tomimt

I've been 30 for years.

Now that you are entering KQ3, let me warn you before hand, when you do the spells, one of the spells has a wrong incantation line in the manual, so be sure to check out the right lines. The error is, if I recall right, included in every version of the game.

I do recall most of the treasure items can be actually used to solve at least one specific puzzle. It won't give you max poinst, but it will get you past that point if you don't have the max point item.

I'd say the root of the problem is the amount of games out there today. The games themselves don't need to last for months and if they stump people for too long they migrate quickly to play other games. And if someone has stopped playing your game, it is likely they won't be returning customers to your next game.

I'd go and pronounce it something like this: Aivn-kovh-grogh-prem It's clearly a name from some dead language.

Yes, the gnome puzzle is optional, as if you answer wrong you'll get a key you can use to unlock a door that has a ramp which leads to the giant. The big three puzzles, getting the shield, mirror and the chest, have multiple solutions, which is very clever. KQ1 has a lot of design elements which were sadly dropped from adventure game development, but I think that has more to do with how difficult it is to design such open puzzles, especially when the games themselves are more and more difficult and costly to produce. What was really fun back in the day with KQ1 was to try to find out the optimal ways of doing the puzzles. Though the unfair gnome's name puzzle made that pretty difficult, unless you knew the answer.

It's pretty difficult to think any modern first time player would go gaga over any of the first 3 KQ games. As they are, they really work best seen as historical relics and views on where games have started and how they've evolved. They have a lot of stuff that can be compared to modern games really in a way, that you can see that some ideas we think are modern have been thought of in the early years of computer games.

KQ1 really is one of the most open adventure games there is. It's interesting just because it was not only the mother of animated adventure games, but because its approach on the world and puzzle design. It is open world, small, but still you can go almost everywhere immediatly. You can pick up a lot of stufff, some just for points, but some can be used to solve multiple puzzles. But at the same time it has stuff in it that just isn't in any way fair towards the player, as the game really doesn't give that many hints on how some of the more obscure puzzles work, nor does it generally give that many hints at all. KQ2 is far more guided and "traditional" in approach, I'd even call it less ambitious. It's clearly more of a midwork, that was done to fill in the need for a new game more than anything else. In terms of game design only KQ3 is far ahead of KQ2, which really didn't bring anything new to the table. I think KQ2 might actually be the only KQ game that didn't bring any significant improvements to the game engine itself, nor Roberta's design.

Personally I think KQ4 is the best game in the series. I've also always liked KQ7, which some people seem to hate with a passion. KQ6 I think has always been a bit bizarre mix of extremely naive and overly dark narratives, which don't mix together very well. KQ5 is a pretty looking game, but it also frustrates me the most in the series thanks to some pretty poor design choices. Out of the first 3 games, I really recommend playing KQ1 and KQ3. KQ2 is pretty much just together shoestringed pieces that make very little sense. KQ3 has a bit different approach to the first 2 games and has interesting experiments in narrative.

Visually KQ5 is a very nice game and the storytelling ain't bad either. But I do think the puzzle design is at places a step backwards from KQ4 and KQ5 has more puzzles with very abstract logic. I think it might be, as just like Al Lowe said, he didn't at first understand that going from parser to icons made his puzzle design too easy, Roberta might have realized that and made some of the puzzles of KQ5 more obscure because of that. And that lead into some pretty clunky puzzle design.

KQ5 is actually a pretty interesting step backwards for Roberta. KQ4 is much better game and has a pretty solid design overall. Also I've always liked Colonel's Bequest a quite a bit, which still is IMO a solid game with fairly logical puzzle design, which has none of the "pie in the Yeti's face" kind of puzzle design. I think going from parser to icons threw her off the balance, just like what happened to Al Lowe with Larry 5, which beame too easy because of it.

Well luckily enough Roberta was smart enough to create an alternative puzzle to get you where answering right to the gnomes name puzzle would have taken you. For all it flaws, which can be forgiven being that during the 80's game devs were just making it up on the run, King's Quest 1 is a great example of a game where several puzzles can be solved differently, In many ways King's Quest 2 was a step backwards from it and it has even more mind blowing puzzles than KQ1 has. Like the suagar cube, or the harness and the snake, or that damned bridge. But it also is pretty non-linear. And, IMO, Roberta just like the guys did got better and better as they went on. Was she favourited by her husband? Most likely as she always hade the first hand access to newest tech and most likely the best resources of the company, but at the same time she did strive to go forwards, which is more than can be said even on many current devs.

Here's a classic one, and propably one of the most difficult puzzles in adventure game history, straight from King's Quest 1, the original AGI version. The official SCI remake had simplified one. "The name of the gnome"-puzzle. Now, you need to guess a name of the gold spinning gnome, who is, if you know your fairytales, Rumpelstiltskin. If you try with that, no cigar, as that's not quite the answer the game wants, despite you'd be on a right fairytale. In a place that has nothing to do with Rumpelstiltskin you can find a not that says "Sometimes it's helpfull to think backwards.". If by some leap of logic you arrive into a conclusion that that particular note is related to the gnome you can try to write the name Rumpelstiltskin backwards. But that's no dice either, as that's not quite the answer the game is seeking. And there's no other hints it will give you either about the solution. And the solution is, that you need to throw the alphabet backwards and choose letters that are in the same location as would the original letters of Rumpelstiltskin be. Yeah. I doubt there was many people who solved that one, espceially with the small amounts of hints the game gave you. And if you didn't know the fairytale itself, good luck trying to even get in the same page with the puzzle, as the game has no mention of the gnomes name anywhere, it just expects that everyone knows the fairytale. In the SCI remake it was simplified so, that it actually accepted the Rumpelstiltskin spelled backwards. And even then it was relatively difficult puzzle.

I think the 30 dollar tag is a tad hefty as well. They do seem to defend it by being indie, but there's a lot of indie games out there with better production values, even adventures, with much more reasonable pricing. I think they might have miscalculated the pull of re-made retro titles a bit.

It's not entitlement if you buy something thinking it is a full game if it's not labeled as something else. It's the sellers fault, not the customers. (disclaimer, I have not bought it.)

I'm pretty sure I originally had to check the voodoo writing solution from a walkthrough back when I played GK1 in the glorious 90's. Though in retrospec it is pretty logical, as you just combine already known things in it. Of course, one thing how it could be made easier would be to accept a line of text with correct words in it , no matter what the exact order of those words is. That would be relatively simple check to do, as the list of acceptable words is pretty short.

Oh yeah, those. I remember playing the Indiana Jones one. That was reasonably fun. They really should port those for tablets, they'd fit well as something little to play on the go.

I always did wonder it a bit why they didn't do SW adventure games, but the rights being with someone else would explain it. And by the time they got the game rights back doing an adventure wasn't the only viable option.

There's a couple of titles I've been looking to get right out the bat. At least Outlaws, X-Wing and Tie Fighter.

Sure, as a collection that is dirt cheap, so as a collection that is a must buy for anyone who likes Apogee and doesn't already got those titles. And Keen games haven't been in sale anywhere for a good while now, so it is great to see them surface again.

Some of those have been in GOG for ages. There's only a couple of titles there that haven't been for sale in othet digital stores. http://www.gog.com/games##sort=bestselling&devpub=apogee_software&page=1

I think most likely because Activision wants King's Quest to be the first official Sierra re-launch title. We already know that Activision is making the rules for Pinkerton Road what comes to GK20th release and so on, so had they wanted to Activision could have made it Sierra re-launch title.

It's the couple of first days. Overall I'd say the voice acting seems a bit of a mixed bag, but Gabe was the only one that made me gringe. But I enjoyed the demo quite a bit actually. Based solely on it I'd be willing to go as far as to give it 3,5 stars out of 5. And the technical improvement POS has gained is pretty amazing, as I must admit I didn't expect much of them after Moebius. Do you know if they're doing anything to Jackson Square? Out of all the places in the demo it felt like it was using some placeholder art. Definetly the weakest are graphically and it looked like it really could use some more passes before called finished.

On the topic of GK, POS has released a demo in Steam and after trying it I must say I liked it a lot. Gabes voice is my only huge issue, he sounds like a mix between Elvis and Tim Curry. But other than that it does look like a solid game.

Even if I'd say I'd just try it to see how it feels like, I know I will end up playing the first book through. I couldn't resist playin BS5 nor Broken Age. I doubt I could end up resisting a game I've been waiting since I played Dreamfall ages ago.