King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human Retrospective

The Gaming Dungeon has kicked up a short retrospective feature on King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human, the third installment in Sierra’s much-loved adventure series.

This is where the game gets interesting, you have to find the secret room where Manannan keeps his magic spellbook. When you do find it, inside is a spell for turning people into cats, along with a variety of other spells. So you go off into the world looking for the spell components needed to turn Manannan into a cat. Along the way you solve puzzles, create other spells, die a lot- basic adventuring.

Unfortunately, Manannan’s trip isn’t everlasting. He comes back after 20 minutes, and if you’re not back at home, have the secret passageway relocked, things looking like they did before, and any spell components hidden under your bed by the time he returns- you get zapped. If you do manage to return everything, you then have to do chores until he takes a nap, which gives you some more time to collect your components. If you don’t manage to do it in that time, you have one more chance when he goes out on another trip. When he comes back from that one, it’s game over.

While it’s more of an adventure game than anything else, KQ3’s unforgiving spell system and other elements gave it a RPG-like feel at the time. At least that’s how I remember it, anyway. Good times.