The Adventurers Guild

It's time for King's Quest V, a game that was originally released with some strangely disturbing box art of a family being kidnapped as they were performing their nightly line-dancing routine.

Do owls eat children? I'm pretty sure that owl is planning to eat the kid.

King's Quest V is a game I have a little personal history with.

I originally bought it for the Amiga when it came out, played a little bit, and as usual with adventure games in those days, I became stuck relatively early and gave up somewhere in the first town.

Now this is a much more like the sensible box art I remember

I played the game again some years later (late 90s or early 00s) and finished it with a lot of help from a walkthrough. I very rarely play adventure games without using hints or a walkthrough these days, so I'm looking forward to testing my skills (and patience) in a playthrough of a difficult game using only my wits. I wouldn't be surprised if I get stuck at some point, so get your bets in on when I'll be asking for assistance.

I feel it's appropriate for me to play the game on this blog seeing as I own the PC version of the game because I won the King's Quest Collection here, in an extremely round-about way. The game was originally donated by Lars-Erik and won by Canageek for guessing the Conquests of Camelot score. Canageek regifted the game to whoever guessed the Circuit's Edge score. Ilmari guessed the Circuit's Edge score and regifted the game with his own quiz. I won Ilmari's quiz and took the King's Quest Collection prize which I only seemed to win because nobody else wanted the bloody game.

According to Mobygames, King's Quest V was the first adventure game to be released on CD-ROM in Multimedia PC format, the first to have digtitized voiceovers, the first to use digitized hand painted backgrounds, and the first to cost over US$1,000,000.

Following the lead of Lucasarts, this was also the first Sierra game to use a mouse & icon based interface rather than a text parser. Unfortunately for my sanity, it kept Sierra's 'deaths and dead-ends make good gameplay' policy. But, baby steps, right? If you haven't guessed, though I've enjoyed many Sierra games, I always much preferred Lucasarts adventure games.

Roberta Williams is once again credited as the lead designer of the game, with many of the other developers having credits in multiple Sierra Adventure Games (including our own Corey Cole listed under Development System... whatever that means.)

Like many games of this era, King's Quest V had various releases in different formats, on different platforms and in different countries. Trying to find release dates has given me some conflicting info, but it seems that the original game came out in late 1990 as both an EGA and VGA version (likely November 1990) with a CD-ROM 'talkie' version coming out in late 1991 or early 1992.

The VGA version even came with an offer to swap it for a worse version

Rather than hire professional actors, many of the voice actors in this game were also the game's developers, which was common at the start of the CD-ROM gaming era and led to some, shall we say, suboptimal voice work.

As for what version I'll be playing, I thought I'd leave that partly up to you, the readers (while trying to steer you towards my preference along the way.)

The Trickster came up with a basic policy of playing an updated version of a game if it comes out within about a year of the original version. My personal wish would be to play the version most people would be able to play today if they bought the game – within reason. I wouldn't play the Monkey Island Special Editions, for example, but would always prefer to play the 'final' version of the game from back in the day. The version I have is the Steam version, which is the CD-ROM version with voice acting.

I'd prefer to play the 'talkie' version, but if there are significant objections I could be persuaded to play a different version. Bear in mind though, that only one version will be played. We won't be playing the EGA version, VGA version and CD-ROM version so we should choose the most appropriate version for the blog. I've made my personal preference clear, with my reasoning largely being that there's no benefit in playing the non-final version unless we're going to be playing all versions and comparing.

King's Quest V used scanned paintings for the VGA backgrounds, and from looking at screenshots of different versions, it appears the graphics were then downsampled to lower graphics modes with some manual editing done to improve the image. More information and comparisons can be found here.

EGA version with 16 colours

Amiga version with 32 colours

VGA version with 256 colours

Whatever version I play I will make some reference to the version differences during the final rating post. Let the discussion begin!

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

Example bet: (We're bringing it back!)
Zl tveysevraq'f tbar zvffvat
Naq V guvax V'z gb oynzr
'Pbf V whfg nobhg pnyyrq ure n juber
V jvfu jr jrer xvffvat
Ohg V'z cynlvat uvf tnzr
Enccvat guerr gvzrf gb bcra gur qbbe

Jub nz V sbe 20 PNCf?

If you want to read more about the game, much of the information and images came from Mobygames and SierraGamers

Written by Aperama

I assume I'm the guy with the arm technology who's staring at the wolfman?
(Also: Ubisoft title before DRM! I expect multiple layered manual protection systems..)

A-A-AH! I get to learn to use B.O.B as part of B.A.T! I 'can't wait' to see what acronyms await me

Again, we find ourselves approaching a hybrid adventure game. B.A.T. is going to be difficult to tackle – it's already been taken on by another blogger most of us know around here (though he used the 1989 definition from the Atari version as opposed to the PC redo that we're playing), has the unenviable situation of being directly noted in the PISSED rating by the man who started us all off on our quest to play games in public.. and perhaps worst of all, is French. For those of you who are presently spitting your croissants and fine wine onto your screen at present, I'll freely point out that this blog has something of a negative history as it comes to French adventure titles – typically, they look great and have a fantastic personality to them, but are both painfully confusing and handle like a tank being driven by a slug – so it's fair to say that I'm not particularly enamored of the task that sits ahead of me. Still, it's definitely going to be interesting, even if it does already feel like a pain in waiting.

The two on the right of this picture appear to be the creators of this
– Lange to the left, Cordoleani to the right

I've spent some small amount of time attempting to research 'Computer's Dream' (later Haiku Studios) who created this game – it essentially appears to be a two man team. Hervé Lange and Olivier Cordoleani (who had prior to this made another adventure game never translated from native French, 'Fer et Flamme', or Iron and Flame). I've spent more than my fair share of time slipping around in an attempt to work out if they got up to much of anything else over this period, but it doesn't appear that they have any pedigree from text adventure or other games of their ilk. This isn't necessarily a bad thing – but I do note that after this game and its sequel, they only managed to produce one more title before they eventually became bankrupt. If they've been up to anything of note since, I struggle to find any more information about them of recent days, with the possible exception of Mr. Lange, who either moved to Canada or has a doppelganger with a history of working on a Nickelodeon-based MMO and a few children's puzzle games for the PS2 according to a random Linkedin page I can find. Hopefully, this just means that they faded into obscurity having had their fill of dealing with the woes of computer gaming, and not that the game was so horrible nobody ever wanted to work with them again. The only other name I can find against the game is 'Mike Brown', who obviously ported the game from Atari to DOS. So not really someone who worked on the game per se – just the person that made sure the hardware differences weren't a huge issue. Apparently, it came with its own dongle for the Atari ST to better play the music it had, which I'm listing as it's the only other piece of information I can get about the game that isn't ripped from the pages of the manual.

This is the most legible page of the 'story' section of the manual. This appears to be the whole backstory of the game – it has a glossary appended with no less than twelve explanations!

And what a manual it is! Half of it is 'story'– it's supposed to read as a short transcript of a conversation pushed amidst an 'encyclopaedia entry'. For those of you who are wondering what that is, it's like Wikipedia in a book. (Boy, seeing one of these in a 'futuristic' game makes it feel old!) There's a sincere issue I find here, as the 'short story' reads like it's the middle of a story, not the start of one – I've tried to read through it three times now and find my eyes begin glossing over and wondering what brand the little Marvel Thor figurine sitting to the right of my computer screen is – it was bought for me as a Christmas present, and it holds a hair-tie around it which I use in emergencies. It's actually Blu-tacked to the speaker sitting next to it.. I mean, the story is very interesting! *cough* Thankfully, a fair idea is given by the back cover, sans the gobbledygook wording that has yet to draw me in. There's a fair chance that I'll be referring back to the manual's story as the game progresses and the universe unfolds around me – but as I read the following half of a paragraph?

'… thermodynamism (ability to adapt to the pervading atmosphere) is obtained thanks to prolix hair (an animal native of the Arpion desert, a planet subject to important climactic variations)... My combat clothing conserves the trends of the 1st millennium of our era... however, the abdorax based on licox is rigid...'

… I feel like I need to have had a few chapters with no new words introduced before I'm going to know what prolix, licox, abdoraxes.. oh, dear lord. The basic story is that Vrangor, an 'evil genius', has announced in co-ordination with Merigo, a 'small-time crook', that they plan to bomb the largest city in 'Selenia'. This is probably only a problem because the character (that you can either use a default one of or create) is living there, right? Wrong! The he/she/it that we are tasked to play as (who I am planning on calling AFGNCAAP) is a member of B.A.T – the Bureau of Astral Troubleshooters.

In case you were all wondering, it's a Funko brand. I asked.

With a dearth of acronyms already thrown at me (and many doubtless to come), the manual explains that all B.A.T. agents have a B.O.B. installed – a Bio-directional Organic Bioputer – which is implanted into their arm so that they can get good mobile reception no matter where they are. Long story short? AFGNCAAP is a secret agent for the space police, and (it) has ten days in order to find out where all of the bombs are being hidden. I do wonder if the character generation process is actually going to prove itself as noteworthy, with six statistics – Force (strength), intelligence, charisma, perception, energy (vitality/'willpower'?) and reflexes (agility). These influence fourteen characteristics – 'chatter', lockpicking, detection (of traps), electronics, climbing, evaluate (barter), mechanics, stealing, tracking, locating, vigilance, 'firing' (power), precision and psychology (charisma). I'm referring all of these mentally back to fantasy RPG tropes as opposed to the sci-fi feel that the game is going for largely because I feel more comfortable with those terms. The base six stats (0-20) for each, with an overall points pool of 78, influence the fourteen characteristics, so I'm imagining that a character with high force, reflexes and energy will be a death machine, and a character with high intelligence, charisma and perception will be a loveable construction worker. I'm leaning towards the latter. There are also weapons listed in the manual which will apparently 'be issued when you make contact with your agent', from the stealthy yet largely undamaging Voktrasof to the game's BFG, the Nova. You can either hold one big (freaking) gun or two smaller ones.

Definitely some options – the only real questions are can they be influenced in game,
and will they really end up mattering?

They've definitely put some thought into the in-game combat, and the game even has meters that check whether you've eaten/drunk enough throughout the game. The manual suggests that it's entirely mouse-driven, with a context-sensitive set of nine icons that will pop up when usable – movement, speech (one for 'static' characters always in one spot, one for 'mobile characters' that move around), drinking, buying, a 'target' for fighting, a 'heart' for romance, an arrow to say you can use the object (e.g. a computer) and a question mark to say that you don't have what you need in order to use the object on screen. It already looks quite clunky just from the manual – and there's still the entire menu full of things to use B.O.B, vehicle use (the 'DRAG', a Tex Murphy-sounding flight simulator), gambling.. the game really does look like it's tried to throw just about everything it can at the player, so it has every opportunity to actually grip me in spite of my slight pessimism looking into it, largely because the manual reads awfully like a flight simulator or something similar. And hey – King's Quest 5 will be being played concurrently, meaning that nobody will read these anyway! Onwards to Daventry! Er, the XXIth century!

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

Example bet:
V pnzr urer gb fghql fbzr erthyne ebpxf
Jvgu uryc sebz n urycshy naq ybpny lbhat zna
N abvfr sebz gur qbbe naq n frevrf bs xabpxf
V arrq gb pbzr hc jvgu n hfrshy arj cyna

Jub nz V sbe 20 PNCf?

Answers by TBD

Introduction and Captions by Ilmari

I can with all honesty say that without TBD this blog might not have continued after Trickster's stepping down from active blogging duties. When I made the call for a fellow admin, TBD was the lone brave warrior volunteering for the task. I myself have grown to depend on my trusty comrade, who has often been the voice of reason more than I could have ever been. But enough eulogising, let's hear TBD himself!

If you didn't know, he works usually as a PI...

...but from his love of riddles I deduce this is his secret identity!

I actually wrote my answers a few years ago but never sent them in because I was stuck on the last question. Now that I'm about to blog my way through King's Quest V I thought I'd better get my act together and submit my What's Your Story now. So let's get to it...

My home country is… Australia.

My age is… 43.

The first adventure game I played was…

Now we know why he got into detective business!

[Original answer] The Secret of Bastow Manor 64. I have extremely fond memories of this game and my life's goal is to save up enough CAPS to make Trickster fire up a C-64 emulator and play Bastow Manor. For the time it had great music and amazingly complicated graphics considering they were just done using the keyboard.

Now that I can't make Trickster play the game no matter how many CAPs I earn, I'll have to settle for playing it myself as a Missed Classic at some point. Stay tuned...

My favourite adventure game is…

Just to warn you there's some mischief going on...

[Original answer] Tough call. I'm going to go with Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, but if you ask me tomorrow my answer's likely to be different.

That was my answer two years ago, but seeing as I'm editing these answers now I'm going to double dip and say The Pandora Directive! Who says you can't answer the same question twice?

Shame on you! BTW, have you noticed that detective theme continues?

When I’m not playing games I like to… Play or watch sport or watch TV/movies – and sometimes when I've been playing a game I'm really immersed in I'm often thinking about the game while not playing it – there's been a few times when I've solved an adventure game puzzle while on the bus on the way to work and had to wait 10 hours before I can see if my plan works or not.

I like my games in (a box, digital format)… Like a lot of people here I used to love the boxes but seeing as the last few times I bought a box it just had a CD in it and no manual, I've switched almost purely to digital - I'm loving the ability to simply download and play games without having to grab the CD from a box and look for the latest patches, and love not having to put the right CD in the drive whenever I want to play something different. Thumbs up for modern technology.

The thing I miss about old games is…

[Original answer] I really can't think of anything. I love old games, and even play old games I missed at the time, but I can't think of anything that was in old games but doesn't still appear today. No, wait, I thought of something. Detailed manuals written in the style of the game's world. I'd sometimes read the manuals as entertainment even when not playing the games. These days it doesn't happen so much.

Now, two years later, I have a new major thing that I really miss about old games – not having to deal with various monetization strategies. I'm going on a bit of a rant for the next few paragraphs so feel free to skip to the next question if you don't want to read my personal peeves.

I miss just being able to buy a game based on if I think it will be enough fun to justify the price. These days I have to study the store page, reviews and forums to find out what DLC is included in which versions of the game, and which DLC adds stuff to the game that I like and which DLC are just multiplayer-only or just a different outfit or weapon that I don't particularly want to pay for.

Special bonus negative points for any game that never comes out with a complete edition after a few years that contains all DLC (I'm looking at you Mass Effect series!)

It's good that there's a parody of the concept

And super bonus surely-you-can't-be-serious negative points for any game with microtransactions to do things that used to be, and should be, controlled by different difficulty levels, cheats and/or mods (Yes, NBA 2K series, there's a reason I'm pointing in your direction – if you set up a system to charge money to make the game more fun, it seems you're acknowledging that many people would find your default levels of progression frustrating, so how about giving them options to increase the amount of VC earned from each game played via the settings menu instead, eh? Otherwise I might be tempted into thinking that you're deliberately making your game less fun in order to make more money, and no self-respecting game developer would do that, surely.) Fortunately this trend hasn't taken over the industry at this point, so we're still safe apart from some outliers. I don't like the trend though, and if it spreads to most games I might become one of those grumpy old gamers who whines about how great the old days were – and get off my lawn!

The best thing about modern games is…

Atmosphere. In the past each game brought me into a new world but as time's gone on games have immersed me more and more into their worlds, with physics, better graphics, 3d, better music and sound effects, writing and voice acting, and more.

I know some people will hate this example, but I can't go past Skyrim to show how modern games can be so much more atmospheric and immersive than older ones (and Skyrim manages to avoid all the negative points of some modern games that I just finished whingeing about.)

And speaking of parodies...

The one TV show I never miss is…

There's not really one show I can't miss at the time. With the ability to record and series link shows I never have to watch them when they're on so I record quite a few shows. The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones are some of my favourites, but everyone's already mentioned those so I'll go with my favourite unsung show - Eureka. It's really fun light entertainment that generally doesn't take itself too seriously even when tackling serious subjects.

It's now two years later and I'll add that partly due to people's answers to this question, I started watching the new Doctor Who about a year ago and am now fully caught up, and have enjoyed it immensely. So thanks everyone who mentioned it – you've created another fan!

Yes, we have soon enough fans to take over Cardiff!

And considering your love of riddles, you will love our initiation rituals.

If I could see any band live it would be… The Beatles, no question. I assume a time machine would have to be involved somehow but I'm up for it. I might need a better car - I doubt mine can even get up to 141.62 km/h?

I am sure we can get a time machine for you somewhere...

My favourite movie is… Raiders of the Lost Ark. Non-stop action with humour and a great heroic character.

One interesting thing about me is…

My inability to think of a good answer to this question is why I never submitted my answers years ago. But here goes...

Though I've been a frequent reader, commenter and now an admin of The Adventure Gamer blog, adventure games aren't even my favourite genre. My favourite genre is very much RPGs, with strategy games and adventure games playing clear second-fiddle when it comes to enjoying my spare time.

Written by Aperama

Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Culturally Ambiguous Adventure Person's Journal #1: It's hard to be positive about being a B.A.T. operative. The pay is lousy and mostly goes towards food and drink – hell, they didn't even land me here on Selenia with any ammo – they barely give you any idea of what you're ready to face.. and they're so devoted to secrecy that I had to have my debriefing meeting with a strange guy in a toilet. Oh, and it's not until NOW that they tell me the planet I'm on is going to blow up in ten days! Naturally, they didn't give me enough to fly back out of this rock.. guess it's time to start pumping people for clues. Watch out Terrapolis, here I come!

I've ended up with a character that's pretty well even across the board
who specialises in conversations (not to mention electronics and stealing).
Looks like your average adventure gamer to me!

B.A.T. is not a game that I think I will ever – or could ever – love. It's already managed to annoy me with its interface rather heavily (in a rather short play session, might I add) by being extremely inconsistent. If you click on the screen when it has the standard cursor (which according to the manual is 'the falcon 's eye, the symbol of B.A.T.') it brings up B.O.B, the arm computer system. It looked to me at first that this was also the load/save option, though that was actually the 'pre-programming' set thing that I couldn't wrap my head around in the manual on the first glance. Anyhow, in and of itself this is straight forward. Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite that way. It can appear/not appear at seemingly random, with the 'conversation' icon sometimes coming even in the sky or the ground. Utterly maddening. Not being able to reliably bring up what is essentially the main interface is simply ridiculous. The combat interface is utterly ridiculous, being even less tactical than the previous game Elvira was. Unless I'm missing something, it consists of selecting a weapon and clicking like a madman until the other person dies (or you do.) Uuuugggghhh.

All because the geniuses in B.A.T. didn't even give me ammo to go with my guns on introducing me to the city. Not so much as a robotic sausage. Life.. don't talk to me about life..

Anyhow. I decided to focus more getting a feel for the interface in this post as opposed to trying to make big storyline leaps (given only two of you are going to read these posts anyway, I can't emphasise enough just how painful the interface really is.) The B.O.B. screen is definitely interesting, admittedly. From what I understand, it's possible to set up a few things through it, for instance having it automatically translate 'robot' or 'alien' when you're conversing with one of those – but I really don't see the purpose behind doing so. It feels like I'd be spending longer messing around with the interface than I would really be comfortable with. As is, it's quite annoying that I have to do the manual translations, even though it seems that the majority of the species I'm encountering are either human or alien – it feels a lot like I'm having my gameplay stretched out. I really don't want to have gameplay stretched out. (I'm really depending on the French gods of gaming to have pity on me at this point!)

I find myself wondering if these screens will give me any sort of warning that I'm about to starve to death without having to constantly click on them, as I'm utterly sure I won't remember to look..

Anyhow, I do suppose what little I've played through should be explained. On landing in the spaceport and messing around with the interface for about ten minutes before even finding the area I was due to enter, I went to the unirace restrooms (although, as the game says, they are equipped for all types of anatomies, they're not very pleasant), I spoke to a police officer who gave me a few clues. Apparently, Vrangor (evil genius extraordinaire) has 'access to some very strange places', to find Merigo, I should 'try the seedier parts of town', and when I asked him of the city, 'the only access to the engines is in the old building'. I can only imagine this is him suggesting that the engines are a weak point to be targeted by bombs? I'm not even completely certain what the engines are for, given Terrapolis is supposedly a city built on a plateau in the largely arid Selenia. Anyhow, in going to the slightly ajar restroom stall, our local contact (complete with his B.A.T. pin badge on the right hand side of his coat) gives a quick monologue/summary of what the manual and back cover have already told us. Vrangor is crazy. Selenia is strategically important to the Earth, as it has large quantities of raw materials, and Vrangor is threatening to blow the city of Terrapolis if all of Earth's interests don't leave it within ten days. While Vrangor has hidden his tracks well, Merigo has been located entering the planet via an 'ecg wave' (his brainwaves, I'm guessing) and as such, we're loaded up with some guns, five hundred Krells (the local currency), a credit chit with 1000 Krells on it, and a hologram of Merigo to show to whoever might have seen him. Neat!

Sweet, equipment! Now why couldn't we have met somewhere OTHER than a toilet stall?
Working here really is the.. well, you know.

Here's probably a good point to mention that the inventory system is legitimately horrible. Each item is listed singularly, and the only selection is made with a 'NEXT' button, meaning that if my inventory should bloat, it'll be quite difficult to work out what I've got exactly. So, I've been given two weapons (a 'hacker', a weapon that 'shoots several thousands of missiles simultaneously', and a 'Haas 10' which is a pistol-like missile launcher with heat-seekers and dumb-launchers) – but no ammo for either. Luckily, I don't plan to spend much of this game shooting if I can help it, as the combat is really that bad. (And yes, this is a homemade video by yours truly, but this is first chance to plug the 'Adventure Gamer' YouTube channel, which will no doubt see occasional uses from the writers around. Also note the way I find someone to 'talk' to (and shoot at) – it's literally random as to whether or not you manage a hit. I also left the full DosBOX screen up to make it clear – combat is that fast even at 3000 cycles.) From the spaceport, we end up in a random sort of 'travel lounge' place, I imagine it's supposed to be – there's a vending machine to buy some food along with a club, so this is essentially the Duty Free area of the spaceport. Apparently, the club (or 'pub' as the game calls it in spite of it having the word 'CLUB' written in the staircase leading to it) has a reputation for being one of the shadiest places in town. A number of visitors have been found dead, too! Oh no!

What's with that little E.T. looking thing?

I still don't fully understand this. The little screen you find in the corner requires a bribe for 'information on the city' for no apparent reason, though you can just leave, with a picture of what looks like a gun poking towards you.. but it has no payoff aside from this thinly veiled threat.

Given that the Space Pub/Club/Bar/Place To Imbibe Overpriced Drinks was largely a bust (unless I was missing something important in there and just couldn't work it out from the interface), the next screen is 'Astroport Square', a place that is 'teeming with people'. It's pretty much what you'd expect coming out of an airp-- er, spaceport – overpriced hotels, overpriced fast food. Again, the place seems largely to be useless, though it does serve its function of leaving a place to keep your B.A.T. agent healthy. I'm imagining that one of the meters on the B.O.B. unit (getting so sick of these acronyms) is indicative of how much rest you've managed to give to them, with 'drink' and 'calories' being the other key health indicators. Still, I'm not going to worry about it until it's needed – so after buying a Dish of the Day special at the Mecafood Center™, it's on to more interesting places..

The 'hot quarter', I'm assuming, is like the Red Light district

However, the central junction has a gun shop

Just for the record, here. I selected the Hacker, which has AG-1080 charges.
I had to double check, as this read awfully like 'A610-80' to me in that font..

So, after having ammunition to go along with my willingness to pump people for information and steal from them recklessly (as is the true adventure gamers' way), I went on a spree of information gathering. A 'skunk' (essentially, a human street punk) told me that someone near the park mentioned Vrangor, and one 'Crisa Kortakis' has a lot of influence here on Terrapolis. (A Glockmup, a 'traveler native to MIGA, not very intelligent but very proud, often destined to carry out dirty jobs and often used as assassins or robbers as they're 9 foot tall', mentioned that influence and money were going to be my best way to make my way around Terrapolis, so I'm doubtless going to have to find her at some point.) Showing the hologram to a Kradokid (one of the races populating the planet Sabellius, resembling lizards with only one eye and extremely intelligent but very fraternal) has them suggesting they might have seen them on 'Tri-Dee'– and any attempts to speak to a Stickrob (a robot that is 'slightly less intelligent than a human') is simply greeted with the note that they don't tend to care much about the goings on of humans.

Of course, I find them a lot more entertaining when they're speaking through
what looks like the Galactic Standard Alphabet...

So, while I've technically not gotten very far, I felt I had to end before the interface completely destroyed my brain. Still, I have a clear set of directions – I've got to share my hologram of Merigo around as openly as I can manage and track him down. Even though the manual suggests that the Glo(c)kmup (in the manual it's Glokmup, in the game a Glockmup) aren't to be trusted, something tells me that the direct mention of 'Crisa Kortakis' means that I'm going to have to hunt them down, too. This game already feels like a chore, and I haven't even gone past an hour of play yet.. I really hope that this picks up!

If only..

Session Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Written by TBD

King Graham of Daventry Journal Entry #1: "I thought my days of adventuring were over, but apparently not. On coming home from a walk, I found a hole in the ground where my castle used to be. My family and trusted friends were in that castle. Fortunately, my new friend, Cedric, saw the whole thing as was able to direct me to his master, a wizard named Crispin. Crispin gave me something to help me talk to the forest creatures, which ended up being terribly useful. I'm still no closer to finding my family, but I've made some allies who will no doubt help me along the way. Now, time to continue my quest..."

The game starts with an overly long and drawn-out introduction, something that would be annoying in a current game, but back in the early 90s, I used to gobble that stuff up. The fact that the graphics and use of voice were great for their time means I can forgive them for their indulgent lengthy closeups done purely to show off their mastery of the technology.

This 11 minute introduction could easily have been cut in half without harming the narrative – but it's all about wowing the gamer with great graphics and sound! And people say gaming has changed!

After finally getting control of Graham I began to explore my surroundings. Cedric suggested I go south to the town, so I went west to prove I was no owl's puppet!

I soon met a man who lost his fiancee and a bluebird drinking from a tree, and could do nothing with them. Then I saw a snake, specifically, a poisonous snake! The snake doesn't do anything no matter what I try to do with her, apart from tell me the road is hers, so I clearly need some kind of snake repellent before going east.

My disembodied legs chat with this depressed prince

I mapped out the area and found to my pleasure that it was consistent, meaning that if I went west and then south I would get to the same place as going south and then west (not necessarily so in many adventure games.) So, simple grid map it is.

I also noticed that, unlike earlier Sierra games, I could simply click on where I wanted to be and Graham would find a suitable path himself. Saving me from having to manually dodge every rock, bush and clump of grass - thanks, Sierra.

Cedric refused to enter the town because he was scared by a dog once, so I went on alone. In town I met a man fixing a cart (who left after I visited a shop), a tailor, a German toymaker with a child who wants to keep one of the toys for sale, a shoemaker who doesn't have any shoes for sale and four or so townspeople who have a generic line to say if you try to talk to them as they walk around. They're useless, but good for the atmosphere, making the town seem more alive.

The fat guy constantly tries on and complains about the outfits he's getting. I'm sure he'd much prefer some random item of second-hand clothing I find lying on the ground somewhere instead

After I left one of the shops, the man was no longer fixing the still-broken cart, but there was a silver coin there, which, being the benevolent and kind king I am, I obviously pocketed for my own uses.

King Graham, Pixel Hunter

Somewhere out there is a man whose cart no longer works so he can't make a living selling goods, and some rich king from another land takes his last silver piece for himself. I figure I'll probably be saving these townsfolk from an evil wizard at some point, so it's only right that I collect taxes from two realms now.

I next visited the bakery, and found that they were selling custard pies for a silver piece. Having just decided through some particularly baffling logic that I was clearly the rightful owner of the silver piece I found, I bought a pie from the baker who made a point to tell me how delicious it was.

Was that a hint? I checked out my points (I had six) ate the pie (which according to the narrator, was definitely delicious) then checked my points again (still six). Ha! Nice try game, but I'm not falling for this trick. If your pie doesn't give me the ability to fly or absorb dragon breath or something I don't care how delicious it is – I'll just keep it until I can trade it in for an old pair of trousers at some point instead. Restore a saved game time!

Coincidentally, William Baker and his brother both took up a career in baking.

To the west was an inn, which Cedric refused to enter because he doesn't like the place. I could do with a stiff drink so I entered. Three men were speaking in hushed tones and the narrator suggested I could hear them if I got a bit closer. I followed the narrator's advice, and promptly died. Remind me that if I ever meet that narrator in person I should raise his taxes.

My first death - how many will I find? (Death #1)

Outside the inn was a haystack, which I searched to no avail. I was expecting Graham to get pricked by a needle while searching, or to find something else there, but nothing happened.

Further to the west was another screen that seemed determined to kill me. A bear was trying to get honey from a beehive. There was a stick on the ground, which was clearly a valuable item because when I clicked the eye icon on it I was told what it was! Okay, death number two. Maybe I'll come back later.

This bear kills me with a move reminiscent of Wrestlemania (Death #2)

To the north was an anthill and a gypsy camp, neither of which I could do anything with right now. I did, however notice that the anthill music bears a remarkable similarity to Gabriel Knight's Detective Mosely theme.

It could be just me but when I heard this ant music I thought immediately of Detective Mosely - so I superimposed his theme over the second half of this video

A desert lay further to the west, and from my memory of playing the game before, I know I have to map the desert because I can only last a set number of screens (five?) before dying of dehydration and there are a few random oases scattered about. I went to the first row of desert screens, and found the ire of a small but dangerous scorpion. Death number three. Need scorpion-proof shoes I suppose.

My mum always said wearing thin boots would be the death of me (Death #3)

To the north I found a weeping willow with a harp and a story that seemed strangely familiar, but when I re-read the Quest for Glory II post I realised that it was only a passing similarity. The willow tree used to be a human and had her heart stolen by an evil witch and was now crying, creating a lake of tears – the only thing that gives her comfort is her harp. I want that harp, but know I won't get it until I find and return her stolen heart, so I settle for drinking her tears instead (too salty for my tastes, apparently)

Oh, the tears of unfathomable sadness! Mmm - Yummy! Yummy, you guys!

To the west of Crispin's house was an 'Enter at own risk' sign at a forest entrance. Being out of ideas, I entered. The cowardly owl refused to join me. On the second screen of the forest (no matter which way I went) I was killed by a witch, who looked more like a wizard to me – the beard gave him away. The manwitch threw some kind of energy ball at me which turned me into a toad – I suspect I'll be needing a mirror to reflect his spell back on him, but haven't found one yet.

Beware the deadly balls of the Manwitch (Death #4)

There was also a small house with two gnomes - the young one was playing with a marionette - I feel like I'll need to either give the marionette to the toymaker's granddaughter or give her doll to the gnome's grandson or both or somehow convince at least one of them to part with their beloved toy.

At this point I was sort of stuck. I walked around trying my magic wand on everything (Crispin gave me a wand at the beginning and told me it would need to be treated well before it would work, or something equally ridiculous) and trying to give a custard pie to everyone, as well as offering a fish to everyone and everything. I had earlier found a rotting fish in a barrel in town but got annoyed when the baker's cat refused to have anything to do with it. Then the obvious hit me – bears like salmon – I threw the fish near the bear and he took it and wandered off.

Queen Beatrice of the bees thanked me and offered me a free taste of her delectible honeycomb (that one's for you, Kenny.) I tried to take another piece, but the narrator told me that would be unwise – not as unwise as getting close to three thugs in a bar mind, but still unwise enough that Graham refused to do it.

We royal types need to stick together

Going north to the anthill guarded by the New Orleans police department band, I found a dog trying to play with the dirt castle. Having just picked up a stick, the answer seemed obvious. The dog took my thrown stick and left, towards the desert unfortunately – if I see dog bones next to a smiling scorpion later, I'll be unhappy.

King Antony of the ants thanked me and told me that his subjects would help me out at some unspecified later time. I decided that ants might be very useful for eating through rope so I deliberately got myself captured by the inn thugs again, in the hope that my new ant friends would come to my aid. They didn't, the unreliable little bastards, so I reloaded and decided to call it a day for my first session.

This map is proof I should never be hired as a cartographer

So tune in next time, when I'll likely have to save a swarm of flies from a hungry antelope!

Session time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Save The Owls Fundraising
Western Screech Owl

Joe Pranevich mentioned in the intro post that he'd generously donate up to $25 to an owl sanctuary to make up for his feelings of hate towards poor Cedric.
From playing King's Quest V I already know owls are afraid of towns, dogs, forests, witches, deserts, bandits, inns and bakers. The owls need our help!
So, anyone who joins Joe in his quest for safer non-witch-infested sanctuaries for owls, will get themselves some bonus CAPs as well as the warm fuzzy feeling of helping a creature who is, well, warm and fuzzy. I'll be the first to join Joe in his quest with my own $5 donation.

Written by Mad Welshman

“Is it strange, sir, that my head unaccountably aches here, and I feel that I have been here for longer than I've seen?” Alice enquired, scratching irritably at her ribbon. The Reviewer chuckled, showing perhaps more teeth than necessary.
“Not all here is fair, child, and we want you to find things out yourself.”
Alice frowned. “That... Didn't answer my question.” The Reviewer's grin widened.
“It's a good demonstration of unfairness, don't you think?”

As you might have guessed from the last post, I already know this game somewhat, and can tell you right now that, while the descriptions are sometimes interesting, the pixel art is mostly lovely for the time, and the game has technical experimentation I'm quite fond of, one thing I'm not fond of is the often arbitrary nature of item placement, some of the puzzles, and some of the deaths.

Important note: You do have to stand up first.

Here's a good example, we fell on a pile of leaves and twigs. We can look at them, and we can search. We need to search, because there is a key inside, and examining the heap gives you not a single clue that there's a key in there. Locker on one side, 10 on the other? Right, let's keep an eye out for a Locker 10, then!

We find ourselves, as you can see, in a little corridor. We're locked in for the moment, with not a key in sight. But first, let's go to the far end of the east corridor, where an important mechanic awaits. Specifically, a bottle (in plain sight) and a cake (hidden under the table in a glass box). Anyone who's remembered Alice in Wonderland will know what these do, but for those who don't... Let's take a look at our score text again.

“You are normal sized.” Size is an important part of some of the game's puzzles, and it won't always be clear when we have to go smaller or bigger, or even how much smaller of bigger we need to get... Because yes, there are multiple sizes.

Let's experiment a little. Looking at the bottle, there is “some potion” inside. Well, what's the harm in drinki- Ahahaha, as expected, we're tiny, we're small, we're... big one turn later. And there's no potion left. Hrm. Well, there's still the cake, I supp-OUCH.

It's amazing how often Alice gets a bump on the head...

That, in one paragraph, is a further Dead Man Walking (wasting five minutes of our time) and another trip to the medicine cabinet, another damn reload. Well, if we knew the source, we'd know that was a silly idea in the first place. Not that it matters, but we ate all the cake too. There's also about five or six doors in this one room. So let's try the other end, passing a door with a C on it (near where we fell), a wooden door, and some furniture that seems to just be there as furniture.

How odd, a Piano is playing itself here, and some chairs are playing... Musical Chairs, oh ho ho ho! This is a nice easy puzzle, although if you're not careful, you can definitely die in here. One key's on a musical sheet (Key in C), and the other (Key in G) is inside the piano... Exactly where you'd expect musical keys to be (20 CAPs to the first person who correctly notes why these keys are unusual)! And... A thing I had not expected, or misremembered. Actual music. It's about a minute long, it's cheery, aaand... You'll probably have finished listening to the music before you've managed to switch discs the two or three times it asks you to and loads the graphics. I now remember why I preferred the DOS version more, less music or not.

Remember, sit on a chair when the music stop- Oh, it isn't stopping, and nor are the chairs.

...I can't believe I forgot that. Either way, getting the second key requires a bit of fiddling, taking the music sheet when the chairs are in the right position, getting on a chair, shrinking, getting into the piano, getting the key, and getting the hell out before you break the piano (And, incidentally, your head). After that, it's time to open some doors! The Broom Cupboard, opened with the Key in C, has three items, one of which (the card-shoe) is utterly necessary to the endgame. Thankfully, you can't leave the area without the overalls that are also here.

Now, it would be a good time to mention at this point that, within the six rooms of this area, you will be expected to change discs, if you're efficient and already know the solution, about five or six times. Two to four in the Piano Room (Not sure why it asked me to change disks twice), and two as you switch from the corridor (Disk 2) to the Long Hall (Disk 3, where our potion and cake are). I mention this because it's fun to see how much the game's assets take up. So far, it's around ten, eleven locations, two of which have animations attached, and one MIDI tune on disk 2 (Disk 1, as far as I can tell, is just the title image, the title midi, the installer if your ST had a hard drive, and the game's engine, which then stays memory resident until you reset the ST.)

For extra oddness, the three middle rooms are disk 2, the outside ones 3.

Either way, once we've gotten the Key in G, we can unlock the tiny golden door (of no use to us right now because we're too big), get visited by the rabbit, who drops a blue fan and blue gloves, and then... What?

This is where the puzzle isn't so elegantly designed. See, we have overalls, which are Gingham patterned (red and white checked cotton), but they're slightly too small for us. The cake is obviously not the answer. The gloves don't appear to be that important. We basically have to look through, and, in a process of elimination, work out we're meant to open the fan, wave it, and get into the overalls... Then wait for Mr. W. Rabbit to come back, mistake us for his maid Mary Anne, give us a key to his house and some demands, then leave the white door unlocked. Stepping through, we find ourselves... With no visible way back, and a second set of demands, this time from the Knave of Hearts, who tells us what we already knew (It's a dream), and that he'll tell us how to escape if we steal treacle tarts from the Queen of Hearts.

Damn his eyes, because although Alice hasn't met the Queen of Hearts, we, the players, have... and I'm already feeling an itching sensation as my neck feels slightly less attached than it is before. Still, there's also a stick insect here, on a stick. Adventure gamer kleptomania strikes again, and I try to get both. Sadly, the stick insect manages to get away. There's lots of directions we can go, but we're only going to deal with one this update. The rest are:

North, to the Palace Grounds. Nuh-uh, No Way Jose, not yet. That's Heart Country!
Every southerly path takes us to some woods, and straight south is a grin floating in midair and a saucer on the ground. I don't know about you, but I don't trust floating grins.
East is the path to the residence of Mr. W. Rabbit Esq, along with a poster telling us about a croquet game... We're not to be late if we're invited... Or heads will roll. Argh!

I actually kinda like it. Got a kind of old-country chic to it...

Rabbit's house is very badly maintained, which leads us to believe that Mary Anne, the maid we've been mistaken for, has been gone a very long time. The grass is overgrown, there's no laundry on the washing line, and the house itself doesn't look too great either. So naturally, we steal the washing line and the sole clothes peg, forlornly hanging on it. Time to rob Mr. W. Rabbit. Step one: Unlock the front door, and in we go!

I'm not going to bore you with the entire process lovingly described here, I'm just going to summarise. Upstairs is a locked door with a gap on the bottom. It is locked and the key is on the other side. There is a vice in a nearby garden shed, and we already have a sheet of music. I think you can guess how we're getting into the White Rabbit's room. However, one thing you're not going to notice unless you're looking at everything is that there's a playing card (6 of Diamonds). This is what the card shoe is for...

What the... Did anyone get the number of that card?

We also steal an egg and a cup from the kitchen. So, with all that bumf out of the way, we are finally in the White Rabbit's room, which has the pink fan, and the pink gloves we were sent here to get. You may be surprised to note that we're already a quarter of the way through the game... And already, we've found things where the developer has relied more on the hint function than designing the puzzles well.

All of the Items in Room we can see are lovingly described,
you can interact with most of them... And most of them are not very helpful.

There is no obvious clue as to the uses of the fans, although the potion and cake are obvious to anyone who's read the Wonderland stories (and there are clues on their containers), there is no clue that the No. 10 Locker key is there (and, as far as I am aware, we can completely miss this item, leading to a Dead Man Walking scenario). We have several items, and I will say that successful completion of this game requires all of them. But we have a goal: Get the hell out of Wonderland, escape this dream that, really, doesn't turn out to be a dream. More of a nightmare.

I currently have a pair of pink gloves, a pink fan, a pair of blue gloves, a lantern, an empty bottle, a cake, a washing line, a clothes peg, a stick, an egg, a cup, and a Locker 10 Key

Time Taken: 1 hour, 10 mins

Total Time: 1 and a half hours

Death States Discovered: Banging head on tunnel (Update 1), Crashing through piano (This update), Eating the cake indoors (This update)

Dead Man Walking States Discovered: Drinking the Potion (This Update), Not Getting Locker Key (This Update), Eating the Cake Before You're Supposed To (This, and At least one more update)

Written by TBD

King Graham of Daventry Journal Entry #2: "I've just seen enough sand to last many lifetimes and I have no desire to see even another grain of the accursed stuff – my first royal edict after I rescue my family will be to destroy all hourglasses in Castle Daventry. I scoured the desert for many miles, finding only a boot, a gold coin and a likely cursed bottle. But there is a silver lining - the gold coin has purchased information – information on my family's whereabouts. Just as importantly, I now have an item that I am certain will help me on my quest. I would love to use it immediately, but I am so very tired – it's likely the dehydration. So... very... tired...."

I don't think I can quite convey in words how boring this session was. It started well, it ended well, but the bulk of the 2 hours 20 minutes I spent was tedious busywork.

Before I continued, I loaded a previous saved game from before I bought the pie and tried using the silver coin on other shopkeepers – as this is an adventure game, the shopkeepers have limited inventory that you can actually buy - the tailor said that a silver coin wasn't enough for his blue cloak, and the toymaker requested a gold piece for his sled.

I did try the cloak in the inn, in case it was an invisibility cloak. It wasn't. I died. I reloaded.

I once again tried the haystack, thinking that something might be there after I did something elsewhere, and there was, or more to the point, I could get to it where I couldn't before.

They also do a great cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

I never would have thought the ants would help me find a needle in a haystack. But hey, they found a golden needle, which, unsurprisingly, belonged to the tailor, who was easily convinced that his beautiful blue cloak would be a suitable finder's fee. It seems Graham is just as much Vito Corleone as he is king, trading favours for items instead of using cash or barter like a normal person. It was the tailor's needle in the first place – if I found somebody's lost stuff the most I'd accept in return would be a beer or a cup of coffee – and it wasn't like the tailor offered the cloak – Graham 'suggested' it. I know I wouldn't say no to a guy who's singlehandedly defeated a giant and a dragon.

When I tried to wear the cloak I was told the weather wasn't cold enough. My deductive skills determined that I will at some point in the game go to a cold area. But now, time to go to a hot area.

Bloody hell, the desert! Everything I've just mentioned took 12 minutes.

My next plan was to tackle the desert – seems simple enough. And it was – very simple, but very boring and time consuming. So how does the desert work? You can only go a certain number of screens before dying of dehydration.

Birds- lucky I can talk to animals - please Mr and Mrs Vulture, would you kindly bring me wate...wait...noaaaaaaaaahhhhhh.

There are a few locations that contain water. So it's a simple case of travelling a certain number of screens, mapping continuously. I did this for 40 minutes, finding nothing of interest apart from two oases, which I could drink from, and some tents, which were empty apart from a fast bandit and had a water jug outside for drinking.

But wait, I'm just selling these Encyclopediaaaaaahhh...

Now that I write it, 40 minutes doesn't sound like too long, but 40 minutes of repetitive busywork seems longer than it is. At this point I'd searched 91 screens of desert, most of which you have to traverse multiple times to make sure you explore every screen on the off chance there's something useful there.

At this point, I made myself a cup of coffee – not because I was thirsty, but just to get away from the damn desert – if I weren't playing for this blog I'd have definitely downloaded a map from the internet before this point.

Graham and I both needed a drink after spending so much time in the desert

Coffee at the ready, I continued to map the desert. I found another oasis and a well - each time I found a new water source I despaired because it meant another bunch of screens I'd have to traverse.

I also found a skeleton with a boot, which I took.

Finally something other than sand

Eventually I found a temple, where the first interesting thing happened - I died.

Hi. I'd like to ask directions to the nearest oasaaaaaahhhhh

I knew what I was supposed to do, but just hadn't done it fast enough. This time I hid behind the rocks and the bandits rode past me to the temple door, saying “Open Sesame” and hitting the door thrice with a jeweled staff. After they left I tried the same, banging with my fist as I had no staff, but to no avail. I'd clearly need a staff. Despite the game's attempt at dulling my brain for the last few hours, the answer hit me quite quickly – the empty tents from before. I returned to the tents (stopping twice for a drink, of course) and found them partying. The small tent had the staff in it as well as a sleeping bandit – I carefully snuck in and quietly grabbed the staff. Then I woke the bandit to thank him at which point he knifed me in the throat.

Excuse me sir, may I borrow this staaaaaaaahhhhhh

Okay, let's try again without being so polite. This time I snuck past the bandit instead. I went back to the temple and opened the door with my staff, which promptly broke. Inside I saw a single gold coin and a bottle near the door and a large amount of treasure at the back. I knew taking the large amount of treasure probably wasn't going to do much good but had to try...

You know you're a bad king if you make the same mistakes as Daffy Duck

Taking the gold piece and bottle, I left just before the door closed (I died the first time for taking too long to switch from the hand to the walking icon, but did it fast enough the second time)

Finally I went back to civilization leaving behind the awful desert.

Here's the full map of the desert – all 210 screens, including the 7, that's right 7, screens with anything other than sand in them – a whopping 3% of the screens are useful! The minimum amount of times you have to die if you guess correctly every time is 32. I likely died at least 50 times.

Making the death screens red was a lot more fun than actually playing this part of the game

This whole desert sequence was just plain bad game design. The only way to be sure you've found every useful screen is to die 32 times, travel on 210 screens which all look the same, many of them multiple times, and there's absolutely no skill involved. It's all busywork. The fact that I'd clearly worked out the method a third of the way through and needed a break should be an indication that it went on way too long. Of course if there's a map in the game somewhere I've just wasted 2 hours and whinged unfairly on the game for this whole post.

Desert stats:
Total screens of desert: 210
Total screens with anything to do other than walk through it: 7
Percentage of useful screens: 3%
Minimum deaths required: 32
Time taken to do desert sequence: 2 hours 1 minute
Minimum number of screens required to traverse for full mapping: 300ish (stopped counting after 264 – took a guess)

Anyway, enough complaining about the desert, on with the rest of the game, which is quite fun.

The first thing I tried was using the bottle - Maybe there was a genie inside and he'd help me with a puzzle. I was half right. There was a genie inside, but he wasn't as grateful as I'd hoped...

Oh. Hi, Mr Genie. As for a wish, I don't need anything. Except this lamp, and the paddle game, and the remoaaaaaahhhhhh

Both the gypsy and the toymaker wanted my gold, but I figured I'd be leaving the town before needing a sled so gave the money to the gypsy. Seemed like a good decision as I got a cutscene...

I can escape if only next time he chooses paper

So, armed with more knowledge of Mordack the wizard (he's Manannan's brother and wants my son, Alexander, to turn his feline brother back into a human) and a new spell-repelling amulet, I'll start my next session by visiting the forest manwitch for some toad-reflecting action. Join me in a few days...

Session time: 2 hours 20 minutes

Total time: 3 hours 35 minutes

Session deaths: 6
Total deaths: 10

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Save The Owls Fundraising

As detailed in the previous post and started by Joe Pranevich, anyone who mentions that they'll donate to an owl-related charity during the King's Quest V playthrough will get an as-yet-undetermined amount of CAPs.

Also, any adventure game companies looking for a new artist, I am currently available!

Written by TBD

King Graham of Daventry Journal Entry #3: "I'm out of ideas. I defeated the witch in the forest and ransacked her home, but now I seem to be lost in the forest, unable to find an exit. I also helped a rat but suspect I should have done something to help the bird I saw running through the desert earlier. Am I doomed to stay here forever? I MUST find a way out – I CAN'T let Mordack keep my family prisoner while he tortures my son. There are some creatures here, but I don't know how to contact them."

I was right about the amulet working against the manwitch, but after meeting her in front of her house realised it's definitely a womanwitch. The beard I thought I saw was just a long witchy face. This time the witch didn't bother casting a spell at me, but she stood guard in front of her house. I offered her the bottle, which I knew to contain an evil genie. That worked well. The witch is now imprisoned for 500 years in the bottle and I had free access to her house.

Do witches sleep? I don't see a bed.

In it I found two items – a small key and a spinning wheel. I couldn't use the spinning wheel myself because I apparently lack the skills. I thought that giving the wheel to the tailor might help me. The key opened a small door in a tree in the forest which contained a heart – clearly the willow tree's heart.

So I now had two more ideas – give the heart to the willow tree and offer the wheel to the tailor, or perhaps the gnome if the tailor wasn't interested.

Problem – I couldn't leave the forest – the screen from which I entered was no longer available. So, I'm in a forest that is rumoured to contain a witch, I seem to be travelling in circles and am unable to leave and I'm sure there are eyes watching me from the darkness. I think I've seen this movie.

There is one screen that I seem to be able to do something with – a rock creature is there and blocks the way west, but I don't seem to be able to interact with it other than to look at it – there's also some eyes in the distance. When I tried using one of my items on the eyes, it said “The small creatures, whoever they are, don't seem to show any interest in it.” I tried every item I had (a boot, custard pie, small key, magic wand, amulet) but they didn't want anything I had.

Apparently the rock next to the frog is a creature, but I don't seem to be able to do anything with it

Convinced I had missed something, I reloaded and went back to some other areas to see if there was something new there. I tried the haystack again - nothing, checked out all the shops, offered everything new I'd picked up to the snake, tried everything but going back into the desert.

I was pretty sure I could give the boot to the shoemaker so he could either swap it for something or offer to fix it for me.

On the way from the baker back to the town with my boot, something new happened – I saw a rat running from a cat. I didn't have time to try anything before the cat caught the rat. I tried to talk to them as they left, but no luck. Oh well. I continued to the town. After unsuccessfully offering the boot to the shoemaker his wife and his dog, I decided to try going back into the bakery and leaving again to find another cat-rat scene, but it looked like that cat-rat scene was a one-off. I was pretty sure it was important so I reloaded my game from yesterday and tried going to and from the bakery again. I again saw the cat-rat scene, but immediately saved so I could try a few things. This time I tried talking to them both or picking them up – no luck. I tried my inventory items on them – first the boot – success! I threw the boot at the cat and the rat thanked me and offered my help. I assume the rat is king/queen of his tribe, as every other animal I've saved has been royalty. I'm a king myself and clearly won't lower myself to save a peasant - they can look after themselves – they're all dirty and they smell too much for my high-born nose anyway.

This is the first creature I've saved that wasn't wearing a crown.

So, another new idea - rats can eat through ropes. I got myself captured by the inn thugs again, and this time, as I'd hoped, King Rat came through the rat-hole and ate through my rope. I picked up the rope, which somehow looked like a full coil of rope despite having to have been eaten to threads by the rat (magic rope?) There didn't seem to be anything else I could do in the cellar though, and after a time I still got the same game over scene. The only items I seemed able to click on were the door (which had a rusty padlock) and the rat-hole (which had nothing in it.) I didn't seem to be able to do anything there, so I again reloaded to yesterday's save.

I tried to find the bird at the edge of the desert, but he seemed to be gone. I'm suspecting there's something I have to do with it, and it's one of those cat-rat only happens once deals, so next time I might try to reload an even earlier save and try things.

So, now I'm stuck. I have a few things I can try so hopefully I can figure it out.

One thing concerns me, the crying man that appeared on the bluebird screen the first time I was there and then left – maybe I needed to do something with him. I'll be very sad if that's the case, so I'll save that for after I try everything else.

Here's a list of things I can think of to try, in the likely order I'll try them...

Search the forest harder
Search the cellar harder
Reload and try to do something with the running bird by the desert
Try to do something with the bird in the tree
The one place I haven't been to for a while is Crispin's house – maybe there's something else I can do there
Buy the sled instead of the gypsy fortune and see if I can use that somewhere (perhaps the gnome child wants to swap his marionette for it)
Check out the tents in the desert to see if the bandits have left anything useful there
Restart the game and try to do something with the crying man before I talk to him. (I have kept backups of my original saves but this was literally the first thing I did in the game)

Session time: 45 minutes

UPDATE: Played for another 50 minutes for little progress. I now know a few more things about the forest and a few other places though...

If I don't kill the witch when I first meet her, she appears everywhere I do. Perhaps I should do something with her elsewhere instead. I tried killing her on the eye creature screen hoping that they'd see that I'm a witch killer and shower me with riches or an exit or something else useful. It didn't help.
I can also talk to the witch, which I didn't try before, and Graham argues with her like a 6-year-old.

Oh, I didn't know this was a PRIVATE forest. Do you OWN IT?

I can squeeze the honeycomb out onto the ground on the screen with eyes – I found this out by accident by attempting to give everything to a frog – it only let me do it on this screen so I I'm lucky I worked this out at all.
Leaving the honeycomb and doing a lap of the forest before coming back doesn't appear to do anything. I'm guessing I need bait to put on the honeycomb, but nothing I have seems to work.
There are small steps in the witch's house – they didn't look anything like steps in the graphics to me. I'm guessing the eye creatures are small and can get up those steps but I need to capture one with the honeycomb and some bait then I can force it to use the stairs to help me escape the forest.
After using the honeycomb I have sticky bees wax in my pocket instead – don't know what I can use this for.
I can walk into the moat of hellfire surrounding the witch's house.

I fell into a burnin' ring of fire. I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher

Walking past the ant castle makes me do a little dance, but I don't think that has a useful purpose other than giving me some more bad owl voice acting.

This was the moment the voice acting made me cringe

There was nothing to do around Crispin's house that I could find.

UPDATE 2: Played another two sessions of 25 minutes each and discovered some new but not useful things...

I missed a possible death early on – ENJOY!

Everyone's favourite kind of snake - Pooooiisonous

Talking to the willow tree before talking to the prince doesn't let me say “Hey, I think your fiancee turned into a tree. If the game's going to make me lose unless I don't talk to him at all until after I've re-humanized the princess, I'll hate it forever.
The running bird may just be an easter egg – I can't talk to it or throw a boot at it, but if I try to grab it it just says “BEEP BEEP” in a road runner cartoon style voice. The problem is, I can't 100% trust the game that this isn't important so I'm only 80% sure it's just an easter egg
I don't seem to be able to drop the honeycomb elsewhere (I only tried a few places, but it seems obvious that the one place I can use it is the one place it is useful.)
There's nothing new to do in the bandit tents after looting the desert temple.
I seem to be good at finding new ways to die. Here's another one.

Perhaps Graham should've paid attention when taking his daughter to her swimming lessons

UPDATE 3: Another 70 minutes, including starting the game from scratch, and discovered a few more things that don't help at all. I spent a lot of this time clicking on most parts of the background scenery in case something there is a clickable object rather than background decoration – didn't find anything useful though...

The willow tree sings a song if I talk to Cedric on her screen.

I found the song very moving

I can be killed by bees if I go to their screen before getting the fish (the bear doesn't appear if I don't have the fish apparently.)

As he was dying, Graham's last words were "I hope you all get killed by a bear..."

I can also use the golden needle to buy the toymaker's sled. So, golden needle or golden coin, both of which I can also use elsewhere.
I noticed that the toymaker's son, who comes into the room making seemingly-random comments, first mentions something about being out of wood and perhaps having to go to the sawmill. Is there a sawmill I missed? Or can I find wood for them somehow?
I fear there's an eighth useful screen in the desert – perhaps I didn't notice a clickable pixel on one of 210 similar screens while my eyes were glazing over during my 2 hour mapping session.
The hollow log in the “Enter at own risk” sign screen has a comment when I 'look' at it, but I don't seem to be able to do anything else with it. I'm pretty sure I also looked at it the first time I went to the screen.

UPDATE 4: I spent another 85 minutes achieving absolutely nothing. But again tried a few more things that didn't work...

I had a great idea that I was sure would work - throw a coin in the well that I found in the desert. Neither the gold nor the silver coin worked.
I also tried keeping the needle and the jeweled staff to open the cellar door (I was quite proud of myself when I came up with the idea of the staff) but neither of those worked.
I did some points-tests with the needle and gold coin, as they seem to have equivalent purchasing power - The gold piece gives me 5 points when given to the gypsy but no points with the tailor or toymaker. The golden needle gives me 4 points from the tailor, 2 points from the gypsy and no points from the toymaker. The baker gives 2 points for any of the silver coin, gold coin or gold needle - nobody wants to give me change if I pay too much - greedy peasants. This suggests that the tailor gets the needle, the gypsy gets the gold coin, and the toymaker gets something that I haven't found yet.

REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE
So, after 4 hours of no progress, I'm out of ideas. I'm officially putting in a request for assistance. Remember the rules for requests found here.

I'm stuck in either the forest or cellar, depending on which I choose to do first. I assume solving one of them will give me the item I need to solve the other.

Remember to code your hints/spoilers in ROT13, and start with a vague hint then get gradually more detailed. I think at least 3 hints before the flat-out solution spoiler works well.

Session time: 5 hours 00 minutes
Total time: 8 hours 35 minutes

Session deaths: 4
Total deaths: 14

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I have made a request for assistance. Thanks!

By Aperama

Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Terran Adventure Person's Journal #2: Well, I've explored the entirety of town, now. After having been shot at by Glockmups and Stickrobs (and damn, do those Stickrobs hurt when they fire away!) I managed to find my way to both the Artificial Park – which simply has to be a dead end, given I can barely even find anyone who'll talk to me there – and the Hot Quarter. After finding a lovely lady (and having her promise that I'll spend the night with her), I continued through to find the Xifo Club and its corresponding business building, both owned by the influential Crisa Kortakis – which I'm fairly sure I can finagle an interview with if I can just find my way into the club. It's going to be expensive, given I can't even find a bouncer to bribe.. boy, I hope B.A.T. take all of my receipts on tax!

This is what I found at the adult theatre in the Hot Quarter's 'films' department for 5 Krells.
Kenny? Restrain yourself, these people mean business

I'd first like to apologise for not being able to get a post up earlier. Conjunctivitis is not at all fun – I've essentially been without my right eye for the past week. It turned this completely menacing shade of red and everything. Unfortunately? It was far, far more interesting than this game is turning out to be. I was promised (by Trickster, no less!) that the game had an engrossing atmosphere that would be sure to draw me in. It.. just doesn't. After taking some advice from Jan Larres which came straight from the manual after the last post, I can say that I no longer have to go through and use the 'translate' function every time, while I left all of the 'personal health' meters alone as B.O.B. only allows about ten lines of code in a program at once.. but even that took inordinately long. It's a screen with an up and down arrow along with around about two dozen options – none of them conveniently located next to each other, forcing up and down arrow usage to be clicked repeatedly. Slowly. A scroll bar, even, or just smaller font, would have done the cyborg-masters at B.A.T. far better justice. Random combats pop up out of nowhere and simply aren't fun – they're clickfests and seem to require you to select your weapon each and every time, and only seem to pad out the game – I haven't received any of the native currency for the effort of self-induced RSI that the game seems to want to inflict upon me for doing so. In fact, I haven't yet found anything that will provide Krells apart from the 'Bizzy Game', a version of Simon Says which gives them away at 5 a pop – in contrast, a Nitrokola, the cheapest drink I've found, has a real value of 6 – 12 minimum after my barter skill.

It flashes three symbols and you then have to click them in the order they popped up. Oh, also? If you leave your credit chit in there after leaving the machine, it's lost forever. Vive le France!

So, when we last left off (aside from my pondering finding a physical copy of this game and violently assaulting it with a hammer), we were exploring ~~Daventry~~ Terrapolis in search of Merigo, a two-bit criminal who is likely to lead us to ~~Mordack~~ the evil scientist Vrangor, with the only named lead that we could follow apart from vague clues like 'go around here' or 'yeah, I think I saw them somewhere.. that's not here!' being the name of Crisa Kortakis, a famed businesswoman in the area. One of the few clues stated that we should 'try near the Park'– and there's only one 'park' I could find – the 'Artificial Park' near the doctor/surgeons place just past the gunsmith (he'll do a full body surgery for 180 Krells, which I think is a pretty damned good deal. Except that I'm a scummy adventure gamer who has reloaded every time any money has exchanged hands or I've lost any health – take that, fair gameplay!) There is only one (thing) that is permanently on the screen to talk to, and it has no information. I do notice that I get attacked a lot by both Glo(c)kmups and Stickrobs here – Stickrobs in particular aren't worth the time, as they pretty well universally run – so I wouldn't be surprised if there's something I'm missing here. The actual 'park' is essentially a 'tree museum'– there are some ancient animal bones and a free drinking fountain within. The only interesting thing inside is seemingly that there is one 'Cop' which gives a different response to questions than all of the others have – Merigo 'looks like a guy he saw in a nightclub' (the rest say they saw him around 'the old building'), and a DRAG pilot 'reported seeing an operational desert base' (instead of talking about weak points in the city.)

The only thing with a face here. If you hold the mouse in the wrong spot you can't even talk to (it).

But on the plus side, it would appear that even with the excuse of
being racist against 'aliens', the designers still had to get their digs in at Asian flea markets

Conversation with two people at once! Well, two on the screen.
You still have to talk to one at a time

Still, aside from the 'krotospaiis skeleton' from the desert (totally not a dinosaur, just ask the writers of the game), there's really nothing much I can find to interact with. This place is definitely on my 'something's up here' meter, though, and will doubtless be revisited before too long. However, far more clues have led to the Hot Quarter – or as I like to think of it, the carnival quarter. Why the carnival quarter? Everyone you speak to asks for money, and the majority of them that take it respond with the default 'Would you mind not wasting my time !!'. After giving them money. Harumph! The opening screen to the quarter is just an old man standing around to take money just to say 'oh, the hot quarter is over there!' The next screen has the aforementioned gambling house and what I can only think is the 'Terran only nightclub', where the game's inbuilt 'romance' system comes into play. It's essentially more RSI-inducing frantic clicking to no real notable avail, so I'll leave a video link to give an indication of the HOT ACTION that comes through from it.. (Unfortunately, I can't work out what to do with it. The game states that the person you 'seduce' will 'follow you around town', but I can't find anywhere to take her. The 'hotel' is just a cryogenic bed that costs ludicrous amounts of credits and seems just to be there for healing purposes. The restaurants are all automated.. I'll admit that I've just realised that I could have taken her to the park – but what would we do, have relations in the not-dinosaur skeleton?

On second thought, it looks a little more like a Sandworm from Dune..

I do hope that there's nothing more to the red light quarter than I've already found. There's lots of 'heart' symbols in there, but that just leads to more atrocious dancing, and my fingers are already feeling sore just thinking of having to 'show my smooth moves on the dance floor' again. At least you can frantically click the 'escape' button if you end up in a fight. Or perhaps the game is just telling me that I need to sit through and not click the mouse once! (I doubt this.) There don't seem to be any other interactible either people who stay on the screen or other places to visit in this section of the Hot Quarter, with just one more screen seeming to exist in this area of Terrapolis being the business HQ of Crisa Kortakis. Unfortunately, she isn't a particularly sociable person, with a huge bodyguard that you can't even try to blast away if you want to sitting in the front of the area, and her 'owned nightclub' not being accessible without an object, I presume a pass or something along those lines. I know this due to the manual and the manual alone – one of the ten context-sensitive icons is a 'question mark', which says you're missing something (or someone) to access or use with the thing you're hovering over. I thought that it was perhaps our lovely dancing maniac that it wanted me to take with us to the Xifo night club? It wasn't. French RSI-bait 1, Aperama 0.

Even with my 'darling' Lydia on my arm, I don't get in? Damn it..

A 'hulktronic'? I'm tempted to try him on with the 'Nova' in the startup screen.. but I know deep down that the game wouldn't care that I have a weapon capable of vaporising a city block

There's only one other place to visit – the northern airlock of the city.. or to put it another way, the one that leads out towards the planet instead of back into space. The game insists that there is a place to rent out the DRAG system (the flight simulator portion of the game) within, but I can't find the place to leave my mouse. It seems pretty clear between the clues that have been left ingame along with the manual's description of the system (which actually goes out and says that the 'radar' on the simulator will have Selenia as the green dot – and Vrangor's station as the red dot. 'If you want to go to Vrangor's station, move your DRAG left or right; move forward when the red dot is on top of the radar screen...' (I mean, as far as I'm concerned, we've found Vrangor, let's bomb the bastard and get on with our lives now – thanks, manual!)

So, uh, I've read the manual, and it tells me Vrangor is out in the desert..
Can we just shoot him, Mr. Guard?

I'm not quite at a dead end – I've still got plenty of people to both bribe and try to attack, but there's no real clear objective from here. I still don't know if the woman from the nightclub is actually still accompanying me around, as there's no way of telling it one way or the other (I've tried going through all of the BOB menus and the regular-game menus to see if I do) and I don't know if there are any practical benefits to the in-game timing system (e.g. will different people be around at 10 AM instead of 2 AM?) There's at least the modicum of hope that there's something waiting further on from here.. but really, the game has given me two pseudo-puzzles and an interface so awkward I've been back to re-check on things three times while writing this just to try and see if a second scan-through with the mouse will give a different object to interact with.

Hopefully, a second run around of the park will yield results..

Session Time: 1 hour 30 min
Total Time: 2 hour 30 min

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

By the former admins of TAG

Salaam alaykum! We have great news!

For quite some time we have felt that taking care of the blog is far harder than we ever could have thought and consumes too much of our leisure time. Frankly, it has often been a real pain in nether regions to wake up some days and think of all the work, we have to do for blog maintenance. We found that we started spending hours just to make up excuses for avoiding blog editing shifts - Ilmari spent too much time washing his hair and TBD even signed up for a pottery class. Finally we admitted that we had to let the blog go. Still, we didn't want to leave our faithful readers completely without their weekly adventure game dose. We thus decided to find a new maintainer for our beloved blog – someone dedicated enough to do the work we had grew so tired of.

We had discrete discussions with some major gaming sites on the Web, and the amount of interest surprised us. IGN, Valve and Gamespot all made reasonable offers, but something was always lacking. We wanted our successor to continue the heritage of Trickster and this proved too much to many potential sponsors. Many offers would have meant selling the soul of the blog to faceless corporate game industry – running ads as fake reviews and praising new hit games for money just wasn't our way. We bravely decided to keep the integrity of the blog intact, rather than accept such terms.

Some suitors were really persistent. Adventure Gamers wanted to buy us off, just because our blog was taking away so much traffic from them. A guy called Bill bragged on and on about his multibillion corporation and kept telling us how the blog should concentrate on nothing but X-Box games. We were getting desperate, but then it clicked.

At first we thought that all the e-mails from Shaikh Haroun el Serenia from the small caliphate of Vrangor and a CEO of Trusted Arabian Gasoline Corp. (see, it rhymes with TAG!) were just very bad spam. After some actual transactions on our bank accounts we realised that the ridiculous name was just an alias of a benevolent and enlightened ruler of a Middle-Eastern country who wanted to remain anonymous, because adventure gaming is not really allowed in Quran.

No, it's not this guy.
This guy is dead, as far as we know.

We are not saying it's this guy.
We are also not denying it.

In retrospect, there was nothing amazing in all this, since TAG has a history of attracting wealthy sponsors from rich oil countries. Shaikh, as we are going to continue call him, is a dedicated fan of classic adventure games and has expressed his deepest wish to provide fully paid employees from his personal staff to keep the blog going on to distant future. The originator of the blog, Trickster, and the two co-admins, Ilmari and TBD, have been rewarded generously and will be shortly living in pleasant surroundings on a tropical island.

The admin will soon be spending their time here

What's the catch, you ask? There isn't any! The staff of Shaikh are eager to provide us with all sort of extra information on oil prizes and all new ways of using up gasoline, and especially interesting and reassuring tidbits about how the oil industry is not polluting the world.

We will have occasional articles of this sort on the blog

But rest assured, we haven't forgotten the games! A new exciting feature of TAG will be the ”Missed Arabics”, which will go through the history of the Arabic adventure game. Just think of all the oriental mystery! We will get to see such less-known gems like Al-Farabi: Mulla Sadra (translates roughly into Date Quest: The Mission for the Succulent Fruit), Ibn Gabirol (The Secret of the Camel Oasis) and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Above a Sand Dune).

Just look at this picture from Date Quest!
Aren't you just dying to read more about it?

We will give 20 CAPs to the one getting best score on Secret of the Camel Oasis

Above a Sand Dune has plenty of cool minigames

Fans of Quest for the Glory -series will delight to find out that the blog will host a semiannual playthrough of the second game in the series. Also, you will see nothing else, but games with similar intriguing themes, like Prince of Persia (I know it's a bit stretch to call it adventure game, but we must obey the man who pays for the whole thing).

During the transition period, the Shaikh has hired a well-known commenter of the blog to deal with all the concerns and worries of regular readers.

The temporary assistant manager of the blog was rather enthusiastic to get the job

So, big changes are ahead of us! Oh yeah, you should probably all start to learn Arabic, because that will be the new language of the blog. But don't worry, I hear it's real easy!

Just start here!

King Graham of Daventry Journal Entry #4:“With the help of an elf I finally escaped the dread forest. I then helped a woman get her heart back, bartered with a gnome, a cobbler and a toymaker, defeated a gang of thugs, scared a poisonous snake and entered an icy mountain pass. A good day's work, if I say so myself. Now to find a way to continue through the icy mountain and find Mordack's castle.”

Thanks to apprentice_fu I found my way out of the forest.

After reading the first clue, which was “The solution is within the witch forest area” I did a little more searching. After a few minutes I thought the second clue wouldn't hurt so I read “There is an item you missed”

Aha. So something I thought was background decoration was actually a clickable item. I'd done plenty of clicking on anything I thought had even a slight chance of being useful but hadn't found a thing. This time, instead of using the 'eye' icon to look for things, I skipped a step and went straight for the 'hand' icon to take/activate something. I went around the screens furiously clicking everywhere with the hand, hearing the same comment over and over when finally, in the witch's house, Graham opened a drawer I hadn't previously noticed.

This drawer is responsible for me wasting many hours - there'd better be something good in there

I'd definitely clicked on the items on the table, but had received the same generic comment I get for clicking anywhere on the background of that scene. Somehow in all my previous semi-random clicking I'd not clicked on the table itself or I would have known. I was planning to blame the game for its pixel hunting, but once I knew what the relevant item was, I was surprised that I could click anywhere on the table apart from the top and find out about the drawer. So, pretty much my fault there.

Inside the drawer was a pouch containing three green gems. Gems could work as bait, so I went to the west and first tried giving a gem to the eyes, which resulted in me throwing it on the ground and a little elf taking it and running off. I tried putting the other two gems on the spilt honeycomb and the third one worked. I grabbed the elf and traded his life for an exit. The elf agreed, and asked 'Rocky' the rock to move aside. Rocky's voice acting isn't the best the game has to offer.

It felt a little unfair that until this point the game didn't even allow me to click on Rocky with the 'talk' icon selected

In a cutscene, the elf took me inside a cavern where other elves were working and offered me some fine leather footwear for my generous green gem donation (which the witch probably stole from the elves first anyway.)

In most fiction, it's the dwarves who mine and are obsessed with shiny gems. Way to break the stereotype, King's Quest V

Because I was unable to control Graham during the cutscene, I immediately went back down the hole to see if there was anything I could actually do myself in the elf cavern. There was only one thing I found that I could do - die.

Don't tell me when exploration is cut off by a chasm. I'm the King here. I'll go wherever I please.

I went straight back to town to see If the shoemaker wanted my new shoes – he did, and told me he had nothing to offer. Graham insisted that he wanted nothing in return, but still stood there impatiently until the shoemaker thought of something. He eventually offered a small hammer, which Graham quickly pocketed despite sounding so magnanimous when he refused anything in trade mere moments earlier.

Apparently the new shoes were so good that they'd be able to retire immediately, which they did. The husband, wife and dog all left, leaving me alone in their empty shop.

Shouldn't they have at least kept the shop open long enough to sell their new pair of shoes?

Because I thought it might result in an amusing or sad comment, I then offered the willow tree's heart to the toymaker, who gave me his sled for it. I then offered the sled to the willow tree but she said she didn't want any of my items, just her stolen heart. Not having the option to mention that I had found her heart, but traded it for a shiny red sled instead of returning it to her, I reloaded and gave the tree her heart back.

She turned back into a woman, threw away her now suddenly shrunken harp, and called to her fiancee, who dutifully ran into the screen so they could run off together. I took the harp because, in Graham's own words, “If she doesn't want it, I'll take it.” The unofficial motto of all adventure game characters.

The happy couple reunited at last. I'll just stand here in a pool of your tears and hope you leave without taking your harp

The next few puzzle solutions came to me quickly now that I had some new items.

Graham refused to offer the spinning wheel to the tailor because the tailor had nothing he wanted. When he showed it to the gnome, the gnome recognised it as his own spinning wheel that had been stolen from him by the witch.

Graham greedily demanded his grandchild's favourite toy in exchange for finding his stolen properly. The gnome agreed, so Graham took the kid's favourite toy and traded it in for his very own red sled. Graham really takes the old schoolchild logic of 'finders keepers' to a new level.

I did the cat-rat scene from the previous post again and got myself captured by the inn thugs. This time, the cobbler's hammer worked on the door and I escaped. I found a leg of lamb in the inn's kitchen, then tried going towards the talking voices just to see if I would die. I did

If you're going to try to kill me, I'll just steal your dinner and walk out the front door

After reloading, I opened the back door and left with my new rope and a leg of lamb. After everything I went through and the amount of times I died in that inn, a leg of lamb seemed a bit anticlimactic, but I'm sure it will play a vital role in saving my family at some point.

I tried a few things on the snake in an attempt at making her leave. She doesn't like harp music and eats neither lamb nor beeswax. I thought maybe she'd like some cooked meat so I went back to the gypsy wagon where I'd seen a cooking fire. There was no fire and the gypsies had left, which I'm sure made Cedric happy because he doesn't trust gypsies (he probably thinks they'll steal your stuff and sell it back to you.) There was, however, a tambourine on the ground. According to the narrator, Graham 'rescued' the tambourine from the ground.

King Graham, rescuer of fair maidens and unattended personal property

I took my new instrument back to the snake to see if she preferred it to harp music.

Important hiking tip: If you ever come upon a poisonous snake, simply wave a tambourine at it and it will leave.

Finally the way to Mordack's castle was opened. I went east, and came upon a frosty trail. 'A few hours later....' popped up on top of the screen, depriving me of the joy of making a sarcastic comment about a scorching desert being so close to an icy path.

Graham started shivering, and I knew I had to wear the cloak but didn't because I wanted to see the freezing to death scene. But first, two cliff falling death scenes.

Ah, falling off cliffs - a proud Sierra tradition

One thing I mentioned earlier but is most evident here, is this game's pathfinding system. In previous Sierra games, you had to manually navigate around the world. Most of their games even had at least one section purely devoted to making sure the player used pixel-perfect navigation to avoid things – like the annoying vine scene in Space Quest II.

In this game, Graham will automatically take the correct route – an improvement which I loved. In a 2d rendition of a 3d world, I always found those sequences frustrating and unfair.

Watching Graham navigate this path without me having to do it myself made me a very happy player

On the second screen of the icy path, I saw a branch above me and the rope immediately came to mind. I used the rope on the branch, at which point I dutifully froze to death.

Deliberately not wearing the obviously required cloak just so I could see Graham die - does that make me a bad person?

Wearing my cloak, I tried again. This time I was surprised to die.

Oh well. This seems like a good place to finish for now. Next time, I'll try coating my rope with bees wax, or perhaps offering the wax to the bees themselves if I find myself still stuck under the rope. I still have access to all the other areas from before, including the forest so I may still have missed an important item somewhere – I certainly hope not - I don't want to ask for assistance twice in one game.

Session time: 1 hour 05 minutes
Total time: 9 hours 40 minutes

Session deaths: 6
Total deaths: 20

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

By Aperama

Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Human Adventure Person's Journal #3:“This city is not the place for me! It feels like every way I turn, I get shot at! Thankfully, I have a pretty good memory, so I haven't had any trouble making sure I'll be able to live out my ten days on this rock before it goes up in flames through the Bizzy game. I'm still nowhere closer to finding Crisa Kortakis, my leads are all running dry and the most notable thing is that I've gone from a weapon I can hide to a full-blown forcefield and the most powerful gun I can lay my hands on. Every time I set my way out into the city, I find a new path to get lost down – and a new angry Stickrob, Robokiller or Glockmup shooting at me. I haven't done anything wrong! Though I could have sworn one of them was actually Merigo.. Must have been a mirage, right? Well, back to pretending to be a beat cop..”

The good news is that through boredly keeping it in a window while I watch movies, currency is not going to be an issue

B.A.T. is proving itself to be ever so typically.. French. I think I managed to get through about a single line of dialogue that I hadn't received prior to now in my continued exploration of the town of Terrapolis.. in the two hours I spent trying to find something (anything!) to do in my time playing this game. It's just so bloody inconsistent. I had to restart DosBOX because it wouldn't let me out of the hibernation chamber (the most convenient way to test out different times to see if different people are around) around about four times, so I was convinced that the ONLY WAY OUT wasn't working for some reason. I am seriously not liking this! There are a few interesting things here and there – and I have managed to find a few extra new areas to go through, so that's something – but there's no real excuse to have exits and entrances be so incredibly difficult to spot. The navigation doesn't even make much of any sense! To find the police station, for instance, you go to the doctor's surgery, which can be found in the (northwestish quadrant) of the gunsmith's screen (which you return to via the east/northeast pointing arrow.) You then go south. And south again. When you reach this screen? North! So when you think you're doubling back? You're not..

You're at the police station! Coincidentally? First place I had a random encounter whilst starting this post. Really nice place, this town

~~So after getting the piece of tape covered in cat hair to pretend I have a moustache~~ The revelation that completely random arrows could pop up out of nowhere a la Leisure Suit Larry 3's lawyers in a manner that I only discovered due to scanning over the entire screen with my cursor, I managed to find one more thing that the manual had alluded to that I knew would be of some assistance – ~~a mirror to escape to Wonderland~~ a forcefield generator for combats for the low, low price of 400 Krells. I'm kinda skipping ahead here, though, as I didn't get a screenshot of the real curio of this post – Merigo! He turned up in the Hot Quarter outside the Bizzy Game arcade in a combat that I had one second to prepare for – he killed me nigh-on instantly. I reloaded, came back through, and at 1:30 PM exactly, he showed up again - and I again died before I even got to select my weapon. This just means that I need to use B.O.B. to be 'accelerated' instead of 'normal', though. Quickly switching over in a third attempt, I've had no luck spotting him. (In preparation, I got enough through Bizzy to also afford the game's most powerful weapon, the Nova, because.. well, I value my wrists, and I've seen no real indication of an advantage to having weaker weapons aside from cheaper ammo. This is possibly going to be a fatal flaw, given I sold off my Hacker, my Moz and all of the ammo I had for either – if they stop me from walking around a club or whatever with a gigantic gun, there's not much I can do – the weight was too much to carry them both.)

The back of this place sorta reminds me of evidence lockers. Wonder if I'm buying this from a black market cop bunch?

So, here's the critical issue. I'm looking around for Merigo again – I figure I have the right idea given he turned up and shot me like a crazy person. Knowing roughly where to search for him, I'm trying to do so in the Hot Quarter – but all I seem to get attacked by now that I'm properly armed (in spite of making sure that it was both on the Monday that I arrived in-game and that it was the magical number of 1:30 PM) are Robokillers, which carry nothing on a use of the 'search' command on killing them (thanks again, Jan Larres) though in truth, most of the combats I've received items for have just been food. As much as I want to kill random Skunks for steak and chips? It just doesn't seem to make much sense to waste resources of any sort to fight, given that my last doctor's visit cost 180 Krells from one fight in spite of having the best weaponry and armour in the game, both of them equipped prior to the fight starting with a Robokiller. The fights may as well be identical to one another, though, given they all involve the same tactic of 'click like a crazy person after selecting weapons and armour'.

On the plus side, I've levelled up! And I have.. received absolutely nothing for it. Je ne comprends pas?

As far as the actual exploration side, I've found several areas that appear to be for random encounters (as in the picture from the police station, it all but says 'this is just here to make things seem more dangerous than they actually are'), I've wandered about in the hopes of finding different people at different times – but I have yet to find any permanently-placed people that change over time. (I hope I've explained what I mean here well enough to not need to go into this further. While you guys may have enjoyed yourselves throwing up dozens of bets in some other game– and it technically may have had the first Request for Assistance – I'm officially throwing out one here and now out of desperation. I'm obviously missing something either involving finding my way into Crisa Kortakis' club, finding Merigo as a permanent fixture to talk to and then take down or triggering his random fight (is that even supposed to be a thing?) I think I've fully scoured the town now, and have spent over an hour reloading in a desperate attempt to find something interactible.

At least I've found the 'old building'. Guess I need something to interact with it? Yeah, I'm stumped

As I feel I have been so overwhelmingly negative and distracted during this post ~~I think I've paid my penance for Les Manley already~~ I would like to at least show one glimmering light in the game's overwhelmingly lacklustre nature – B.O.B. has feelings, too! I have absolutely no idea why or when this happened, but when I was in the police station I found what seemed to be the desk clerk wasn't allowing me to speak to them – they were still in alien/gibberish/trying to tell Billy Blaze how to rebuild the parts to his rocket ship. It's not really a puzzle, though – I'd discovered what was going on back in the forcefield shop when I noticed an option that said 'computer test'. Expecting to have a short quiz on the history of the personal computer, I clicked it, being told that I was forced to spend 40 krells for an assessment – and the shopkeeper told me there was nothing wrong with it. I worked it out when I got the following screen:

'You're playing this horrible game! WARNING!'

The clue that made me realise anything was even wrong

So, I can at least say that I've solved one puzzle throughout this game (al! Two if I count 'go to the toilets to find my equipment'. However, back to my request for assistance! I feel I've pretty much exhausted my ability to search through this town any longer. The random combats are enough to make the task completely monotonous, and the fact that almost every last conversation is identical to the last is driving me thoroughly insane, making me want to do virtually anything else. However, I'm not giving up completely – I'm fairly confident that there's not an awful lot to this game in the first place, so all I really need is a start. It's up to you guys (well, up to Jan Larres) as to how much in the way of help I'll need. Obviously, if one of these will lead to the rest sequentially opening up, the first is all I'll probably need. Here's my list of issues:

Crisa Kortakis' club – how to get in? (As a subplot how to get into her office building – but I figure they're related)
Merigo's random combat: glitch or important? Are my stats the main reason I'm struggling so hard there, or is it level-based, or will I moiderise him now that I have a bigger gun?
Is the Bizzy game the only way to make money? Is that its only purpose?
~~The map I bought turned out to be dancing lessons! How do I get my money back?~~
Do levels mean squat? Is it worth grinding between the Bizzy game, ammo, surgeons' and forcefield seller just to level up a bit more?
Is my Nova going to mean I can't get into Crisa's club as the manual sorta suggests? I figured it'd stop me from the nightclub back at the start, but I've really noticed no difference whatsoever

Remember to code your hints/spoilers in ROT13, and start with a vague hint then get gradually more detailed if it's possible. If the solution is something mindbogglingly simple, though, feel free to just spoil away. I can only imagine that the timing system will have something to do with it, so I'm expecting something that isn't entirely ROT13-able (e.g. 'go to the old building at 10:30 AM on Tuesday and they'll open up'– well, I'm probably going to be able to work out what '10:30 NA' is just from a glance).

Session time: 2 hours
Total time: 4 hours 30 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I have made a request for assistance. Thanks!

King Graham of Daventry Journal Entry #5: "I've finally made it. Mordack's castle is just ahead and in it, my captured family. It was a long journey on water, sand and ice, and I nearly lost my friend, Cedric, along the way, but now we are here together and ready to face the dangers of the evil wizard's castle.

When I left off last time, I had just thrown my rope onto a branch but couldn't climb it.

My plan of rubbing beeswax on the rope didn't work. I spent 55 minutes backtracking and searching every screen for something I didn't find. Among other things, I decided there had to be more to the inn than a leg of lamb but despite my furious random clicking found nothing.

Perhaps a sign of my lack of trust in the game being fair to me, I also clicked on almost every pixel of the rope, thinking perhaps there's a small section of rope that is safe to climb. After attempting to use everything in my inventory, I found that the leg of lamb could be eaten and I got points for doing so. I thought maybe if I was stronger I could climb. One thing I also considered was that I was carrying too much weight. Cedric wouldn't take any of my items and I wondered if I needed to reload an even older saved game from before I bought the sled - maybe the sled was making me too heavy for the rope. I couldn't drop items, so couldn't solve my weight problem quickly.

It took me a while to realise it, but I was dead-ended. Like when I asked for assistance two posts ago, my problem was assuming background decoration where there was actually a clickable object.

While clicking on every part of the scene for the, let's say, 12th time, I found an outcropping to the right of the tree branch that had a different 'look' comment than the rest of the background. I reloaded an old game and tried throwing the rope at the outcropping instead of the branch.

While not totally unfair, this puzzle deliberately tried to trick me into wasting my time

This time I got warned about being hungry. I deliberately didn't eat because I wanted to see a death by starvation, which did happen a few screens later...

Come on Graham. A few more metres and you can slide the rest of the way

I reloaded and ate half of my lamb. Freshly satiated, I climbed the rope, Then I jumped over a few rocks, and, you guessed it, died many times by jumping on the wrong rocks.

I wonder if there's a way to tell which rocks are safe without dying

Then, and I'm sure some of you will be happy about this, Cedric got captured by wolves!

Caption contest!

Using my trusty sled, I slid down a toboggan slope which looked like fun. Then I checked out the cliff to see if I could add to my death tally.

I knew I shouldn't have turned the toymaker down when he offered the extended warranty

On the next screen I found an eagle. He was hungry and it was obvious what I should do. I gave him the rest of my lamb, which he thanked me for before flying off. I'm sure we'll meet again when he'll perform a trivial task for me. I also tried my pie to see if he had a sweet tooth (beak?) but I got less points for that so lamb seems to be the right choice.

This time it was my turn to be captured by wolves. The wolves worked for an ice queen, Queen Ice-abella. For some reason she'd captured us to kill us, rather than just having us killed before letting us into her throne room. Makes no sense to me, but perhaps that's why I've never gotten a job as an Ice Queen.

She told the wolves to kill me, and if I stand there and let them, they of course do what they were commanded to do.

The wolf on the left is called Sir Graywolf. The wolf on the right must be called Sir Alsograywolf

While the wolves were coming for me I tried using my harp. The Queen then realised that my ability to play a harp clearly meant that I also had the ability to kill a yeti, so sent me to kill a yeti for her.

I can't turn down the chance to help someone wearing a crown

In one of the more ridiculous scenes in the game, I defeated the yeti by throwing a comedy custard pie at his face, which caused him to lose track of his location, and fall to his death.

About time someone apart from me fell off a cliff in this game

Of course, if I don't throw a pie at him, or try to throw it too late, the usual happens.

Help me, Yukon Cornelius. You're my only hope

I entered the Ice Queen's cave, and looked around. All crystals except one have the same narration when clicked on. Knowing that there had to be something useful in there, I quickly found the one crystal that I could touch, used my cobbler's hammer to break a piece off as a souvenir and went back to the Queen to give her the good news.

10 CAPs for anyone who hasn't played and correctly guesses which crystal is the useful one

After Isabella had Sir Greywolf show Cedric and I the way out of the mountains, I was captured by a two-headed Roc and put in a nest. Something was glinting in the nest as the egg slowly hatched. Clearly I was to be a baby roc's first meal. I grabbed the shiny object (a locket) before the egg hatched then my eagle friend picked me up and took me to a beach.

How about we save a lot of time and you just take me straight to Mordor, I mean Mordack

Later on, I reloaded to an earlier saved game to see what would have happened if I didn't give the hungry eagle some lamb earlier.

Can you smell what the Roc is cooking?

Back to the beach, I took an iron bar I found on the sand, then decided to go for a swim...

Where's David Hasselhoff when you need him

Okay, swimming was out, so I went to the boat I could see in the distance on the beach. That's a much safer way to travel on water...

There is absolutely no way to know the boat has a hole until it's too late

Simple enough. I use my beeswax on the boat (thanks Queen Beatrice) and now I'm sure there will be nothing to stop me safely crossing the ocean...

When will sea monsters learn that boats aren't digestible

I also found a third screen on the beach which contained a hermit's hut, but there was nothing to do there as the hermit was hard of hearing and couldn't hear what I was saying.

I quickly realised that the ocean was, much like the desert, a maze of sorts. Sea monsters eat you if you go to far in any direction. Fortunately it's a short and simple maze and I quickly found an island. Unfortunately, as soon as we arrived at the island, Cedric and I were captured by some harpies.

Is it a flock of harpies, or a murder of harpies? A gaggle of harpies perhaps?

The harpies discuss how delicious I'd be while I notice another shiny item in the grass. I take what turns out to be a fish hook, then play my harp, thinking that would soothe them. It didn't so much soothe them, but it brought out a competitive streak in them. One of them took my harp and the others followed her. Of course, if I didn't play the harp and just stood there, the usual happens...

Death by snoo-snoo

Leaving the screen, I came across the shattered body of a badly injured Cedric. I carried the poor owl back to the boat screen, where I found a conch shell, then got on the boat and returned to the beach.

Having Graham physically carry Cedric was a nice touch

Back at the beach, I tried talking to the hermit again, and this time gave him a conch shell as a hearing aid, which worked. He had a poultice that cured Cedric and also knew a friendly mermaid who led us to Mordack's island. I'm on the final stretch now and I can't go back so hopefully I haven't missed an item along the way.

Whoever holds the conch gets to speak

Just to see what would happen, I reloaded and ignored Cedric's body on the harpy screen, going to the hermit without him. I still got to Mordack's island, but I assume that would be another dead-end situation, as well as a cruel thing to do for an owl who's almost been helpful countless times already.

Mordack's Island

Session time: 2 hours 05 minutes

Total time: 11 hours 45 minutes

Session deaths: 10
Total deaths: 30

Pixels found so far: 5 (Silver coin, gold coin, locket, fish hook, conch shell)

As an excuse to zoom in on a screenshot of a sick Cedric, I thought I'd remind you that anyone who mentions that they'll donate to an owl-related charity during the King's Quest V playthrough will get some bonus CAPs.

By Aperama

Duke Garland's Journal, Vol. 2: “I have recovered the first of the Tears of Esmeranti! Despite a perilous journey through the cavern of Malicia, I have emerged victorious against the evil gigantic crab, Cangrejo. In spite of his many attempts to cover my head in.. well, it seemed to me that he was attempting to defecate on me, the powerful artifact that I purchased back in Muralla town, the Magia Stone, has seen me through danger. On arriving in the next town of Satono, the sage Yasmin has taught me the secret magick of sword throwing – Espana. If all works as quickly as I hope it will, Felicia will be turned back from stone and Jashiin will be dead at the hands of the Fairy Flame Sword in mere days!”

I especially like the part with the rainbow explosions. B.A.T. is managing to impress me now

So, I've done a deep amount of soul searching in an effort to work out why it was that I hated B.A.T. so much. In the end, the answer seemed a lot more obvious than I thought it would end up being. See, when B.A.T. was released, I would have been about 2 years old. (Yes, I'm a young'un.) Still, in spite of the rapid acceleration in hardware standards et al over the time that I would have actually been able to worry about these considerations, my family was not so rich that the latest and greatest could always be ours – we would have been more likely to play an older game on our (some years old) hardware, meaning this could just as easily have been the first game I ever played. I have clear memories of these games in my formative years of only 4 or 5 – among the first I really remember being the game in the video above. The game I reference here was traded with a family friend (for a 'value pack'-market copy of Space Quest 1: The Sarien Encounter) and is one of the games I have the clearest memories of. It was nasty at several points (in spite of the cheap way I've displayed it here), particularly with my reflexes at the time – but at no point was it ever unfair. There were several points at which one could scam the in-game systems, saves were free – but this little platformer stumped me until I was 15 or 16 and able to navigate the ludicrously difficult final dungeon in spite of the game coming with its own maps. I felt accomplished when I did – I never once felt like I was losing because of the game system being too random or what have you.

I'm fairly certain that if we had instead traded for B.A.T, I would have properly gotten into sports. Or trainspotting. Or anything other than computers. It's a cruel adventure indeed where you're told at every turn that you have a clear means to a puzzle's end, only for the puzzle to turn out to be solvable only if you perform a small satanic ritual first. Unfortunately, though, I signed on for this, so.. well, I'll conveniently forget the strikethrough text for all of this.

BigGuns McBizzy's Journal #IV: “So, I'm kinda making a mockery of this whole 'interstellar police' thing. I've spent the past three days of 'investigation' talking to people who don't know an awful lot, gambling because I really haven't been given enough money to do what I need to do, and buying guns. Oh, and hanging out with girls. In bars. Come to think of it, I may actually be a gigolo. I should probably double check the next time I fill out a tax form. But, uh, yeah. I can head out on the DRAG any time I want, but I found some Kradokid who turned in Merigo. May as well blast him before getting the heck out of Terrapolis. I might not even bother saving the place. Chances are, with my Bizzy skills, I'll own this town before the end of the week anyway.”

Where we last left off – a screenshot I didn't actually think was worth showing off.
Flipping marvellous.

If any of you have been reading the comments, you'll realise that ~~I was planning for this post to be entirely about the cheese sector of Europe~~ I would not have even possibly continued further on without assistance. As I'd sorta predicted, I only really needed a short set of clues to set me on the right path – but the game really doesn't do itself any favours. In order to find Merigo (properly, not just have him randomly drop in on you in an attempt to kill you) you need to speak to a lady in a bar (which I had done as of post #2) and then find a random alien (type of which she names) randomly (the screen gives no graphically intuitive idea of what you're doing) who in spite of looking and greeting in the same manner, and having the same responses to everything else, will ask for money when you speak about Merigo – 'lots of it'. There's only one way to get money – the 'Bizzy Game'. It's a simple game of Simon Says, which I have been heavily cheating in for quite a while up until this point. It could likely fund the entire game without any more than a few clicks of buttons, particularly as time stands still when you're – and I beg forgiveness for this – Bizzy-ing yourself with this.

Nope..

Not quite..

And that's a bingo! Congratulations!
You somehow avoided burning your game diskette in sheer frustration!
(These are six different individual Kradokids between the screenshots I've taken here, by the way)

So, this left me with one clue that I had not yet spoiled myself with – and it was honestly more or less the one I was more interested in. The Bizzy Game, to my mind, couldn't possibly be only there for bloating out gameplay by giving a 'money' source. It wasn't fun like, say, poker is for example – it's just rote memorisation which anyone with half of a brain would immediately turn to using a notepad or the like to get through. I have a computerised version of a notepad. It is called 'Notepad'. Noting down squares by two-letter combinations (I use 'FS' for 'full square', 'DI' for diamond and so on) it's child's play to get to level 14 or 15 without anything possibly going wrong – this left me with utter oodles of credits in my account. However, reading Ilmari's clue let me know that if I was in there at 1:00 – not 12:59, not 1:10 (as I was there in both of those timeframes on 'Monday') but 1:00 PM, a girl would be there to challenge me in Bizzy. I can only imagine how this game would actually work in reality. It has no timer, so it's sorta like playing blackjack where the house lets you count cards. Onto a sheet of paper in front of you. While wearing a hat that says 'I AM CHEATING'.

I had 996 Krells on hand when she challenged me to this. I had to reload, get money out and go back because she accused me of 'not having the money'...

I already have access to potentially unlimited money. For that matter, I already have 'Lydia' following me around from the club. Sloan, you're now the head of my harem?

It was clear to my adventure game logic (the one I have referenced in other posts that tells me that rope is quite possibly the most valuable substance created by either God or Man) that we're not out for her money, anyhow – even if we needed it, you always want a favour more than money. And as it turns out, this is exactly what she does for us – I was looking for something to do while waiting until 10 PM for my Kradokid friend to turn up at the museum and started clicking on things to see if they'd allow me through now that I have a bevy of beauties at my arms. As it turns out, Sloan knows someone in the DRAG pilot circuit, and she makes the guard step aside so that we can slip on in. Of course, she didn't think to mention this to us on agreeing to take her as a 'guide'.. come to think of it, why they wouldn't let a B.A.T. member through in the first place is beyond me, but hey. The hangar is somewhat less than appealing with very little in the way of interactivity. Going up some stairs leads to the 'DRAG Hirer'.. who is ready to charge us even more than I've already earned through Bizzy. Yoiks. Of course, our harem comes in handy once more..

My Nova, the best gun known to man, Kradokid, Robokiller or any of the other
made up names I care to mention, is in contrast worth 400 Krells..

Ah, so this must be where my B.O.B. comes into its own as a phone, my convenient plot device?

Nope. Phone booths. Welcome to the XXIIst century, pal!

This number puts us on a direct line to Crisa Kortakis' secretary. It would have been nice of Lydia to tell us that she knew the woman that I've been spending two posts trying to find while outside the door speaking to her evil 'hulktronic'. Crisa Kortakis is clearly just here because the creators of the game didn't feel that their space-age game reminded people enough of Jabba the Hutt – she's a human, incessantly obese lady sitting on a floating chair with wires connected to her. She has three options to her – ask to arrest Vrangor (she berates you), ask to give you some money for the DRAG (which she does, gives Lydia a small jewel for around her neck and kisses her) and ask to leave Selenia (which she grants by killing you. I sincerely hope she at least shoots your remains into space. Though I guess the bombs soon to explode will probably do that.)

Oh, god, she's not wearing anything

I sincerely worry for whoever thought drawing this was a good idea.
You could have made this thing an alien, France! YOU COULD HAVE SAVED OUR EYES!

Plus side? She's loaded

So, with nothing else obvious to do apart from hiring a DRAG (which seems a poor idea given I know that Merigo is still outside the area with the Bizzy game, kicking people's arses with ludicrously overpowered weaponry and doing it in such a quick fashion that nobody can actually react) with the money she's just poured into our account, there's nothing really left to do here apart from go down to the 'hibernation hotel' and wait until 10 PM. Of course, even this is more difficult than it has to be – instead of just giving a number to decide how long you'll sleep, there's an awkward slide bar that has markings of 2, 4, (big space), 8, (reasonable space), 16, (virtually none), 24. So I needed to wait nine hours – one click above '8' became 10. Instead, I waited just under eight and then clicked at random. I've heard of another infamous and similar puzzle involving time waiting and goats, so I presume this is an intended test of the gamers' skill. Right? Right. Anyhow, it's off to the museum we go ~~to find a strange idol from Barnett College for Marcus Brody~~ to bribe us a Kradokid. He gives us a time for 100 Krells, and sells us a pass to the Xifo club for 300. Of course, we couldn't just ask Crisa for this. Hell, we couldn't even just do any number of things that would logically lead to us being able to get into a successful nightclub owned by the clearly very close friend of the woman we've seduced – we had to find a random alien, get him to tell us that there was a criminal liable to blow up the entire city who often visited there for money, and then think that the 'kid' (there it is, in his NAME!) would have a pass. To a nightclub.

I'm stopping here just so I can wipe the fury off of my cheeks. With a metal scourer.

Session time: 1 hour
Total time: 5 hours 30 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. But if anyone is about to tell me I've missed something, tell me. I'm not sure I have the mental endurance to have to reload significant portions of the game – heck, even minutes of it could be tough. Thanks!

King Graham of Daventry Journal entry #5:My boat's shipwrecked on Mordack's island and I've explored his castle as thoroughly as I can think of, but I've no way to defeat the fiend or rescue my family. I've defeated a blue creature with the power of teleportation and the talking cat, Manannan. I've met a princess that I've sworn to rescue after saving my own family but I'm still no closer to my goal. There must be a way. I need only to find it...

This was all just supposed to be a three hour tour - a three hour tour!

From the looks of our boat, our chances of going back the way we came are gone - I'm sure I could repair it if only I wasn't all out of beeswax. Unfortunately, I didn't seem to be able to salvage any parts from the shipwreck. There was a rotting blue fish near the shipwreck though so of course, I picked it up. It may sound like just a piece of trash, but last time I picked up a rotting fish I ended up with honeycomb, a stick, beeswax, some green gems, a golden needle, some fine shoes and so on, until I eventually made my way here - none of which would have happened if I didn't pick up the rotting fish.

With a rotting wet fish in my pocket, I climbed the stairs, where I found two large snake statues. As I got closer, the eyes glowed brighter. I went through expecting exactly what I got - death!

Oh boy!

After a reload, I tried using my crystal shard on the snakes. It reflected the lightning back into the snake eyes and burned them out. Onward once again!

Moving forward, Cedric and I found the entrance to the castle, but because Mordack doesn't want to make it easy for his visitors, it was over a chasm. If I tried to cross I'd fall and die, so, despite Cedric's pleas that we turn back (turn back where, owl? Our boat is smashed to bits and we have nowhere else to go!) I went around to the side of the castle, where I found a grate. Again Cedric begged me to turn back - again I ignored him.

Prying up the grate with my metal rod and propping it up with the same, I dropped down into... a maze. Cedric had bravely offered to stay outside and be a lookout.

Once I go down, I can't do anything with the hole in the ceiling so it looks like I'm stuck down here in this labyrinth. This maze was hard to navigate at first but fairly easy to map once I got the hang of it. When I walk in any direction the next screen has me continuing to face that direction. I would have found it very difficult except I discovered accidentally (this is not the first time I discovered something important accidentally in this game) that if I clicked my 'look' icon on the blackness below the actual visible screen I got a compass - this makes no sense and I feel for anyone who didn't discover this trick.

This labyrinth is largely empty and another exercise in basic mapping skills - the dungeon hole doesn't exist until later when I escape the dungeon

Throughout the labyrinth creatures randomly walk on the walls, but I don't seem to be able to interact with them so I assume (hope?) they're just background atmosphere.

These yellow green or blue creatures quickly scurry along the walls and ceiling, vaguely resembling space invaders

In one dead end I found a furry monster whose only words are "Dink" and whose name is Dink. When I got close to him, Dink killed me.

I will name him George and I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him

After a reload, I decided to try my rescued tambourine - I've had great luck so far playing music for animals. Dink loved the tambourine and ran off with it, dropping his hairpin as he left. I'm not certain but I think he recognised the tambourine and is off to return it to its rightful gypsy owner. I of course, rescued Dink's hairpin from the ground. I found nothing else of interest in the labyrinth apart from a door, which I could open with my new hairpin.

Now out of the only slightly annoying labyrinth, I took a bag of peas from a cupboard, then went to the next room to see a beautiful servant girl. I knew she was beautiful because the narrator points out that "though wearing rags her beauty nevertheless shines through"

When I try to talk to her she shies away. Knowing that all women value jewellery over their own safety, I give her the locket I found in the roc's nest. I'm rewarded with a cutscene.

She seems to be wearing a lot of eye shadow for someone who expected to be scrubbing floors all day for someone she hates

Her name is Princess Cassima and she's from the Kingdom of the Green Isles. Mordack wanted to marry her but when she refused he kidnapped her and told her she'd remain a scullery girl until she agreed to marriage.

Now that Graham knew she was royalty, he promised to save her as soon as he rescues his own royal family.

There seemed to be nothing else to do on this screen so I went east where I found a large organ.

The head above the organ creepily follows Graham as he traverses the room

Guessing that it probably wasn't a good idea, I attempted to play the organ. When I got close to it, it started playing music by itself. Surprised to still be alive, I went east to the dining room, where Mordack promptly killed me.

Apology accepted, King Graham

Deciding against drawing attention to my presence, I decided not to play the organ the second time. Instead of Mordack, a weird blue monster captured me and created some kind of portal to a dungeon, throwing me inside.

Looks like some kind of weird mix of an alien a tauntaun and a smurf

As soon as I entered the dungeon I saw a mouse go into a mouse hole - so I stole his mouldy cheese with my fish hook (Graham doesn't care about the quality of the items he steals, he just wants everything that isn't his.)

After a short while a rock in the dungeon wall moved. Princess Cassima was pushing aside the heavy brick and had come to rescue me.

She's stronger than she looks. Scrubbing floors is surprisingly good for upper body strength

She mentioned that she comes down into the labyrinth often and I should go with her. I followed her and she led me back out to the labyrinth's exit. With my trusty map, I could have navigated my own way out, but following her was easier.

If I get captured by the blue monster a second time, she doesn't rescue me - probably because I didn't give her a second piece of jewellery. The first time I escaped I deliberately got captured a second time because I didn't have time to get the cheese before Cassima rescued me. That was a mistake.

I like the way Graham's reflection in the water works quite realistically

I reloaded and this time used the fish hook on the cheese before she showed up.

Back in the castle, I went upstairs to find Mordack's bedroom. I found the cat there, but gave him a rotting fish to keep him busy and moved on to the library. In there I read a book that had some strange pictures and symbols on them. Graham wouldn't take the book, but memorized the symbols and, according to the narrator, they might be useful later.

Who needs to memorize when I have dosbox's screenshot capability

I also entered the laboratory, where I found my captured family - but couldn't help them. I also found a strange machine.

Witness the awesome power of randomly trying all my items on a machine I know nothing about

The machine seems to have three notabale parts - a platform on each side and a cauldron in the middle. It only counts as one item for the purpose of clicking, so if I use the wand anywhere on the machine, Graham puts the wand on the platform on the right hand side. I can also use the cheese on the machine, and Graham puts it into the liquid in the middle which activates the machine - after the machine fires off some electricity for a while, Mordack then comes and kills me.

I may be dead, but you have mouldy cheese in your cauldron - good luck getting over your fungal infection!

And... now I'm stuck. I'm pretty sure I'm missing the correct item to put on the left platform of the machine - I assume I need some kind of magical power source to power Crispin's wand that's been useless for the entire game.

The two things I clearly need to do are rescue my family and kill Mordack - one likely needs to be done before the other and the machine probably helps me do one or both of them.

Both the blue monster and the cat appear randomly but can usually be avoided by either reloading and entering the room again so they randomly don't appear, or immediately leaving the way I came.

I've played for a few hours since I was first stuck and discovered some other things by reloading to various points, but nothing that's actually helped me progress.

Dink the furry labyrinth dweller is not always in the same place - he can appear in other dead ends.
I can defeat the blue monster by throwing peas at him, which causes him to slip and fall. I don't seem to be able to do anything with his body

Cartoon sound effects play while he slips on the peas

I can capture Manannan the cat by giving him a fish and then shoving him into the empty bag of peas. I don't seem to be able to do anything with him after that. Talking to him before capturing him or ignoring him results in his leaving and Mordack appearing and killing me a screen or two later.

For a powerful wizard Manannan is extremely easy to outsmart

After dispatching the cat and monster, Mordack starts to appear randomly instead. I can't do anything with him as control is immediately taken away from me and he chokes me to death
When Cassima rescues me from the dungeon she mentions that she often comes to the labyrinth to play with her friends, Dink and Sam. Then makes a point of saying "I don't know if you ever saw Sam or not." This makes me think I may have missed seeing Sam in the labyrinth. The problem is, I went back to every possible square and he wasn't anywhere. Either he randomly shows up, he never shows up, or there was something in the labyrinth I missed.

REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE
So once again my lack of adventure game prowess results in me asking for assistance. I'm hoping this is one of Laukku's bets so at least my being stuck will help somebody earn some CAPs. I can think of a number of likely reasons I'm stuck - I may be wrong but the things I can think of are...

There is something in the labyrinth - perhaps Sam or perhaps something I haven't tried with the small wall-walking creatures. I've been to every screen there at least five times but haven't noticed anything
Apart from the labyrinth, there are seven screens I've been to that I haven't been able to do anything in - the two Dining Room screens, the screens on both the bottom and top of the stairs, Mordack's bedroom, the organ room and the front door outside the castle. I might be missing something in one of those screens
There is possibly another screen I haven't been to because I've simply not noticed an exit - perhaps another screen outside the castle
I've once again failed in my pixel hunting skills and there's something somewhere I should have seen and clicked on
I dead-ended myself before entering the island. I don't think this is the case as I suspect someone would likely have mentioned it in the comments of the previous post

Remember to code your hints/spoilers in ROT13, and start with a vague hint then get gradually more detailed.

This is my current inventory - I feel I'm missing at least one important item

Session time: 3 hours 40 minutes
Total time: 15 hours 25 minutes

Session deaths: 5
Total deaths: 35
(I haven't been counting any falling deaths that don't give either new animations or dialogue)

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I have made a request for assistance. Thanks!

Written by Aperama (mostly)

Special delivery from the B.A.T. headquarters

Special agents Mr. T and Mr. I

"Have we heard anything from our best operative yet?"
" Not a word. Last time we heard, Mr. A was forced to make his living as a gigolo in Selenia, using all his time to cheat in casinos just to survive. Merigo, the small-time crook he is after, has kept shooting him to tiny pieces, and Mr. A has been forced to go through several regenerative SAVE/LOAD-cycles."
"How awful! Should we just recall him?"
"He did finally manage to get a lead on Merigo and should be reporting in few minutes whether he has succeeded to eliminate this small problem."
"Ahh, I think I am hearing an incoming message..."

TRANSMISSON BEGINS... AGENT A CALLING FROM SELENIA

Angry Guy with a Gun's Journal mk. V: “Okay, now this is just ridiculous. I mean, who in the name of Crisa Kortakis is running this place? I'm not even sure why I'm bothering to save this stupid place any more. I found Merigo. I killed Merigo. Did I get a thank you? A parade? No, I didn't even have anyone notice the body on the floor! He had an access card to the Old City.. and why on Terrapolis I decided to go down there is beyond me. I even took Lydia and Sloane with me – they didn't seem to mind getting lost in what I can only call a hellish maze of tunnels. Well, they didn't complain, anyhow. It's thankful I took Lydia – heck, I think Crisa even knew what was going on – she conveniently left Lydia with a key that unlocked a secret compartment to find an access card to an.. Epsilon something. I can only think that this is going to be my way of getting to Vrangor. I have a new force field, plenty of ammo for my Nova and a DRAG.. it's time to leave Terrapolis, kill Vrangor.. and if they don't parade me as a national bloody hero, I might just blow the city anyway!”

This is what happened the first time I fought Merigo, just for the record.. just I could record it with him in one reliable place. I still wonder if Merigo can be killed without 'finding' the right alien

In order to run this blog (and facilitate between writers and admins), there's a forum for us to post up issues et al. This game gave me a first for the blog, I think – the game managed to literally make itself non-completable. This isn't me saying the game was too hard – it bugged up significantly. There's a maze (more on that later) which I literally needed step by step, square by square directions as it was unsolvable ingame. Despite being given directions and a map, I feel honour bound to say – I cheated. And in truth, that wasn't the advice given – the advice given was actually 'just call it here, the game is obviously doing you significant mental damage and you'd rather be playing a game of stick and paddle.' Or single player beer pong. I think that I might have to drink quite a bit to complete the game at the present rate, actually. Now I see why Chester needs his GIMLETs.

Merigo looks a little like he was dressed as John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever..
maybe he got what was coming to him

So when I last left off, I was ready to run into the Xifo club and face Merigo. As you can see from the video above – prepared, taking him down was actually quite simple. It just took having B.O.B. set to 'accelerated' (accelleration – I'm willing to forgive this spelling error as it may be something from the original French) to give me the time needed to blast his face off. (Well, actually, I aimed everything for his gut, but good enough.) So, on killing him, he drops a keycard that allows access to the Old City – a series of underground tunnels that sit underneath Terrapolis. Thankfully, as Ilmari refused to allow me to bite off my nose to spite my face, he pointed out before I touched in on the horrendous maze to come that I was missing a key item in the comments. This game is so awful that even his clue wasn't good enough! I had already found a 'hotel'– why would I be expecting to find another hotel hidden behind the force field shop? Keep in mind that to locate a place in this game is already like pulling teeth, having to go over the entire screen and sometimes not even getting a result despite being in the right spot (if it's decided that a random 'person' is there to be spoken to, you can have the 'speech' command override the 'go out of the room' command with no way of knowing you've missed it). Still.. even with the knowledge that this place was here, I wouldn't have thought to rent out a room, be 'randomly' assigned the right one and 'find' a keycard for the underground tunnels inside. Maybe if there wasn't already a place in another room called 'HOTEL' with a sign out the front I might have been looking for it.

Mummy. I give. Hail freaking Satan. Whatever I have to do to make it stop

So, I can only restate my thanks to Ilmari for giving out that hint – I'm not a hundred percent sure what it unlocked underneath the tunnels, but I'm certain that if I'd had to go through the maze of a thousand terrors again that I would indeed lose my marbles completely. See, here's what forced me to (for what I believe is a first in this blog's history) actually need to ask for an exact map of a maze. For one thing, the maze is absolutely huge – I'm certain that even TBD's work on gridding out KQ5's maze has very little in comparison to this thing. See, this one has dead ends. Several of the 'gates' which you go through actually don't allow you back through – to the point that you have to take an extremely wide arc to get around them. I'm willing to map out, trial and error and all of that. But now, add in another killing blow? What the FAQ writer apparently thought of as 'random' (it actually seemed to occur pretty damned reliably at four different locations), the maze will turn you around on entering a new room – instead of facing the same way every time, you face the other. Now, why couldn't I just grit my teeth and bear it?

What the maze is supposed to look like

What it looked like half the time

You can't save in this thing. Over 300 required squares (who knows how many erroneous paths) of individual, featureless nonsense. I mean, I can say that it does stop half way and you can save there – but trust me, that is barely good enough. This maze technically only took around about 30 minutes during the first section and maybe 15 on the second (as I had a better idea of what I was doing, using the mixture of 'sometimes this turns you around here' annotations from the walkthrough that Ilmari had copied out for me – the map was more useful overall though) but the true toll that it took on me was definitely mental. I can barely insist enough on how painful it was getting through this thing, and it's only out of sheer dogged persistence that I managed to go through (well it was 290 something and then the last lot is just 'keep going to the end', so I kinda blanked out for those last maybe 30 squares or so – that said, it did turn me around here in spite of the walkthrough's guide not telling me it would – I nearly cried when pushing forwards did nothing).. but to be honest, the real sin here is that for the incredible amount of effort taken, this is pure padding – it's not even where you end up wanting to be, this section of the game is simply to send you to get a single keycard which I'm assuming will allow me into Vrangor's base.

The 'underground city'! It's impossible to describe the elation in seeing this screen

Don't have to tell me twice, sir

So, now that we've finally made our way into the underground city, there's.. some people to talk to! They don't really say anything – they're pretty much mole people, and don't know anything about anyone. Even Merigo, who has obviously been down here recently in planting the bombs that the manual speaks of, must have forgotten to tell them his name – they don't respond to much of anything, so it's just onwards ho. I'm guessing that the last screen is the one that the technician's access card lets us into – I didn't go in without to confirm, but it does sorta look like an access tunnel-y place that it's sending us through. When we enter what looks to be a control room of some sort (albeit bereft of any real interactible features), Lydia pops up and finds something that the necklace Crisa gave her when we met with her 'would fit into perfectly'. So clearly, Crisa's in on this (though she won't let us in to see her again and confirm it) – maybe she's quietly trying to let us not have the city blow up, or she just thought it'd be funny to have us go a hundred and fifty squares through a maze to pick up something that the game has yet to say we'll need...

How convenient!

Radar.. thingamebob.. amewhatsit! Okay!

Again, it might not look like much progress has come out of this post – but good god does it feel like it. I'm calling it here. My word/character count is quite a way down from when I usually finish a post, but this is a special circumstance. The game literally doesn't want me to beat it. I can only say how frustrating the game is so many times. But it is. A lot. Alcohol. I need alcohol.

this haunts my nightmares

Session time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Total time: 7 hours

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. But if anyone is about to tell me I've missed something, tell me. I'm not sure I have the mental endurance to have to reload significant portions of the game – heck, even minutes of it could be tough. I just want the game to end. Can you please make it end? I'm willing to consider anything. Hammer to the brain? I understand that's a pretty polite way to go.

END OF TRANSMISSION

"I say, what a remarkable man! Walking through a devious maze almost blindfolded! I think he deserves 20 Cassiopean Astro Pins extra for this assignment!"

"Quite right. But what is this? A second transmission from Mr. A.!"

"So soon! What a remarkable man!"

TRANSMISSION BEGINS... AGENT A CALLING FROM SELENIA, AGAIN!

I Just don't know any more. Why am I even keeping this? Journal 6: “I.. uhm. I won, I guess. I don't know about the bombs and stuff. Was that important? I don't know. After making my way through the tunnels, I went down to the technician's station behind the airlock (gee, they hid that one well! It's just lucky I guessed they were there!) I found the code for what I knew was going to be the Epsilon Station from the code I found in the underground city – a series of eight left or right switches.. I could have guessed it but I think it would have taken a while. Anyway. I amped B.O.B. up to accelleration (damned French designers misspelling everything!), made my way into the Epsilon station – and found Vrangor already swinging his sidearm at me! I took a few hits, but I took him down. He's dead, so I won't be asking him any questions. I'll try to get onto B.A.T. command and report what's happened.. and.. god, what if those bombs are still active? Seriously, this could be bad..”

French Developer 1: 'Mon dieu! I know what zis game is missing!
The worst part of le Tex Murphy games!'

French Developer 2: 'But monsieur, if we were to do zis, we would have to make
le space stations look like circus tents.'

French Developer 1: 'Brilliant! But le bad space station is evil, so.. orange and black?
Like le Halloween!'

Tears. Tears of utter pain and disappointment. As though the game weren't causing me enough grief, it has to not only end badly – but badly on a cliffhanger. Hoo-boy. There is one key positive I can take of this – I'VE FINISHED B.A.T.!!! I DON'T HAVE TO PLAY THIS HORRIBLE GAME ANY MORE!!! WOOHOOOOOOO!!!!! (Also on the positive side, I only had to get through two bottles of cider to get through this section of the game thanks to my meticulous game saving.) I was wrong on Ilmari's clue from post #4 – it was actually needed for Vrangor's station, so I didn't actually need it when I was worried I would – but it saved more trial and error to make my way through.

Where we essentially last left off

The DRAG was a lot like the Tex Murphy flight simulator portions – except without elevation, or anything interesting. Or an auto pilot. Essentially, all it was was just going around in circles until I found an orange dot on the radar section, going around at full speed until nearing a place to make sure it took my entry properly. Not complicated. Landing in the station, it looks sorta like the Epsilon station has been crashed into or something. I really don't know what to make of it.

What would you guys call that?

Unfortunately, this led to the final 'puzzle' of the game – an entirely guessable 'code'. I figured having five different keys on me would mean that one of them would allow me in – after all, I had picked up the 'epsilon radar' thing in the underground city – but it was actually the technician's pass that was the way through here. I hadn't noticed another entryway in the 'northern airlock' area (I found it by sheer chance, naturally, as that is how this game works – I was scanning rooms at the time and figured that I hadn't given much care to the DRAG area, but found another arrow on my way to getting there) which let me enter an area with some people standing around in space suits. They told me to 'help myself to this data'. I did.

Thanks, guy!

LRLRRLLR? No, up up, down down, left right, left right, B A start, you fool!

The game has no sound, just music, by the way.
So when you click on this, you have to BACK out with no clues that the door is now open

So, I know what you're all thinking. There's going to be a great big climactic showdown of wonderment, where all of the questions we haven't bothered to ask are going to be answered? No, they spent all of their budget on printing manuals with indecipherable information and creating a useless flight simulator. And a useless maze.

So yeah. Nope!

Session time: 20 minutes
Total time: 7 hours 20 minutes

TRANSMISSION ENDS

"That's it, Mr. A did it! But what did he ramble about bombs? Surely he should have remembered that we were after Vrangor just for his assets?"

"I am afraid the traumatic experiences of Mr. A in Selenia have caused a partial amnesia. He thinks he is part of some silly intergalactic space police, instead of the Bureau of Avaricious Taxmen."

"How awful! He must be given some time off for his duties. So there were no bombs, then?"

"Of course there were bombs! What do you think we were blackmailing Vrangor with?"

"Ah, the standard procedure. Wait a minute... I am getting something... yes, Mr. A has been transported to a Bureau space cruiser with his harem that he insisted taking with him. Should we call our troops to remove the bombs?"

"And leave this rat hole colonized by French Maze Builders Association intact? Better to end its misery..."

Written by TBD

King Graham of Daventry Journal Entry #7:It's finally over! Mordack is dead and my family is safe - I may even have found my son a suitable royal wife into the bargain. All I had to do was wait in Mordack's study for an unreasonably long time and everything else just fell into place.

I know I've been hard on this game at times and I'm going to be so again, but I should mention that I've really had fun playing King's Quest V - I don't think that enjoyment has come out enough in my posts so I thought it worth bringing up now.

I ended the last post with a request for assistance, and Andy_Panthro valiantly came to my rescue.

As I read his clues one by one I became increasingly annoyed with the game. I needed to use all of the clues to solve the puzzle, and even then it was difficult. The final hint was...

You can hide in the library (in the right place), and wait for Mordack to arrive and sleep. Then his wand can be yours!

Well, I'd already tried looking for hiding places all throughout the castle after reading earlier hints, including the library, but now knowing this was the correct answer I tried again. I waited in the library for a while. Nothing was happening. Perhaps my dosbox cycles were too high. Perhaps the game doesn't play well with modern processors. Perhaps I hadn't found the elusive 'right place'. I kept waiting. Eventually (2 minutes and 30 seconds later) Mordack appeared in the bedroom and took a power nap.

Before going to bed Mordack likes to pretend he is Batman

Now, two and a half minutes doesn't sound like much. But when sitting in a room in a game waiting for something it seems forever. Even when I was sure it was the right thing to do because Andy_Panthro told me so, I still didn't think I was doing it right. The game gives no indication at all that Mordack ever sleeps while I'm in his castle. There is no indication in the library that anything there is a hiding place. The closest you get to a clue is when you look at the doorway of the library and the narrator says, “Graham can see into Mordack's bedroom through the open doorway.” I can see how in hindsight some might classify this as a clue, but the narrator will generally tell you what's on the other side of any door or opening when you 'look' at it so this isn't unusual.

It seems that just waiting in the library for 2 minutes or so is all that's needed. In trying different things, I noticed that it took different times for Mordack to appear – I suspect that each time I looked at an item in the room it paused the 'Mordack tiredness clock' which only starts when you enter the library and ends as soon as you leave. From my tests it seems to be a 1 minute 50 second wait if you don't take any action.

In an effort to discover more deaths, I tried standing directly in front of the doorway so Mordack can see me when he appears, but he didn't notice me at all. I also tried going further into the room so the 'eye' on top of the door could open and stare at me, but this still didn't change what happened. After he went to bed I also tried grabbing, talking to and walking up to the sleeping Mordack, but I couldn't get the evil wizard to wake up and kill me.

Seeing as the game didn't give me to option to kill him in his sleep, I took the wand he'd left next to his bed and left for the library. Having finally found the item I'd spent hours trying to get, I knew what I needed to do here. I put Mordack's wand on the left platform, Crispin's wand on the right and the mouldy cheese into the cauldron (did I miss a clue somewhere that told me the machine was powered by mould?)

The machine activated and this time Crispin's wand was charged. Mordack appeared, as did Cedric, who flew through an open window. Mordack used telekinesis to retrieve his wand and shot the owl in the suspicion that perhaps he was about to be useful for a change.

Now it's my turn with a too-late-warning, "Cedric, watch out!"

Mordack threw his wand on the ground in disgust ("Warning Mr Mordack. Wand abuse”) and showed his real power by turning into a giant flying insect.

I used my own wand and the images from Mordack's book appeared, letting me choose from them. Because I'd seen the screenshot a few times, I remembered the order they were in in the book so tried the first one, which looked like a tiger.

I turned into a tiger and faced off with the giant insect, which resulted in neither of us doing much of anything.

Honestly, if I had to bet, I'd put my money on the giant winged insect with dangerous looking pincers

Unimpressed with the stalemate, Mordack turned himself into a dragon. I used the wand and chose the second picture, which looked like a bunny on a human face.

I turned into a bunny and quickly hopped away each time Mordack breathed fire at me.

When I'm in this form I like to be called Mister Hopsy

Mordack then turned himself into a pooooiisonous snake. I used the wand and chose the third picture, which looked like a human shadow with a white rat superimposed over it.

I turned into a mongoose (okay, not a rat) and tackled Mordack.

FATALITY!!!

He then turned himself into a ring of fire and surrounded me. I chose the obvious and used my wand to turn into the fourth picture which looked like either a butterfly or a chandelier.

I summoned a rain cloud above my head and the rain put Mordack out, thus ending his evil forever!

Time to put a dampener on your celebrations, Mordack (To be read in your favourite 80s action hero voice)

I had defeated the evil wizard and got a cutscene where the rest of the plot played out.

Beam us to Daventry, Mr LaForge

In the cutscene, Crispin appeared and told me everything I'd already heard from the gypsy back in the first act as if he was telling me news. Then he told me he knew how to fix my family and castle. He embiggened my family – my randy son promptly fell in love with Princess Cassima, who'd shown up to ensure I was going to save her as promised.

Let's continue to ignore the dying owl and have a group hug

Graham for some reason told his family that Princess Cassima was solely responsible for their rescue, forgetting all the other people who had to play their part as well – why no love for King Antony or the Willow Bride or even the roc whose hunger gave me the locket I needed to gain Cassima's trust?

"Cassima, meet Alexander, who started this whole mess." Nice way to introduce your son to the only eligible princess he's likely to meet?

Crispin sent Cassima back to her home, then sent my castle back to where it belonged and was about to send me and my family back home when Graham suddenly remembered the probably-dead body of Cedric the Unhelpful. Crispin easily brought Cedric back from the brink of death, then sent the Royal family back to Daventry.

"Everybody who is not to blame for this whole traumatic incident put your arms around me - Alexander, pack your stuff and get out of my castle."

I'm a little surprised to have maximum points here

Of course, I couldn't leave the game without seeing what happens if I choose the wrong spell when fighting Mordack...

Time to put a dampener on your... wait... what... aaaahhhhh!

Session time: 35 minutes

Total time: 16 hours

Session deaths: 1
Total deaths: 36

Dead ends found or suspected: 19
I found some dead ends, and suspect some more. Let me know in the comments if I've gotten any of these wrong or missed any...

Not throwing the boot at the cat as soon as it appears
Not getting the bottle or coin in the desert temple's treasure room
Buying the sled with the gold coin or needle
Buying the pie with a gold coin
Not getting the honeycomb before going to the forest with the amulet
Eating the pie
Eating both halves of the lamb
Throwing the rope onto the obvious hanging branch (Grrrrr!)
Climbing the rope without having bought a sled
Climbing the rope without having given the shoes to the shoemaker
Giving the pie to the eagle
Not feeding the eagle before getting captured by wolves
Not picking up the crystal before being kidnapped by a roc
Not picking up the locket from the roc's nest
Not picking up the iron rod from the beach before giving the conch to the hermit
Leaving Cedric to die on harpy island
Not picking up the fish hook from harpy island
Giving the cat a fish but not bagging him – particularly as it's possible to meet the cat before the blue monster
Throwing the peas at the blue monster the first time you see him – this one's particularly bad – effectively making it impossible to win because you were too good at the game's own logic

I have a strange love/hate relationship with King's Quest V and have no idea how the PISSED rating will end up. I guess we'll all find out in a few days. But first...

Comparison between CD and Floppy versions
I thought I'd spend a little time examining some of the differences in the PC versions of the game.

Apart from the obvious difference between CD and Floppy versions of the game, being that the floppy version isn't voiced, I noticed some other slight differences

The floppy version has extra icons, notably two walk icons. The leftmost icon has Graham's walking controlled in the same way as previous Sierra games - when you click, he'll travel in a straight line towards your cursor but stops as soon as he hits an obstacle. The other unfamiliar icons are save and stop which are sensibly contained in the options window in the CD version. Also the screen cursors for all the icons are a simple white in the floppy version rather than coloured in the CD version.

The leftmost icon is a "Click here to die while climbing mountain paths" button

Strangely, the character portraits show more detail in the floppy version, and in the case of Queen Beetrice at least, more animation - as she waves her staff slightly and moves her arm and antennae. The CD version has water sound effects and a bear growl as well as voiced dialogue.

We get to see the bottom of Crispin's beard in the floppy version

Nice wings you have there, dear

One other thing I noticed was that time stops when the voiced dialogue kicks in. This makes one particular puzzle much harder in the floppy version - the scene outside the bakery with the cat chasing a rat - in the CD version, the narrator tells you about the cat chasing the rat before they show up, giving you some time to react. In the floppy version it all happens much faster, making it almost impossible to do anything before the cat's killed the rat and you're stuck in a dead-end.

As for which version is better, that would be different for people's own subjective tastes - I personally like the extra immersion I get from voiced dialogue and can cope with the poor voice acting. I'm a little disappointed about the missing animations and character portrait detail but the voices, sound effects and user interface improvements more than make up for it for me.

Written by Aperama

Welcome to your inevitable demise

I can really only say so many times how much I dislike this game. That said? I really, really dislike this game. There's just nothing about it that ever drew me in. I would not have completed it were it not for the fine ladies and gentlemen of this blog.. I'd not have even bothered using a walkthrough. The game's just not fun. There was exactly one point at which I felt the game had some small amount of promise – and it essentially ignored it entirely as best as I can tell, with no point ever seeming to take advantage of the 'RPG' elements – nothing ever increased in ability (I finished at level 4) and there was never a random element (I tried 'stealing' from about fifteen separate people – each and every last one of them caught me.) I can only imagine how poorly this is going to do on the PISSED score – so much so that I was trying to think of an extra 'E' to turn it into a 'DESPISE' score – but hey. There are better games waiting for me over this holiday break I'm presently on to soothe my worries (Pillars of Eternity has remained unplayed since release) – I think I just need to put this behind me. Like, y'know, someone who has witnessed a horrific murder. Uh. I mean, Vive le France! Baguettes and expensive wine, oui oui!

The game's start was its strongest, and even then it didn't do that too well

Puzzles and Solvability

I'm of two minds, here. I'd like to be as fair as humanly possible in trying to give some kudos to this game for what it has to offer – but I think that if I called this game an adventure game, I would also have to credit DOOM for its innovative design choices in having 'keys' to open 'doors'. That is just about literally the extent of puzzles in this game. There are several things that cannot be accessed at first. Some of them require sheer luck. No, scratch that. Most of them do. For instance, to find Sloan (required to get into the DRAG airlock) you need to meet (what is apparently him – more on that in sound/graphics) at the arcade. At 1:00. If you don't click on Bizzy between about 1 and 1:10, he's not there. That's not a puzzle – that's just sadism. If anyone were to even mention that this guy existed elsewhere in the game, that'd be one thing – but the only things you can talk to people about are Merigo, Vrangor and the city. Even they give no clues as to what you're going to end up having to do. I don't know how many times I can insist I'm trying not to be unfair! The only saving grace I can say for these 'puzzles' is that a lot of them can apparently be solved in other ways (if you don't stay in the hotel that has the technician's access card, you can apparently sometimes find it on random people being sold). Not a single 'puzzle' left me feeling satisfied that I'd done something worthwhile at the end of it – I think that has to be the real benchmark here. One point for them existing, another for alternate ways to get through them.

Rating: 2

I think that ID software should really pay some penance to the French developers here.
They virtually pioneered the 'find random keys and use them in doors' approach!

Interface and Inventory

This was what I was prepared for – anyone who has ever played, reviewed or even mentioned this game has spoken of its appalling interface. I can admire that the game's problems are largely that it wants to do too much. It wants to have combat, a (driving) simulator, a maze section, conversation.. it offers everything. What it really needed to do was any one of these well. To have a hunger/thirst system that doesn't show onscreen unless you use your inbuilt wrist thing – which you access by finding a point of the screen that hasn't randomly offered something else to do in spite of whether it's visible on-screen or not – unless you use a program in it, which you can only use one of and you need to decide between 'bodily function', 'combat readiness' and 'translation'? It's just silly. Having an icon on screen which says 'DYING OF THIRST YOU IDIOT' would have done everything. Keep the translate/combat readiness functions and it's a legitimate idea that'd work okay. I also drank (at a fountain in the park) so much that I got thirsty again – I went over 100 which made it 1. That's just a silly bug that could easily have been ironed out. Oh, and the inventory is just worthless. Ceaselessly clicking 'next' as each inventory item is listed, no 'previous' function to go back, and getting minimal information on items? I knew more about items out of King's Quest 1. This is probably the most regressive interface we will see in this blog's history – it would have been clearer what was going on were this a pure text adventure.

Rating: 1

It has so many options, but the majority of them are worthless. You never need to attack anyone, stealing is useless even with my 'high stats' in it, only a few people have anything useful to say – and the 'offer' command is never used in the game's solution. Just so many failures!

Story and Setting

They really put quite a bit of effort into this side of things, I can give them that much. I certainly do think that someone back at French Developer HQ (I refuse to give the company name again out of fear that it is like the Candyman, and will break down my door with more shoddy games if I do) had a very clear idea of what was going on in this game. Unfortunately, it doesn't translate particularly well ingame. There is one monologue which explains the game's story (outside of the manual)

“Hello agent AFGNCAAP, I hope you enjoyed your trip. I'm the one who has to explain your mission in detail. You are well aware of the important role that Selenia plays in supplying raw materials to Earth. As a matter of fact, if Selenia was seized by an enemy, Earth would soon be in serious trouble. We have received information, from a reliable source, that this dreadful possibility could soon become a reality!!! An outstanding, but raving mad scientist, has escaped the penal colony of St. Yver of the Angels. This would not be so important, if it were any scientist other than Vrangor!! We lost all trace of him after the escape, but recently discovered the presence of an ECG wave corresponding to that of Merigo, a prisoner who escaped with him. Merigo is our only possible lead to Vrangor. Also, the governor general of Selenia has received an ultimatum which, to cut a long story short, states that we have ten days to evacuate Selenia, after which every human being will be destroyed. The ultimatum was actually signed by Vrangor!!! The loss of Selenia would be a lethal blow to the Galactic Confederation... That's all I can tell you. It's up to you to eliminate all of the risk factors. Here is your equipment...We've added a hologram of Merigo. Everything depends on your success...”

The problem I have with this? This is the only real time at which the game's storyline is explained outside of the manual. For a game that has a twelve page fake novel interspersed with fake encyclopedia entries, I expected an awful lot more in-game. Having Merigo give a death speech was a nice touch – there just wasn't enough of it. And why not have Vrangor give a Bond villain monologue before he begins to open fire? Sure, it might not be realistic, but it would have given a lot more depth to the storyline. Again, I see this on the level of Doom – 'you're in a place, if you take too long you'll die. Kill people and you'll win.' Oh, and I really hated the manual's text, it was just.. gibberish. But hey – you have a clear directive, and the setting is unique. I can claw back some points here, because I'm nice.

Rating: 6

Crisa Kortakis seemed to know what was going on, at least.
Mind you, the game never let me press her for details..

Sound and Graphics

I'm going to be generous and call this an 1989 game for the sake of this portion of the review – according to most sources I can find, it was released in 1989 for the Amiga with a PC conversion being the reason we're playing it in 1990. There are three musical tracks in the game. I am being extremely polite in calling them 'musical'. I disliked the music that blares away at the game's start from moment nought, and it never got any better – I'm guessing that they really were a small team and didn't have any devoted musicians coming up with anything, just resulting in them putting together some slapdash instruments. Graphically, there are some portions which look alright – and others which really don't. The majority of people look like people, aliens look like aliens. There are still a few things that I find myself looking at in my screenshots that I can't quite place. However, there is really no excuse for having a character with an ambiguous name be dressed in such a way that I actually believe he is of the opposite sex.. or at least, the walkthrough I checked after playing suggests that Sloan is a 'he'. That we can have two conflicting ideas of what the picture shows is a bad thing – this isn't a Magic Eye puzzle, it's just a picture of a person. No text identifies them in any way, so we're left entirely with our graphical interpretation – it wouldn't have been hard to, say, not give him lipstick. (I'd not have a problem were he intended as a transgendered person – I just feel that they drew someone of roughly Native American origins and figured that'd be good enough. It's a nitpick, yes, but I feel a valid one.) Without the manual, I'd still not fully understand what a Kradokid is, either, or a Glo(c)kmup – the pictures weren't ever particularly clear, even if they did convey the right atmosphere. Still, the graphics weren't offensive.

Rating: 4

I still see a woman! It's the glossy lips, I think. Do I just need my eyes examined?

Environment and Atmosphere

This game, according to Trickster, was one of those that sucked him in and in spite of terrible interface and difficult playing conditions never let go of him. I don't hide in so much as the slightest that my experience was different. Perhaps it all started badly when I couldn't really read the manual without feeling like I was reading the middle of Dune without knowing what an Atreides or a Harkonnen was, being confused why all of these people were so excited over cardamom and paprika – but the game's interface was enough to keep me at what was well and truly arm's length. Were there just one or two interactible alien characters that gave off some character to the game, it'd be so much different – but instead, I felt repeatedly that the game was suffering heavily from trying to keep to what was in the story in the manual without giving enough to be dragging people into its own nature. What I suppose is the real killer for me is that if the entire game were a 1970s crime series episode – say, you were Starsky (sans Hutch because this is a single player game) – the entire game would have made no difference. Starsky runs through the sewers of Bay City, California after taking down a perp, Mervin, to find key DNA evidence that leads him to drive around to find the evil.. science guy.. Vernon.. who is planning to set off bombs in the city. Done and done. The exact same game. With a rich sci-fi universe these guys were trying to create, they could have done so much more to grip and drag me in – but all this is is a (particularly bad) episode of a cop show set in space without all of the tropes that make the cop scenario fun and vibrant. Having someone from 'home base' to talk to, for instance (one of the many things they could have taken from Tex Murphy that would have actually been good) would have made the game so much more fun.

Rating: 4

At least it's better than Cleopatra 2525

Dialogue and Acting

Nope. None here.

Rating: 0
Okay.. maybe a little unfair. (I've been trying so hard all of this review, dammit!) The game has a very limited amount of dialogue. I've included the large monologue in this post which takes up probably around about 80% of the text listed ingame that isn't the bare minimum to virtually say 'no, we've written this up in the manual'. For instance, my gun by the end, the Nova. It has a rather awesome manual description – 'The most powerful weapon offered, its cannon is in fact a genuine photon accelerator. It is carried on the shoulder and is equipped with multiple shock-absorption systems. In short, it's not to be used in a very busy public place...' In game, all that's given is 'NOVA.' when looking at it along with a piddly little picture. Speaking to people rarely comes up with more than one lot of dialogue (for instance, 'Haven't I seen him on Tri-Dee?' is one of the most common things spoken about finding Merigo – but when around about 20 people say it in a row, I can't really call it dialogue.) Just having a few more individual characters instead of all of the 'random encounter' styled people would make a huge difference here. Unfortunately, as with so many other things in this game, an initial promise falls critically short in all the ways that count. I'm assuming that they made the game out of fear that small text would be too hard to read on the awkwardly formatted conversation screen they created – but really, they'd have been better off taking the gamble and actually including some proper speech, even if it wasn't ever going to be a dialogue between two characters. I'm giving it points for having talking as a necessity (can't get into Xifo without it) and having it be varied.. albeit ever so slightly.

Rating: 2

This is literally some of the best dialogue in the game – it's clear, functional and not dressed up in space-talk about space-things that space-space just to sound interesting. Distressing? I think so

2+1+6+4+4+2=19, which divided by 60 equals .3166 recurring – 32 rounded up. However, I'm going to take two points off. Not out of anger at the game's many lackings – it really did have so many moments with promise, falling short at every single one of them – my problem with the game is far more simple. I encountered a game-breaking bug which literally would have stopped progression. Yes, I wouldn't have found anything new after that point if I'd stopped the game there, but having a game-breaking bug is enough to make me want to lower the score on this. Even without it, though, the game was illogical, unfun and generally made me question my faith in humanity.

Cap Distribution

120 CAPs for Aperama

Blogger Award - 100 CAPs - For blogging his way through game for our enjoyment
Daredevil Award - 20 CAPs - For getting through a maze half blind

40 CAPs for Ilmari

Clue Master Award - 30 CAPs - For giving me lots of clues when I did ask
B.A.T. Master Award - 10 CAPs - For making my double post into a curio of alien culture

30 CAPs for Renke

French Bird Lover - 30 CAPs - For helping our avian friends survive in the land of mad adventure games

20 CAPs for TBD

Backstage Antics Award - 10 CAPs - For providing me with a map when I needed it
Reference Extraordinaire Award - 10 CAPs - For finding my references to geek culture (when I fell into different games)

20 CAPs for Laukku

Ant Apocalypse Preparation Award - 20 CAPs - For answering the riddle re: Greg Bradley

15 CAPs for Jan Larres

B.O.B. of All Trades Award - 10 CAPs - For helping me with my programming woes
Clue Award - 5 CAPs - For giving me a clue even when I didn't ask

10 CAPs for Kenny McCormick

Genre Appreciation Award - 5 CAPs - For announcing a Steam Sale
B.O.B. Apprentice Award - 5 CAPs - For discovering food and toilet apps reminiscent of my onboard wrist computer

10 CAPs for Laertes

Psychic Prediction Award - 10 CAPs - For predicting the score I would give the game

Written by TBD

In trying to rate King's Quest V I tried to compare it by what came before, particularly the previous King's Quest games. King's Quest V has the disability of coming out soon after The Secret of Monkey Island, a game that raised the bar significantly for almost every PISSED rating category and therefore raised the bar for what you need to do to get a good PISSED rating. There were some categories where I was really close to going a point higher or lower but hopefully the final score is a fair one.

Puzzles and Solvability

I can sum up this section with 'some okay, mixed with a whole lot of bad'

Some of the puzzles were fairly satisfying to solve. Most of them were simple variations of having the right inventory item. I can't recall any puzzle that was particularly good but many were serviceable. The ones that weren't though - some of those were terrible. I was stuck a few times: I hadn't effectively pixel hunted once; I'd dead ended myself another time; and the third time I just had to do something I never would have done if not prompted.

The 'best' puzzle in the game was probably the desert temple puzzle. Seeing the bandits knock on the temple door, trying it myself, then realising I had to go back to their tents to steal their staff was fun, though simple, to work out. That's really the only puzzle I could think of that didn't consist of, “Oh, I'll just try this inventory item I picked up earlier” or “I don't have any appropriate inventory items so I'd better click randomly on every screen in case I missed something” There was no combining of items in the inventory, though you can use inventory items on yourself.

Returning to the previously empty tents was the only time I deliberately went somewhere with a plan to get an item to solve a puzzle

In fact, now that I think about it, I can't remember more than a handful of times you use an item on an item in the environment. The vast majority of puzzles are solved by giving/throwing an inventory item to/at a character.

Some puzzles are too hard to work out – the honeycomb puzzle was one I'd worked out accidentally by trying to do something else - that's also how I found the labyrinth compass, which should never have been invisible in the first place. The library waiting puzzle is almost impossible to solve on purpose.

Furthermore, there's no direction to the puzzles. You almost never get the option of looking for something specific, so never really have the chance to use your brain to solve the puzzles. At the beginning of the game you know you need to go east to get to Mordack's castle, but the way east is guarded by a snake. The only way to get past the snake is to solve all the other unrelated puzzles until a tambourine suddenly appears on a screen it wasn't on before.

Two exceptions are the baker saying the pies cost a silver coin and the gypsy saying I need a gold coin. But there was no thinking involved about looking for those items. I never thought, 'where will I find a gold coin – Is there a mint in the game, or a bank?' I just waited until I found a gold coin in a random location, then used it.

Good adventure game puzzles have you specifically looking for things. The puzzles in King's Quest V are simply, 'get past this obstacle... somehow' and the way to solve them is to throw inventory objects that you've found in random locations at the puzzle until it clicks.

Even the poster child for bad adventure game puzzles gives you direction. 'I need to hire a bike but someone else has already reserved it – can I somehow convince the clerk that I'm the one who reserved it?'

An example of this lack of thinking was the rope 'puzzle'. When I'd thrown my rope at the branch and died while climbing I was thinking, 'perhaps I need some way to harden the rope or perhaps I'm too heavy - can I lighten my load somehow?' when the solution was 'you didn't pixel hunt on this screen enough – the branch is a red herring'.

Apart from the inventory puzzles we have the three mazes: the ridiculously large desert with three important locations; the not too large ocean but with only 1 important location; and the deliberately hard-to-map labyrinth with 2 important locations (one of which is randomized) that contains the compass that only appears if you 'look' at the empty space below the screen. At best these mazes were not too bad. At worst they were just boring and only there in order to increase play time.

Seeing screens like this for 2 hours is not fun gameplay

I also really don't see the fun in dead ends. I'd counted 19 of them and the existence of them makes you spend too much time second guessing yourself – maybe there was something I needed from the snake before I scared him off. Maybe I missed an item in the desert that I now need in Mordack's castle. Again, something that is only there to increase play time.

I think the problem is that Sierra haven't quite gotten the hang of creating puzzles for a point & click interface yet, and fear of the new interface making the game too easy probably resulted in them making some puzzles annoyingly hard and increasing the amount of dead ends significantly. Although it was still rewarding when you solve a puzzle and get to see a new area, this game really had too many boring puzzles and no really fun ones,

Rating: 3

Interface and Inventory

The interface was good. With pathfinding and simple right-click to cycle through icons mechanic it did its job well.

Comparing the interface to the Lucasarts one, this wins out in having icons instead of words on the bottom of the screen. It allows more of the screen to show the game graphics but still gives easy access to all necessary verbs. You can get the verbs both by right-clicking to cycle them and by mousing up to the top of the screen you get the whole icon bar and inventory.

The one thing missing that some earlier non-Sierra games have had was a tooltip when scanning the screen with your mouse. This would have helped me not have to click on every part of the background and hearing the same message over and over, and would clearly have made the game easier.”

The inventory was good. There was a simple visual of the item and if 'look'ed at in the inventory I got more detail on the item. The ability to combine items existed but I can't recall it ever being used in the game. (Though I did attempt to use everything with everything else whenever I was stuck)

A nice simple graphical inventory, with the ability to look, use or select items

Overall, pretty good job on the interface - some improvements to what's come before in the point-and-click genre but missing the important tooltips or "What is" option, perhaps deliberately so, to rely on the gamer missing things on the screen. Inventory was up to par with the exception of combining items.

Rating: 7

Story and Setting

The story was standard King's Quest fare. Nothing too out of the box here. Evil wizard kidnapped my family. Rescue my family and destroy wizard. Everything in between, apart from perhaps meeting Princess Cassima, was just random obstacles thrown in the way of my goal. How does wandering a western desert help me travel to an island far to the east? Because I need to pick up a shoe to throw at a cat so a rat will save me when I'm trapped in a cellar – otherwise I won't have a leg of lamb to give to an eagle so he'll carry me to a beach when I'm captured by a roc. That's why!

There are small unrelated stories in between but its all simple fairy-tale stuff – the transformed princess with the stolen heart – the ice queen with the need for a hero to kill a monster – the labyrinth below the castle. None of it feels like a part of a greater whole.

Rating: 4

Sound and Graphics

This is definitely where the game shines.

Graphically the backgrounds are even better than our current leader in this category. Some of the detail is amazing. The character models are much more simplistic, but still decent. Character animations were nice and there were lots of them. I liked that things were often happening in the background - the toymaker's granddaughter playing with her doll and the face that follows you across Mordack's organ room being two examples. I particularly liked Graham picking up the dying Cedric on Harpy Island and carrying him back to the boat.

The closeups are also well done and detailed

Sound wise, the game has bubbling brooks and appropriate sounds but one thing I loved was the use of music. Almost every location had its own music which really helped add to the location's atmosphere – the desert's music was lonely and solemn, the willow tree's music was sad, the forest music was slightly eerie, the town music was upbeat and annoying - and was softer when outside the town but louder inside. The idea of each piece of music was great, but there are no standout tunes. Nothing really made me want to listen to it specifically, but that's not what I really need music for in games – in this game it served its purpose brilliantly.

A small example of the location-specific music

Rating: 9

Environment and Atmosphere

I've just mentioned how the sounds and graphics added to the games atmosphere. As do little things like the toymaker's son coming in from the back door occasionally or the picky man in the tailor's shop who hates all the clothes he tries on.

The other people who walk around town serve no purpose but add to the atmosphere

If the environment had been more unique this category might have also scored high, but almost every place just screamed 'generic fantasy kingdom' at me. There seemed to be no particular thought to how the world should be put together. It was just – town section, desert section, forest section, icy mountain section, beach and ocean section, evil castle section.

On balance, I'd say this game would be average in this category, but the voice acting adds to the atmosphere as a whole making it seem that much more real.

Rating: 6

Dialogue and Acting

Dialogue in the game is mostly average, with some sections a bit too unrealistic and simplistic – there was none of Monkey Island's witty conversations or none of the good dramatic dialogue we'll start seeing soon in other games. It's all just... there.

The dialogue isn't compelling and the acting isn't great, but it's VOICED!

There are no dialogue options. Any conversations happen without any input from the player so I can't give a particularly high score here.

Acting is, as we've all heard, bad. But I find it hard to poopoo the game's acting when it's the first fully voice acted game we've had. Any acting at all helps the atmosphere as opposed to reading paragraphs of text that take up half the game screen. It's definitely not even close to the worst voice acting I've heard and while this voice acting performance would be laughable today, at the time it was innovative. Mean Streets may have had some voice acting before, but King's Quest went all the way and had every line of dialogue acted. That kind of commitment deserves to be rewarded and I'm giving King's Quest V points for being the first game to do what became a staple requirement for future adventure games.

So, taking into account the average non-interactive dialogue and innovative use of voice acting I'll score this section right in the middle.

Rating: 5

Total

34*100/60 which equals 57. I'll take a point off largely because my biggest dilemma was whether to give Sound and Graphics an 8 or 9. That leaves the final score as 56. This gives the game a slightly above average score, which I think is deserved as despite the annoyances I had more fun than not while playing.

If I'd played the non-voiced version I'd probably have dropped a point in both 'Environment and Atmosphere' and 'Dialogue and Acting' leaving a score of 53

So, did anyone guess 56? Yes, Kenny McCormick. Congratulations, Kenny. And now, on to the CAPs!

CAP Distribution

125 CAPs for Laukku

2 minutes award - 40 CAPs - for knowing I'd not be patient enough to wait for Mordack
What drawer? award - 40 CAPs - for knowing I wouldn't trap the elf without help
RSPCA award - -10 CAPs - for incorrectly guessing I wouldn't throw a boot at a cat
Mould power award - -10 CAPs - for incorrectly guessing I wouldn't loot a mouse hole in the dungeon
Quest Studios award - 5 CAPs - for finding out some interesting info about release dates
Companion award - 10 CAPs - for playing along and completing the game
Collector award - 5 CAPs - for sharing images of his really old floppy version of the game
My hour is nigh award - 20 CAPs - for guessing that Carl Denning was the answer to the riddle
Let's play award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out an interesting Let's Play of the game with a particularly interesting final video
Storyteller award - 10 CAPs - for teaching us something about storytelling
Genre Support Award - 5 CAPs - for announcing a new adventure game on GOG
Extra animation Award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out an unused death animation for the game

110 CAPs for TBD

Blogger award - 100 points - for blogging through this game for our enjoyment
Genre Support Award - 5 CAPs - for announcing a new adventure game sale on GOG
Save the Owls Award - 5 CAPs - for saving an owl in memory of Cedric

70 CAPs for Corey Cole

Insider trading award - 50 CAPs - for regularly giving us fascinating information about the development process for the game
Even more insider trading award - 20 CAPs - for also regularly giving us fascinating information about the development process of Quest for Glory II

55 CAPs for Andy_Panthro

Companion award - 10 CAPs - for playing along and completing the game
Sponsor award - 20 CAPs - for offering a copy of King's Quest Collection
Creating a monster award - 5 CAPs - for starting the discussion on linearity and freedom
Help! I need somebody award - 20 CAPs - for helping me put Mordack to bed when I was stuck

46 CAPs and Cedric's thanks for Joe Pranevich

Hungry like the wolf award - 10 CAPs - for winning the caption contest by invoking an 80s music icon
Sanctuary for all award - 30 CAPs - for starting the 'Save the Owls' campaign to make up for his Cedric-punching thoughts
It was worth a try award - 1 CAP - for attempting to play along but not really getting around to it
Haven't I been here before award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out how similar Serenia is to now to how it was before

Cedric sent me a postcard, which would never have happened without Joe's initiative

35 CAPs for Fry

"Graham, watch out!" award - 20 CAPs - for telling me I was dead-ended by throwing the rope on the branch
Pika-who? award - 5 CAPs - for making me google a pokemon because I didn't know who Doduo was
Bean counter award - 5 CAPs - for counting pixels
Memories award - 5 CAPs - for sharing all his memories of being stuck in dead-ends

20 CAPs for apprentice_fu

Help! I need somebody award - 20 CAPs - for helping me get out of the forest when I was stuck

20 CAPs for Kenny McCormick

Sanctuary for none award - 5 CAPs - for attempting to save the owls but discovering the owls don't want his help
Time for a party award - 5 CAPs - for organising King Graham's family into an RPG party
Psychic prediction award - 10 CAPs - for correctly guessing the final PISSED rating

10 CAPs for Ilmari Jauhiainen

Cartographer award - 5 CAPs - for pointing us to some official King's Quest maps
Sierra historian award - 5 CAPs - for comparing linearity versus freedom in other Sierra series

6 CAPs for doctorcasino

Pattern weaver award - 6 CAPs - for discovering and analyzing a linear versus open world pattern in King's Quest games

5 CAPs for JosephCurwen

Success by thirst award - 5 CAPs - for solving the hardest puzzle in the game by going downstairs to get a glass of water

5 CAPs for Laertes

His name was Miles award - 5 CAPs - for pointing out that I'd forgotten who runs the transporter on the Enterprise

5 CAPs for Rowan Lipkovits

Deja Vu award - 5 CAPs - for reminding us that this game took place in the same place as Wizard and the Princess

By TAG reviewers

FEATURING TRICKSTER!

1990 was NOT a year dominated by Sierra! In fact, almost no game of the Sierra main series was published this year, and even those published had something new in them. Hero’s Quest changed its name to Quest for Glory in the second game of the series, King’s Quest started the tradition of Sierra remakes and King’s Quest V turned Sierra finally into VGA point and click. We also got the beginning of Sierra’s Conquest-series with Conquest of the Camelot and Dynamix started developing games for Sierra with Rise of the Dragon.

Although we didn’t see so many Sierra games, there were few companies publishing clear Sierra clones: Interstel with Earthrise and especially Accolade with first Les Manley and Altered Destiny, none of which lived up to the original. In fact, 1990 was a year for many new adventure game publishers: notable examples are Delphine Adventure, publishing first French adventure games that were not complete trash, and Legend Entertainment, which rejuvenated the graphic text adventure genre. But the true winner of the year was once again Lucasfilm with Loom and especially Secret of the Monkey Island.

The year was also full of surprises for The Adventure Gamer. Trickster decided to step away from adventure game blogging and TAG became a community effort. Since most of the games in 1990 were still reviewed by Trickster, the TAG awards are also mostly decided by Trickster - although rest of the reviewers of this year (Aperama, Joe Pranevich, Deimar, Ilmari and TBD) have also had the opportunity to choose their favourites.

Let the award ceremonies begin!

Reader's Choice Tag - 1990

Before letting Trickster on stage, let's see what you readers had to say about the best game of 1990. The winner is - why I am not surprised? - The Secret of Monkey Island with 86 votes and 53 % of all votes!

Our astonished winner!

Our runner-ups are, in the second place, Quest for Glory 2, with 23 votes and 14 % of all votes, and in the third place, Loom, with 21 votes and 13 % of all votes. A special commendation must go to Les Manley, which, despite all our warnings, managed to get six votes! And now for the rewards decided by Trickster!

The Charles Darwin TAG:
For the Most Evolutionary Game of 1990

Winner: The Secret of Monkey Island

Monkey Island is evolutionary for a stack of reasons, not least of all due to it raising the bar to unprecedented heights when it comes to entertainment and professionalism. To be more specific though, the insult combat sequences showed that a bit of thought could negate the need for badly implemented action mini-games, the branching dialogue interface nailed the adventure game blueprint that still survives today, and the music set a standard in the industry that pushed other developers to increase their efforts.

If all minigames in all adventure games just were this good!

Also worth a mention:

Loom – An adventure game with no actual inventory? You betcha! Loom is nothing if not unique, and while calling it “evolutionary” is a stretch (since no-one really copied it), the overall production (that included a professionally recorded audio cassette) was extremely high, and the musical interface no doubt made a bunch of other developers think outside the square.

TBD adds: King's Quest V - The use of hand-painted and scanned backgrounds, rotoscoping for character animations and most evolutionary of all, full voice acting, all showed game developers how to better use new technology to improve their games. Though the voice acted version was actually released in 1991, King's Quest V is still the first adventure game to go this route and deserves a mention for being the first to do something that soon became a staple of the genre.

The Lament Configuration TAG:
For the Most Ridiculous Puzzle of 1990

Winner: Les Manley

This game is basically one long advertisement for ridiculous puzzles, but rather than filling all three slots with the one game, I’ve decided to pick one puzzle that represents the level of stupidity on offer in a nutshell. Not only is the player expected to “look” at a sleeping guard’s dream to see what’s going on in his head, they’re then expected to “pick it up”. I won’t even go into the contents of said dream (that would only act to kill off more of your brain cells), but I will say that the purpose of said dream collection was to give it to the World’s Smallest Man to cheer him up. I don’t think any further justification is required.

Seriously, has anyone solved this without any hints?

Also worth a mention:

Altered Destiny – The puzzles in this sci-fi game were more strange than ridiculous, but there was one particular part that made absolutely no sense at all. After scaling a dangerous maze of cliff-edging paths, I discovered a plant that I could not pick up because I didn’t know what it was called (the game actually told me so). After discovering that it’s called a defoil plant, I could. Huh!?

Future Wars - So, you need to disguise yourself so as not to draw the attention of a couple of angry monks. What should you do? Oh, I know! Climb a tree and go to sleep until someone decides to skinny dip nearby so you can steal their clothes. Of course! Who wouldn’t think to do that? It's so obvious!

Joffrey’s Death TAG –

For the Most Memorable Moment of 1990

Winner: The Conquests of Camelot

I can’t say that this game held too many memorable moments, but Fatima more than made up for it. I certainly didn’t expect to be seduced by a minimally-clad, gyrating brunette, especially one offering her “body and soul and sensual delights beyond imagining”, when I started up this family adventure game. I wonder if there has been a single male player in history that didn’t take her up on her offer at least once just to see if they could get laid.

Enticing, but deadly!

Also worth a mention:

Loom - I really was a bit shocked and disturbed to find that one of my spells, which made me appear like a young boy and he appear as me, resulted in the poor little guy being eaten by a dragon. Consequences as tragic as that don’t normally occur in LucasArts games!

The Secret of Monkey Island - The whole thing is highly memorable, but if I had to choose one scene that captures the spirit of the game, it would be Stan the Salesman giving me one last post-sales pitch for the Sea Monkey, only for its front mast to collapse into the sea moments later. A perfectly timed, laugh out loud moment!

The Needle’s Eye TAG –
For the Most Unsolvable Puzzle of 1990

Winner: Les Manley

Once again I could have picked any of a bunch of puzzles in this game, but I’ve gone for the one that required I “touch” Madame Zarmooska for no particular reason. Finding the resurrection card relies upon the player trying this at random, but even once this action inexplicably causes her to disappear, they then have to touch the lizard statue on the table to get the resurrection card that they couldn’t possibly know exists (unless the parser has mistakenly told them so). Enough said.

We all hope this game would have been a bad dream!

Also worth a mention:

Hugo’s House of Horrors - Puzzles requiring specific knowledge that can only be acquired outside of the game proper are in my opinion not fair game. Yes, it’s true; it’s easy to solve the Roy Rogers puzzle by looking up the answer elsewhere, but that goes against the spirit of adventure games in my opinion.

Earthrise – Earthrise wasn’t a terrible game, but the parser sure gave me some trouble. The worst case of this was in the inner security office, where I was expected to shoot a hole in the door and then fire my laser at a panel through it. Not hard in theory, but with the game’s parser, well let’s just say a lot of luck and/or inhuman perseverance was required.

The Golden Mop TAG –
For the Best New Character of 1990

Winner: The whole Monkey Island gang

I know I’m cheating here, but the truth is that the top ten characters of the year would all come from this game. Guybrush Threepwood might be a wuss, but that’s what makes him so perfectly suited to Monkey Island shenanigans. LeChuck is a fantastic villain and Elaine an admirably capable heroine, but the real quality comes in the way of the supporting cast. Stan the Salesman, The Fettuccini Brothers, the vegetarian cannibals, all of these characters are distinct and utterly hilarious in their own ways. I can’t separate them, so the whole lot of them win.

Who could resist all these fine personalities?

Also worth a mention:

Bobbin Threadbare – I haven’t chosen Bobbin because he’s a particularly strong character. The truth is that he lacks any sort of charisma. Despite this, the weaver is a fascinating character to play with a particularly cool ability.

Nawar the Prostitute - I realise Nawar only appeared in Quest for Glory II for a very short period of time, but it was enough for me to ask Corey whether she would ever make another appearance. Brutally honest, crass, and extremely witty, Nawar’s awesome!

TBD regretfully adds: Cedric - he's not the best character, but he's definitely one of the most memorable. Though his personality is less defined than Stan the Salesman, and he doesn't help Graham solve any puzzle, he's our constant companion. He'll stay with King Graham through any dangers... as long as those dangers don't involve bandits, dogs, inns, bakers, forests, labyrinths, witches, gypsies, deserts, towns, castles, yetis, wolves or harpies. He's possibly the most made-fun-of character in adventure game history so deserves his place in this list.

The Severed Head TAG –
For the Worst Game of 1990

Winner: Hugo’s House of Horrors

As much as I would have liked to give this award to Les Manley, the truth is that Hugo’s House of Horrors is so badly made that it’s hard to believe the thing was actually reasonably popular. Stupidly simple puzzles, dodgy parser, appalling graphics, non-existent sound, the only good things to say about it are that it was free, and can be completed in one session.

And then there's this...

Also worth a mention:

Les Manley - Oh man, out of all the games I played for the blog, this is the one I despised the most. The puzzles were shamefully nonsensical, and were made that much harder by the repulsive parser technology. Whatever you do, stay away from this game!

Déjà Vu II – It’s a shame that this game ended up falling to these depths, as I recall enjoying it for the first few sessions. The interface really was a pain to use though, especially after experiencing the leaps and bounds made by competitors. The whole thing collapsed into a heap by its close.

Aperama warns: B.A.T. - France has struck again! The terror of Emmanuelle lived on here in a game with a poor interface, virtually no puzzles and difficulty based purely around what can only be considered chance. There really is nothing redeeming about this French ‘adventure’ game.

The Atlantean Medallion TAG –
For the Best Game of 1990

Winner: The Secret of Monkey Island

There was only going to be one winner this year. The Secret of Monkey Island isn’t just the best adventure game of 1990. It’s arguably the best adventure game ever made. LucasArts had already made some groundbreaking and highly entertaining games by the time Gilbert, Schafer and Grossman sat down to design it, but with Monkey Island they perfected the formula. Challenging without being frustrating, hilarious without lacking drama, the game is beautifully balanced. The fantastic visuals and stupendously enjoyable soundtrack are just the cherry on the top.

And it comes with memorable lines to quote!

Also worth a mention:

Quest for Glory II - The sequel to 1989’s Hero’s Quest is a very ambitious game, and it delivers for the most part. There are very few games that so completely capture the spirit of the game world within every facet.

Loom - Loom deserves praise for its uniqueness alone, but it’s also a very engaging experience. Its puzzle solving mechanic may make reaching the climax just a matter of time, but the journey is one you’re unlikely to forget.

Ilmari recommends: Rise of the Dragon - Certainly not as magical game as the three greats above, but it offered a competent and interesting ride in a Blade Runner -inspired future, with a dynamic environment where your actions really made a difference. Add to the equation hand-painted graphics with a comic book look, alternative solutions to puzzles and the possibility to skip minigames and you have ingredients for a entertaining, if short experience.

***

Those were the TAG awards for 1990! But before we begin 1991, we’ll announce a whole new contest. Someone (I think it was Laertes) suggested a competition for guessing the game which gets the highest score in 1991. This might be a bit too easy, since there’s a certain sequel coming up that will certainly wipe out all the competition (I am of course speaking of the second Les Manley).

Instead, you’ll have a chance to guess the TOP 5. If you can state which 5 games will be the best games of 1991, you’ll get 10 CAPs. You won’t have to know the exact ratings the games will get, but you do have to get the exact order of the top five games.

You’ll also get to guess the BOTTOM 5. The rules and the prizes are same as in the TOP 5, but you’ll have to guess the five worst games of 1991, in the exact order.

And to top it all, you’ll also have a chance to compete for the FULL HOUSE. Guess the exact order of all the games of 1991. If you get them right, you’ll get the TOP 5 and BOTTOM 5 awards, but also 2 CAPs for each game not in TOP or BOTTOM 5. This year getting FULL HOUSE will thus mean a prize of 42 CAPs. For ease of reference, here are the games we’ll be playing in 1991:

Hugo II: Whodunit?
Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers
Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards
Timequest
Space Quest I: Roger Wilco in the Sarien Encounter
Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work
Police Quest III: The Kindred
The Adventures of Willy Beamish
Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance
Martian Memorandum
Castle of Dr. Brain
Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood
Free D.C!
Les Manley in: Lost in L.A.
Maupiti Island
Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus
Cruise for a Corpse
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Heart of China
EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus
Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective

Please make your guesses for TOP 5, BOTTOM 5 and FULL HOUSE in the comments for this post. The guesses should be made before the first two final ratings of the year 1991 will be published. The prizes for the potential winners will be handed at the end of the year 1991.

So, the next games to be played will be Hugo II and Space Quest IV. But before that, we have something special in store, involving a movie that is coming up quite soon. Stay tuned!

Game 52: King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder (1990) - Introduction

Game 50: B.A.T. (1990) - Introduction

What's Your Story - The Brown Dragon

Game 50: B.A.T. - Toilet Training

Game 52: King's Quest V – King Graham, Insect Whisperer

Missed Classic 6: Wonderland - Part The Second – In Which Alice Discovers Time Goes Odd

Game 52: Kings Quest V - Monotony Came From the Desert

Game 52: King's Quest V - Stuck in Burkittsville Woods - Request for assistance!

Game 50: B.A.T. - Dance 'til you Drop

Some small changes to blog format

Game 52: King's Quest V - The things I'll go through for a leg of lamb

Game 50: B.A.T. - Forced Into Submission (Request for Assistance)

Game 52: King's Quest V – An owl in need is an owl indeed

Game 50: B.A.T. - Gettin' Bizzy Wit It

Game 52: King's Quest V - Time to Let the Cat Out of the Bag - Request for assistance!

Game 50: B.A.T. - Merigo 'Round + WON!

Game 52: King's Quest V - Won!

Game 50: B.A.T. - Final rating

Game 52: King's Quest V - Final Rating

The Year That Was… 1990