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Studio: |
Sierra
On-Line |
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Designer(s): |
Roberta
Williams |
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Part of series: |
Kingʼs
Quest |
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Release: |
May 10, 1984 (IBM PCjr) / May 31, 1984 (IBM PC) |
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Main credits: |
Programmers: Chris Iden, Ken MacNeil, Charles Tingley |
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Useful links: |
Complete playthrough (75 mins.) |
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Technically speaking, Kingʼs Quest was not the first game
made by Sierra On-Line, who already had a solid history of text-based
adventure games behind their belt by 1984. It was simply the first game where
all the major Sierra trademarks came together: colorful graphic interface, linear
(and occasionally choice-based) plotline advanced by puzzle solution, and, as
intangible as it may seem to some, that special «Sierra feel». And although
it does look old, due to the overall immersion factor, it is
the first Sierra game where even modern gamers might end up forgetting that they
are consciously involved in a «retro experience» — and just enjoy the thing
for the pure fun of it. The plot, as laid out by
Roberta Williams, is extremely simple, being almost entirely structured on
old English fairytales. As Sir Graham of the Kingdom of Daventry, an old
magical realm which is now in a state of decline, you are commissioned by
King Edward to find and reclaim three of the kingdomʼs long lost treasures — a magic mirror, a magic chest filled
with a never ending supply of moolah, and a magic shield that makes you
invincible. Your task is to scour the kingdom in search of these three
objects, performing various little sub-missions along the way. Do this right
and you become king; do this wrong and you have to start all over again...
and again... and again... The game was first released
for IBM PCjr in 1984, with the more common PC release coming just a few weeks
later. Most of its innovations stemmed from the introduction of the AGI
engine (Adventure Game Interpreter), a working environment that permitted for
relatively easy programming of game sequences with incorporated graphics and
sound capacities. AGI remained Sierraʼs primary working tool
until around 1988, when it was replaced by the technically superior SCI
engine. (However, amateur adventure games are still being regularly made with
AGI even today — many of these can be downloaded online at little or no cost,
with a small, but dedicated community carrying on the torch). |
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Content evaluation |
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Seeing as how Kingʼs Quest was the first game of its
kind, there isnʼt really much of a
plotline. In fact, I have to admit most of it was probably thrown together by
Roberta in 15 minutes or so. Very few things are invented: for
the most part, it is just a mishmash of popular English folk motives — goats
and trolls, gingerbread houses, the giant and the beanstalk, leprechauns and
fiddles, etc. etc. In her future games of the series, Roberta would learn how
to manipulate these motives with more originality, even adopting a slightly
post-modern touch on some issues. Here, though, the emphasis was quite clearly
on everything but the plot. We do not have the least idea
how the actual treasures came to be where Graham founds them, or how come
nobody found them before Graham, or how come Graham manages
to find them so easily. (Some of the prehistory of Daventry and its treasures
is explained in more details in the accompanying booklet, but even then there
are multiple loopholes and gaps). A particularly odd thing is
the idea of finding minor secondary treasures scattered all over the kingdom
as a way to boost your points, but little else — not only is this befuddling
per se (who the heck keeps dropping jewel pouches through the countryside?),
but there is nothing useful you can actually do with these
treasures (although in some places you can actually lose points
by using them in the wrong way). All of this just goes to show how new this
whole business really was at the time. |
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Generally, the puzzles are
quite simple, which is not bad, since the game clearly had young kids as one
of its primary target audiences. There are occasional odd lapses: for
instance, the puzzle of guessing the gnomeʼs name is quite definitely
unsolvable without serious hints, meaning that very, very few of the original
players could ever get to climb that beanstalk. (Fortunately, the situation
was remedied in the SCI remake years later). But for the most part the puzzles
conform to the standard scheme of «get object A in location B, use it on
object C in location D». One thing that Sierra had from the very start was
offering multiple solutions to the same puzzle, a nice move that added an
extra replayability bonus to the game. Here, though, for most puzzles there
is a «right» solution, where you win points, and a «wrong» one, where you can
get through the sequence but will lose points in the process — as opposed to «equal
value» multiple solutions in later games. Already in this very first
game we also see the downside of the general Sierra plan — mixing of puzzles
with occasional inane «quasi-arcade» sequences. For a reason that I have
never understood, Sierra developers thought it absolutely necessary to
include at least several «navigate the keyboard» gizmos in each and every one
of their games, which would almost certainly include at least one or two sets
of narrow stairs which have to be climbed by an agile alternation of the
Up/PgUp keys (thatʼs «up», obviously) and the
Down/PgDn keys (thatʼs «down», respectively).
In Quest For The Crown, the epitome of this plague is the already
mentioned «climb the beanstalk» puzzle, where you simply have to grope your
way up with no clues and endlessly restore your game — probably a big nag
back in 1984, when it actually took the machine some real time to bring back
your settings. I still have no clue as to how they came up with this strategy
— if the idea was to somehow appeal to lovers of the arcade style, the point
was, at all times, sorely missed, and from what I have read in retro-reviews
and fan memoirs, there were far more people hating this stylistic merger
rather than loving it. |
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Being the first game in the
series and all, there isnʼt that much immersion in the colorful, but parsimonious world of
Daventry. The locations are few, the characters are even fewer and, worst of
all, there is too little interaction going on: most of the people you meet
either do not speak to you at all (preferring to chew you up on the spot) or
confine their information to one or two lines of text. Sierraʼs well-known attention to detail, so much lauded for their «classic»
period, is yet nowhere near in sight. The primary character, Sir Graham, is
not characterized by anything apart from fairy-tale clichés about
bravery and gallantry (for all his bravery, though, he does not even get to
fight anyone). And the whole thing rushes past you way too quickly in order
to establish a long-lasting relationship with this world. Still, there is no denying
that this is a world — relatively diverse, unpredictable,
and magical. You get several locations — lakes, meadows, hills — that are
there just for the sake of adding extra detail, and, like in most Sierra
games, you can spend time just wandering and exploring in a non-linear
fashion. It is not a particularly safe world, either, as you
will be stalked by evil wizards, witches, ogres, and wolves on many of the
screens, establishing the classic Kingʼs Quest contrast between «safe
and cuddly regions» and «dark and dangerous regions», albeit in a rather
haphazard manner. Thus, while the game cannot really be compared in terms of
mood setting to the ones that followed, it is still compatible with them in
spirit. |
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Technical features |
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Most of Sierraʼs AGI games conformed to the highest graphical standards of the
times, painting as much and as best they could with EGAʼs 16 colors and low-level resolutions. As the first ball to get
rolling, Quest For The Crown, I would say, is slightly below
these standards — but only slightly. Perhaps the most significant difference
is the relative lack of care in painting the backgrounds: with most of the
attention directed simply towards getting the whole project realized, details
did not yet matter that much. So, you will see fewer trees,
bushes, houses, etc., than you would soon be getting used to. The ones
that are there, though, are done nicely: I very rarely
cringe at the sight of any inanimate object in the game. There are shadows,
horizon lines, brief contours on trees and rocks that try to emulate 3-D,
namely, everything to ensure you this is crude, but not "fake". One area where significant
progress had yet to be made are the character sprites. Grahamʼs mechanically moving figure, to tell the truth, is more reminiscent
of Pinocchio than a brave, gallant knight, and it is even worse with many of
the other characters. While Sierraʼs sprites truly did not
become «believable» until the SCI era, their elaboration was certainly
gradual, and already in the following few games the characters were more
intricately pixelated and their movements were more detailed and varied.
Here, it is a major flaw, because in terms of immersion, easily the most
important thing is to be able to identify yourself with the character you are
playing for, and it is pretty hard — if not impossible — to identify yourself
with a pair of walking matches in a blue cap, especially if the plotline says
you are poised to become no less than the king of Daventry. |
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Very little sound here,
apart from the clever encoding of ʽGreensleevesʼ into PC speaker format — one that probably ensured that for
most young players of the day, the tune is now forever associated with
Roberta Williams and her fantasy world. Sierraʼs budget was probably still
too tight for them to hire someone as resident composer, so most of the time
you will be playing in complete silence (for some people, this might not be
so bad, given the occasionally dubious quality of PC speaker music). However, there are already
signs that Sierra was not about to not make use of the
computerʼs ability to produce sonic waves, most
obviously in the form of a few sound effects that are quite cleverly
scattered around to punctuate significant moments. The spookiest one is the
six-note «danger» signal which is thrust at you from nowhere whenever some
baddie starts crossing your path — given the shrillness of the speaker and
the complete unpredictability of the enemyʼs appearance (they only
appear on certain screens, but it is always at random whether they do appear
and, if yes, when), I remember them giving me quite a few jump
starts. There are also some funny effects, like the one from falling down
stairs or trees (or, God help me, that beanstalk!), or while
dealing with the side effects of falling. That is all there is to say. |
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Interface Here, too, we have a
revolutionary start which, however, was to be greatly improved already soon
afterwards. The classic Sierra parser drives most of the game, but at this
moment, it is still very much underdeveloped, understanding only a few basic
words and nouns and not letting you experiment. The greatest downside, which
was corrected already in the second game, is that there is no command to get
a general description of the location — simply typing in ʽlookʼ will get you a retort of «You
need to be more specific». This is particularly harsh when you find yourself
dealing with objects that are hard to identify because of the poor state of
the graphics — not having a general description in which they could be
included, you will just have to guess what they are. (Hint: Whenever in
doubt, type ʽlook at the roomʼ rather than simply ʽlookʼ, probably a commonplace for text adventure game veterans in
1984). The interface also includes
a few shortcuts, such as the «swim» and «duck» options (the latter is sort of
superfluous — you only need it once over the course of the entire game), with
the rest more or less carried over into subsequent games. |
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Todayʼs
average gamers would be hard pressed to imagine all the hullabaloo caused by
the release of Quest For The Crown in 1984, but a good
advice would be to compare it not with what came after it,
of course, but with what was before, even with Sierraʼs
own titles like Mystery House. The thrill of seeing text
adventure game style combined with actually seeing what was
going on must have been tremendous. And let us not forget: everything that
made up the basics of Sierra gaming for a decade and a half from then on is
already here, in some form or other. Everything would be improved upon, of
course, but there would not really come around a visionary breakthrough that
would elevate adventure gaming on to a qualitatively different level — with
the possible exception of speech audio introduction, maybe. So it is hardly
possible to overestimate the historical importance of the game. Its level of enjoyability is a different thing altogether. It is
certainly too crude to be considered a classic along the same lines as,
say, Kingʼs Quest IV or VI. But if one treats the Sierra universe
as a cohesive and continuing entity, then, of course, Quest For The
Crown is inexpendable as the introduction to the
world of Daventry. It stands much better as part of the series than all on
its own, but as part of the series, it does a good job of setting the
scene. And while both Sierra’s own SCI remake of the game in 1990 and AGD
Interactive’s VGA remake in 2001 are obviously more easily playable on modern
computers due to improvements in the graphic quality and gameplay interface,
I think that for the wholesomeness of the experience you should still go back
to the original version — it is just so pure, innocent, and minimalistic that
forcing it into the age of puberty might take away its best qualities without
necessarily making it feel more advanced and satisfactory. |
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