually is:

If you want further backstory and more details, you better read that manual.

From the manual in summary:

The kingdom of Daventry was ruled over by King Edward and his nameless, but lovely! Queen. They held three magic treasures that served to help Daventry maintain its peace and prosperity:

A Magic Mirror that reads the future so they were able to use it to stave off disasters and avoid things like planting crops right before frosts.

A Magic Shield that is supposed to make the bearer invincible and his army always victorious.

A Magic Chest that always remained full of gold.

Then disasters start striking. They want an heir but haven’t been able to have a child. A sorcerer comes and offers a solution but wants the mirror in return. They consult the mirror and see what they think will be their future prince (spoiler alert: It’ll be Sir Graham). They agree. No child is ever born. The Sorcerer ran off with mirror and placed it under guard by a beast.

Later the Queen falls ill. A dwarf offers a remedy that looks like it’ll work but wants the shield in return. The King agrees. The dwarf runs off with the shield. The Queen dies.

The King grows lonely as more years pass, but eventually Edward comes across a beautiful lady, the Princess Dahlia (she gets a name) in need of help. He saves her. They plan to wed and now it’s the night before the wedding except whoops. She was actually a witch and planned to steal the chest all along which she successfully does and off she goes too.

More years pass with the King and Daventry falling into despair and disrepair. King Edward realizes he may die soon and summons his knight, Sir Graham, realizing it was him he saw in the mirror. If Graham can gather back Daventry’s three treasures he’ll prove himself worthy of the crown and become the King foreseen in the mirror. Time to go Questing.

--

Once you see the king it’s time to set out and start exploring. I set out, I pushed a rock and died because I pushed it from the wrong side and got crushed. And I forgot to save, so I basically had to start again, although ScummVM autosaved me in the hallway in the castle, so I got to skip entering the castle.

Then I set out again and remembered to save this time. Save regularly and keep multiple saves. Now something cool that King’s Quest does is having some puzzles with multiple solutions. There is a points system and to get the highest points you need to do the optimal solutions. If you don’t care about points you’ve potentially got other options.

After finding a dagger and a pouch of diamonds I quickly encountered a flying condor. This condor is mandatory but unfortunately it’s random as to when and where it will show up. I managed to jump and catch the ride while I could, except I ended up in a dead end because I didn’t have what was needed to get past a big mean ol’ rat. I did try offering it the diamonds, which worked, except I think it actually lost me points and I would have ended up stuck again anyway. I reloaded a previous save.

Thanks for the dead-end, condor, but fly on majestically.

My other activities included more exploration and finding more items, getting mauled by an ogre at least once or twice and managing to run away another time, some sorcerer encounters one of which left me frozen in place and essentially dead, got flown off by a witch and eaten, stolen from by a dwarf a couple times and got some temporary protection from a fairy.

I found a four-leaf clover and a walnut. I climbed a huge tree and found a golden egg. Surprisingly for how easy it is to die in other ways, falling off the tree doesn’t kill you. The egg doesn’t break either. Shockingly nice of them.

Moving on, I helped a starving woodcutter husband and his wife and got a fiddle in return. I got lucky in doing those two activities, and along with finding one other item, I earned everything I needed to deal with the rat and the rest of that area and shortly after getting those needed goods the condor showed up again. So, this time I was able to handle everything there and got my first treasure: the Magic Shield.

I was able to find the witch’s house, a gingerbread house naturally, and deal with her accordingly. Actually, I had to do it twice, because fumble fingers for me killed me again oops. This place was another big difference from the SCI version. In the SCI version there are gingerbread figures outside the house and of course the house just looks better. If she catches you Graham gets turned into gingerbread and she puts you outside with a punny Graham cracker death message. In this version you just get put in a cell and know you’re about to get eaten and that’s that. I did miss that in this version.

Not exactly gingerbread-y on the inside. In the SCI version that oven is a cauldron.

I still have a bridge troll to deal with, but I have the means to do so and that’ll open up more areas to explore. I also found a well I haven’t checked out yet as well. I’ll probably try for the well first then go for the troll.

I’m coming for you, troll.

I’ve been mapping as I go and I’m very glad I’m doing so. I’m sure I’d be getting lost if I hadn’t. There are many screens and quite a few are pretty nondescript.

With the huge caveat that I’ve watched this played before, I’m having a pretty good time. Sure, it’s primitive. It’s easy to die, ridiculously so at times. It can be easy to screw yourself over into an unwinnable state in these games, but if you go in with that knowledge and stay on top of your saves, it’s entertaining.

With deaths by: moat alligators, falling into unswimmable water, ogre, sorcerer, witch, rock crushing I am currently sitting a death counter of 15. I’m a little worried I may have forgotten to update it a couple times so it may be a death or two higher than 15. Three of those were deliberate.

I probably only have one, maaaybe two sessions left.

Death Counter: 15

Time Played: 1hr 35min

Current Points Score: 86/158

[theadventurerslog]

King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown | Part 2

The Adventurer’s Log

King’s Quest I: Quest for the Crown Part 2

The second and final part of King’s Quest I. I had two goals to start the session with and I had some struggles with both in a mix of almost right move and relying on knowledge from the wrong version of the game.

Goal 1: Befriend the goat to get its help removing the troll from the bridge. I knew I needed the carrot but I kept thinking you had to feed the carrot to the goat. No, you gotta show it so that you can lure it along even though the text then says it befriends you. Personally I’d rather befriend the one giving me the carrot than just baiting me along, but hey it worked.

Goat friend.

Me and my new pal went to the troll bridge and scared that troll away and my goat left. From there I found a crotchety gnome who seemed rather more friendly than crotchety. He offered to give me a treasure if I guessed his name correctly.

Now, the name to work off of is, of course, Rumpelstiltskin. You can find a note at the witch’s home that gives you a clue to think backward. The assumption would be to simply say his name backward and that is indeed the case in the SCI version.

Not so here! No, you have to use a reverse alphabet cipher on his name, which I just fed to one I found on google. So, instead of Rumpelstiltskin or Nikstlitslepmur, you get the glorious name of: Ifnkovhgroghprm. I would never have guessed that’s what you have to do if I hadn’t already known. However, if you don’t guess it he gives you a different treasure that will still allow you to progress, and honestly I wish I’d gone for that instead for reasons I’ll get into later. I was aiming for maximum points and failed anyway, so I could have saved myself some grief. Anyway, as I did succeed, I got some magic beans.

Goal 2: Go down the well. This is where my prior knowledge messed me up. See, I knew that way led to a dragon and the magic mirror. I knew to get optimal points you needed a bucket of water. However, how you achieve this is different from the SCI version.

In the SCI version you use the bucket to go down the well. Before you jump out into the water, you cut the rope to get the bucket, then swim to the next area and fill it with water. So, that’s what I attempted and I got down there, aaaand couldn’t cut the rope. And then I drowned because you don’t have very long in the water down there before you do. Ah, more deaths.

Glub glub

What you have to actually do is cut the rope at the top of the well and get the bucket that way. But then I wasn’t sure how to get down. It was too slick to climb. Then I realized I was being a dummy. The rest of the rope was still there. And it’s a well. With a crank to lower said rope. So I tried that and it worked and climbed down. My bucket was automatically filled. I was able to douse the dragon’s fire which led it to leaving in a sulk and I got the mirror.

From there I had 2/3 treasures. I just needed the chest of infinite gold. Well, it was time to put the magic beans to use. I found a spot to plant them and then remembered I needed pebbles for more points, although they wouldn’t get used, so I wandered around for a bit until I found some. Then it was back to the beanstalk.

That damned beanstalk.

That why oh why didn’t I just take the lower point route, fail the name and get a key to go into a mountain door and climb the stairs up instead beanstalk.

This blasted thing was hell to climb and I still don’t really get the route. My death counter at the end of last session was 15. How cute. It’s been more tripled and a big percentage of that increase was because of falling off the beanstalk.

Arch-nemesis.

And I was moving my cursor constantly for all the reloads and keeping track of my deaths which had my cat very focused. I don’t think she helped, but at least I had company in my suffering. 

Anyway I did finally make it up the god-forsaken thing to cloud land and then I fell off the clouds. And then I fell off a time or  two again. Finally, I got stable and was able to progress.

After some looking around I found a slingshot and the stairs down to the ground. I looked around a bit more and found a giant holding the chest. You can use the slingshot with the pebbles to kill him or if you have the shield or an invisibility ring (that I missed) you can wait around until he falls asleep for some extra points.

Zzz.

Chest acquired it was time to get back to earth. I was scared of the stairs but only fell down them once! Then it was homeward bound.

The King thanked me for my efforts, keeled over and with his dying words passed the kingdom onto Sir Graham, now King Graham.

Perhaps not the most glorious of endings.

But look who’s king now!

And so the quest is done and my quest with King’s Quest I is complete.

Final Point Counter: 154/158

Final Death Counter: 58 (I may have missed a couple especially from the blasted stalk. The damned stalk. Curse it)

Final Time: 3:05

And just for fun look at all my saves!

Hilariously fitting that my autosave is dead Graham after falling off the beanstalk.

Final Thoughts:

I had fun overall, but I think I would have struggled a lot if I had played it blind. Even the controls would have taken more getting used to. I’ve not really played a game with a text parser before, so seeing someone else use it made it easier to get a handle on it and what kind of commands would work. Even how to phrase the commands and how short you can be.

For example you don’t have to do a full “look at tree”. You can just do “look tree.” While a different system I figure my experience with graphical point and clicks with verbs may have helped too. Just more manual construction here is all.

I did have to get used to movement. It’s not the case of hold down key to move in that direction but just tap and he’ll keep moving until you tap again to stop. That took some adjustment. You can use a mouse to click to move him but given how much I was going to be typing for commands it just seemed simpler to keep my hands on the keyboard for movement as well.

I know I would have gotten stuck a lot more and while I may have fumbled through I would have gotten fewer points in a longer time for sure.

It’s not necessarily a game I would recommend unless you’re really interested in exploring the old stuff, but it was a fun tour. And it has its own charms. I’m looking forward to continuing onward.