(NOTE: I played this on PS5, not sure why that's not an option here)
Basically an extremely faithful fan remake of a game from 1977, done by two designers who, though legendary, haven't made a game in twenty-five years. So you might say it's a little old school.
The original was played on computers before they even had monitors. You typed shit in and it printed out what was happening. It was a text adventure, more or less the first one, and Roberta and Ken Williams have taken that and added graphics, and that's about it. Well, there is an (optional) automapping feature, which, given that this is a game essentially designed to be confusing, is much appreciated, as well as a nice inventory screen. But this is still very much gaming from a different era. The goal is to head into the huge, complicated, light-inventory-puzzle-filled cave and find all the treasures, and get them back to the start. You're timed and scored and can only carry a few things at a time, and you can also die or totally screw your game in a number of ways, so really the game is about playing it over and over and developing routes to get the best score possible. There's not a whole ton in the way of secrets or easter eggs to explore for, just rooms, items, easy puzzles, and confusion at randomized elements and impossible-geometry mazes. There is a simple, droll charm to the silly mishmash of fantasy environments and especially the narration, which is genial and not at all taking itself seriously. Playing this, you can almost in real time visualize Roberta doing the same once upon a time and getting inspiration for KING'S QUEST from it - so much of that game is in here. And for a big KQ fan like myself who never played COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE, the tone is so close that you can almost squint your eyes and imagine this as a new entry in that other series if you want.
The Williamses played the original game in the late '70s and said, hey, what if this had graphics? And then they invented a genre that now contains over a thousand games. Today, they started remaking their old, beloved inpiration as a COVID hobby and eventually got it released. Is it good? Is it fun? I dunno. It is literally a text adventure from the 1970s with graphics. They didn't change the layout of the areas, the script, the rules, anything. And the graphics and gameplay are what you would expect from an extremely low-budget game. But that's fine. It works fine and it is what it is. It's an interesting experiment, if nothing else - grafting a fully-explorable 3D world onto the bones of a text-parser game, with a look command and a narrator and all that. Is there even one other game like that? MYST kind of killed this potential subgenre before it even existed, probably.
I imagine that this could be a really cool experience for someone who loves the original as much as they do, and its fun to see a designer reckon with and celebrate her inspiration so directly. But it's short, fun, plain, and straightforward. Maybe this is one for the kid to play early. KQ was for me, and it's probably the reason I'm on this site, so!
Basically an extremely faithful fan remake of a game from 1977, done by two designers who, though legendary, haven't made a game in twenty-five years. So you might say it's a little old school.
The original was played on computers before they even had monitors. You typed shit in and it printed out what was happening. It was a text adventure, more or less the first one, and Roberta and Ken Williams have taken that and added graphics, and that's about it. Well, there is an (optional) automapping feature, which, given that this is a game essentially designed to be confusing, is much appreciated, as well as a nice inventory screen. But this is still very much gaming from a different era. The goal is to head into the huge, complicated, light-inventory-puzzle-filled cave and find all the treasures, and get them back to the start. You're timed and scored and can only carry a few things at a time, and you can also die or totally screw your game in a number of ways, so really the game is about playing it over and over and developing routes to get the best score possible. There's not a whole ton in the way of secrets or easter eggs to explore for, just rooms, items, easy puzzles, and confusion at randomized elements and impossible-geometry mazes. There is a simple, droll charm to the silly mishmash of fantasy environments and especially the narration, which is genial and not at all taking itself seriously. Playing this, you can almost in real time visualize Roberta doing the same once upon a time and getting inspiration for KING'S QUEST from it - so much of that game is in here. And for a big KQ fan like myself who never played COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE, the tone is so close that you can almost squint your eyes and imagine this as a new entry in that other series if you want.
The Williamses played the original game in the late '70s and said, hey, what if this had graphics? And then they invented a genre that now contains over a thousand games. Today, they started remaking their old, beloved inpiration as a COVID hobby and eventually got it released. Is it good? Is it fun? I dunno. It is literally a text adventure from the 1970s with graphics. They didn't change the layout of the areas, the script, the rules, anything. And the graphics and gameplay are what you would expect from an extremely low-budget game. But that's fine. It works fine and it is what it is. It's an interesting experiment, if nothing else - grafting a fully-explorable 3D world onto the bones of a text-parser game, with a look command and a narrator and all that. Is there even one other game like that? MYST kind of killed this potential subgenre before it even existed, probably.
I imagine that this could be a really cool experience for someone who loves the original as much as they do, and its fun to see a designer reckon with and celebrate her inspiration so directly. But it's short, fun, plain, and straightforward. Maybe this is one for the kid to play early. KQ was for me, and it's probably the reason I'm on this site, so!