King’s Quest Retrospective

Since I covered the recent King’s Quest retrospectives over at Good Old Games, I thought I’d point out a similar article that the folks at 1UP have done. Once again, I gotta quote the text about my all-time favorite in the series:

As hinted at by the title, King’s Quest III stars the progeny of Graham and his new wife — though this fact is one of the game’s bigger reveals. And instead of the lighthearted world of Daventry, King’s Quest III takes place in a much darker setting under dire circumstances. The game’s story revolves around Gwydion, a young amnesiac and slave to an evil wizard, and his attempts to recover his memory and return home. One of the impressive innovations featured in To Heir is Human is the game’s use of a primitive in-game clock; for the first time in the series, events would occur in the game’s world regardless of the player’s progress — making some puzzles only solvable within a very short window of opportunity. This new feature added an entirely new level of deviousness to the already-baffling nature of Sierra’s puzzles. But, without the Internet and 5,000 cable channels, gamers in the mid ’80s had far more free time to figure this stuff out.