King's Quest: Romancing the Throne

After the success of Quest for the Crown, a sequel was inevitable, and the nature of its quest obvious. Having won the crown and the throne in the previous game, what does a young king need next? A wife and heir, obviously. The magic mirror retrieved during the course of Quest for the Crown is the perfect device with which to introduce Graham to his would-be bride, and the opening act depicts a lonely Graham glimpsing a lovely maiden in the glass.

He's informed by the mirror that her name is Valanice, and that she’s trapped in a quartz tower behind three magical doors located in the nearby land of Kolyma (I’ve no idea how to pronounce that). Exchanging his crown for his adventurer’s cap, he sets off to find her. Because, you know, it’s totally fine for a king to just leave his kingdom to go off and do this sort of thing, and he doesn’t even bother to take any coins from the ever-replenishing chest or the magical shield that can protect him from all harm.

Romancing the Throne (an obvious play on Romancing the Stone) was released in 1985, and uses the same interface, “wrap-around” geography, and AGI game engine as its predecessor. In fact, of all seven games in this series, Quest for the Crown and Romancing the Throne are the most similar: each feature Graham as the protagonist, a threefold quest, villains that are easily evaded by simply not entering the screens they inhabit, a magical fairy helper that gives you a protective spell, and even the use of “Greensleeves” as the opening theme music.

As ever, non-violent solutions garner the player more points than using lethal force (except when a truly evil character needs to be taken out) and hidden treasures can be traded away – along with the points they accrue – in order to advance.  Many of the previous game’s bad guys have relocated to Kolyma, including the dwarf, the sorcerer and the big bad wolf, and there’s a clear narrative continuum between winning a kingdom and finding a bride.

They form a neat two-part story in the wider scope of the series, for starting with the very next game, writer/designer Roberta Williams shakes up the formula considerably, from the nature of the quests to the motivation of the protagonists, to the lack of single-screen villains, miscellaneous treasures, and helpful fairies that provide the player with temporary magical protection.

Yet even at this early stage, there were technological advancements over Quest for the Crown. This game was the first to include an introductory cutscene that laid out the storyline for the player to follow. It also featured a more linear story progression, in which the world around Graham changed as he achieved different stages of his goal to unlock the three doors, such as new characters appearing or restricted areas becoming accessible at certain times.

As in the previous game, if the player advanced far enough to the north or south, they’d eventually end up back where they started. This was how the game-world of Daventry was designed, though in that case it was a fully-enclosed loop, to the east and west as well as the north and south. This game has an ocean to the west and impassable cliffs to the east, which suggests a much wider world beyond the boundaries of the game itself.

It also includes fourteen musical selections including Tchaikovsky's love theme from Romeo and Juliet, Bach's “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” in Dracula's castle (Google it, you’ll recognize it), and Michael Jackson's “Thriller” when encountering the ghosts outside the castle entrance (Wikipedia tells me only the opening bars of the last are played so nobody had to pay any royalties – heh, heh).

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The underlying arc of the game sticks with the threefold quest format, though instead of three magical treasures, Graham is required to find the keys that will open three doors that will lead him to his heart’s desire. Each door has an inscription carved on it that provides a clue as to where he must search for the next key: “whosoever choses to find the key that opens this door must make a splash” or “must set their sights high” or “must have a stout heart.”

I’ve always found it interesting to look at the core objective of each game in the King’s Quest series, and how the stakes are raised with each new instalment. If the goal of the previous game was to simply find three magical MacGuffins and become king, then Romancing the Throne has a fair more personal edge: the quest for romantic love.

That’s a pretty standard objective for a childless bachelor king, and Valanice is a quintessential Distressed Damsel of the Girl in the Tower sub-category. Classic fairy tale set-up.

Yet it’s unfortunate that Valance remains a complete cypher, and a little more context to her story would have gone a long way. Who is this girl? Where’d she come from? How’d she end up in a quartz tower? Who put her there and why? Where are her parents? And isn’t it kind of presumptuous of Graham to assume that if he finds this girl she’ll automatically agree to marry him? Yes, I know it’s a fairy tale, and yes it’s difficult to pinpoint how they could have made Valanice more of a character in a story that resolves around her being physically hard to reach, but for a more personal quest it’s also very impersonal. 

The game manual includes a short story which expands on the introductory cutscene, telling of how Graham sees a vision in the mirror of his predecessor, King Edward, who tells him of the importance of securing a wife and heir, which inspires him to host a ball in which he might find a prospective bride. Failing to do so, it’s only after all the guests have left that Graham gets his second vision from the mirror, which tells him: “The jealous crone Hagatha whisked Valanice away to an enchanted land, and imprisoned her in a quartz tower guarded by a ferocious wild beast.”

Yeah, it’s still not much to go on. As it happens, Valanice won’t get any real characterization until the seventh game in the series, when she finally becomes a playable character.

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Once again, the game features a grab-bag of fairy tale creatures, though nowhere near as many overt references to actual stories as there was in Quest for the Crown. In fact, there’s only one that directly corresponds to a pre-existing tale, and that’s the presence of Little Red Riding Hood, her Grandma, and the Big Bad Wolf. And it’s not like the game introduces her as “a little girl in a red hood” – no, the text overtly says: “Why, it’s little Red Riding Hood!”, treating her like a celebrity guest-star that’s just shown up. Likewise, the Wolf sporadically appears in Grandma’s bed, alternating with Grandma herself, in accordance with the story.

Spotlighting fairy tales and incorporating their characters and elements into the gameplay is a recurring feature of all the King’s Quest games, though this game marks the start of limiting appearances to only one fairy tale per game (III readapts Goldilocks and the Three Bears, IV features the Seven Dwarfs, VI has a fresh take on Beauty and the Beast, etc). Perhaps to make up for this sudden decrease in nods to traditional fairy tales, Romancing the Throne also features the likes of King Neptune, Count Dracula, and an assortment of miscellaneous creatures such as a genie, a talking fish, a good fairy, and Pegasus.

In fact, it's surprising just how many stock tropes are used in this game, which perhaps points to its general lack of originality (sans the fact they’re all to be found in the same game) since all exist as completely straight examples. Just through my perusal of TV Tropes, I found The Ferryman, Magic Carpet, Genie in a Bottle, Big Bad Wolf, Girl in the Tower, Rope Bridge, Seahorse Steed, Black Cloak, and Wicked Witch as components of the game.

Like I said, it’s quite a grab-bag. The presence of Count Dracula in particular is hilariously random. As far as I can recall, he’s the only character in the entirety of these games that comes from a pre-existing novel written by a singular author – though due to the nature of the gameplay, you could potentially finish this game without ever encountering him. Sometimes he appears in the entry hall of his own home to bite Graham (then turn into a bat and fly away if he’s wearing the cross) and then in the dungeon, where he’s asleep in his coffin (if you enter when the lid is closed).

As mentioned, most of the bad guys have crossed-over from the previous game: the evil sorcerer, the thieving dwarf, the big bad wolf – though there’s no indication of how or why they managed to travel to a completely different country! Taking the place of Dahlia is Hagatha as the game’s resident witch, which only makes sense if you successfully killed the former character in the previous game. Despite being the antagonist who put Valanice in the quartz tower in the first place, she’s not any more important to the gameplay than the other recurring villains, and – as with Dracula – can be avoided completely if you get lucky and avoid her screens.

Taking the place of the fairy godmother of the previous film is a little fairy who sprinkles Graham with fairy dust as a temporary protective measure, and the noise she makes is one of the most irritating things that will ever enter your eardrums. I remember actively trying to avoid her as a child, just to get away from that sound.  

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Romancing the Throne is also by far the easiest game in the series to complete, and you could probably manage it in under half-an-hour if you’re really committed and you skip some of the extraneous points. As far as negotiating difficult areas go, the rope bridge is nowhere near as difficult as the beanstalk (or the mountain path, or the troll cave, or the spiral staircase of other games) and the trickiest part is keeping track of how many times you cross it. More than seven, and it collapses under you.

The structure of the plot is also fairly straightforward: all you have to do is find the three keys to unlock the three magical doors, which makes the game very linear considering that characters that help you on your way – the mermaid, the antique store owner, the ferryman – only appear after the inscription on each door has been read (unlike Quest of the Crown, in which you could retrieve the treasures in any order).

Once all the doors have been opened, Graham is transported to a strange world of blue sands and violet seas (which looks awesome by the way) and the gameplay becomes profoundly easy: the net used to catch the golden fish is right there on the shore, the amulet to get home is right there on the island, and the ham taken from Dracula’s house is clearly the right way to placate the lion at the tower door. And Valanice’s room isn’t even locked!

Perhaps Roberta Williams figured people would be sick to death of finding keys at this point, but you’d think there’d be a scope for brand new puzzles on the island, and there just isn’t. There’s not even a showdown with Hagatha, the individual responsible for kidnapping Valanice in the first place. She never appears outside her designated screens in Kolyma, and is easily avoided.

There’s also less problem-solving when it comes to moving through the game, and a lot of the puzzles don’t really feel like puzzles. It’s easy to take shortcuts without realizing they’re shortcuts, which makes later obstacles more difficult to surmount.

For instance, littered around Kolyma are several pieces of sapphire jewellery, which can be used to barter your way into certain areas. If you give the mermaid the bracelet, for example, you negate the need to find Little Red Riding Hood’s basket, return it to her, and get the bouquet of flowers which can also be given to the mermaid.

Later, you can get the genie’s lamp from the antique store if you hand over two pieces of jewellery or if you return the owner’s nightingale to her. This is easy enough if you go to Hagatha’s cave and enter/exit the screen until she’s not in her lair, at which point you simply take the nightingale cage and leave. But to get full points you first have to take the cloth from inside the bottle given to you by King Neptune to place over the nightingale cage and thereby stifle the bird’s song.

This allows you to remove the cage safely from Hagatha’s cave if she’s present at the time. But like I said, it’s easy enough to retrieve the nightingale well before you ever visit Neptune, and whether or not the nightingale makes a noise is irrelevant if Hagatha isn’t even in the cave when you snatch it! It’s just a very ill-thought-out puzzle, especially since the bottle with the cloth inside is handed to Graham within a text box and not dramatized on-screen. I’m sure there are plenty of players who didn’t even realize they had obtained it.

And there is at least one Moon Logic Puzzle, which requires you to do something so counterintuitive that it’s hard to believe any gamer organically came up with it without consulting a cheat code. Let’s put it this way: when you are faced with a poisonous snake and you have in your possession a. a sword with a snake carved on the hilt, and b. a bridle, what are you going to do? Kill the snake with the snake-themed sword, or throw a bridle over it?

The answer is b, but you’re forgiven for not seeing an ounce of logic in that. But if you don’t throw the bridle over the snake, it doesn’t turn into a winged horse, and said horse can’t give you a magical sugar cube that will protect you from the poisonous thorns that surround Dracula’s castle, which are well-nigh impossible to traverse without protection.

It’s also a frustrating game in that you often have to enter and then leave a screen until it’s safe to proceed. Grandma’s house more often than not has the Big Bad Wolf waiting inside, and if you’re not familiar with the quirks of games such as these, there’s every chance a player could try entering once, realize it’s not safe inside, and then never enter again.

This is also the case in Dracula’s dungeon, where you can only kill him if you enter the cell and find his coffin closed (it’s usually open) or when you visit the dwarf’s underground house. That latter one is particularly weird, since you have to exit and enter through the house’s only entrance until the dwarf is absent. But then, how did he get out?

Causing further confusion is that Dracula has not one but two keys concealed in his coffin, though you can only get the silver one (which unlocks the chest that holds the tiara upstairs) if you kill him first with the mallet and stake. In which case, it would be remarkably easy for a player to not realize you actually need the second brass key to unlock the magical door – and if you leave without it, you can’t go back to retrieve it. Alternatively, if you enter the crypt to find the coffin open with the brass key inside, how many players just took it and left without realizing there was more gameplay available?

For all these reasons, and the relative easiness of the puzzles and gameplay, Romancing the Throne is considered the least of the King’s Quest games. It’s simplistic but also frustratingly obtuse, which dearly needed a bit more story and a few more puzzles. Sadly, we never got an official remake that could have rectified some of these problems due to the negative reaction of the remade Quest for the Crown, but in 2002 the fans stepped in and provided an updated version of the game that expanded the geography of Kolyma, provided more context to the storyline, and flipped the alignment of some of the good and bad guys...

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Written and designed by Daniel Stacey and distributed by AGD Interactive Studios, the remake is more of a reimagining, and clearly a labour of love. Renamed Romancing the Stones to differentiate it from the original game, it expands exponentially on the world, the characters and the gameplay.

It’s difficult to describe how I felt finding this game. Imagine something from your childhood that you know has dated badly on some levels, only to discover another version that’s richer and deeper, with better visuals and more narrative details, but still contains all the elements you love: the characters, the basic storyline, the pixellated art. Most impressively, Graham is voiced by Josh Mandel, who had been the official voice actor for the character in King’s Quest V, and which at that point had been released over ten years ago. It was an incredible find, and I was utterly captivated for a few days.  

The strength of the game is that Daniel Stacey is awash in the lore of the King’s Quest series, and clearly had it all in mind when he wrote his script. I’m not just talking about the fact the game uses the sprite of Graham from KQV, or the opening intro-screen and title font from KQV to VII, but that it’s built upon plot-points and characters that are established in later games, not to mention titbits that only appear in supplementary material.

What I’m referring to specifically is Stacey plucking a particular detail from KQVI that was introduced towards the end of the gameplay, in which the villain reveals he’s part of a clandestine organization called the Society of the Black Cloak. For whatever reason, this was not picked up on in the remaining two games, though it was a tantalizing hint that a greater conspiracy was going on within the ranks of the villains of the series, especially considering that most of them were depicted with black cloaks.

Here, Stacey delves further into how this organization might work and what its ultimate goals are, placing all the villains of the series (Hagatha, Manannan, Lolotte, Mordack, Alhazared) under its umbrella and placing at its head a wholly original character called the Father.

This mysterious figure unifies the disparate storylines and villains of all seven games (essentially, all of them are working under his guidance) and there are hints strewn throughout as to his real identity – largely accessible through certain books you can read at the library. There are also plenty of letters you can find at various points, which have been written between members of the Society (many of whom are also siblings, as established in the original games) and cut-scenes that reveal the Father is moving his chess pieces around the board for secretive reasons of his own.

Although the main villain is still Hagatha, who has kidnapped Valanice out of envy of her beauty (as per the manual of the original game) the presence of the Father demonstrates the Black Cloak Society has its tendrils in all sorts of pies across this fantasy realm. Some of the letters hint at what the likes of Manannan and Alhazared will be getting up to in later games, while one sequence, in which Graham is put through a Secret Test of Character, flashforwards to the events of KQ3 and reveals the Father’s underlying motivation.

Like I said, it’s thrilling for a story you loved as a child to get remade with more depth and context. To pull in details from later games and make them part of the earlier narrative is what TV Tropes calls Arc Welding and it pays off brilliantly here since Stacey had the advantage of having played all seven (okay, eight) games in the series and writing Romancing the Stones from that vantage point. There’s not only more depth given to the familiar beats of the original game, but a greater continuity that’s woven into the wider context of the games as a whole.

There are even some details pulled from either the game manual or Peter Spears’s The King’s Quest Companion (the official guidebook which contains walkthroughs and novelizations of the games). For instance, the introductory sequence involves Daventry’s Prime Minister Gervain – mentioned in both of the above sources – who is the one to encourage Graham to go on a quest to find a wife.

Likewise, there are flashback/flashforward appearances from the likes of King Edward and Connor (the latter from the much-maligned KQ8), an accurate depiction of Castle Daventry from KQ1, and even an Easter egg cameo from Cedric, the hapless owl who featured in KQ5. Clearly, Daniel Stacey did his homework.

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The underlying plot of the remake is exactly the same as the original: having secured his crown and kingdom, Graham now needs to secure his legacy by finding a wife and having an heir. And it’s not just for pragmatic reasons – Graham is feeling a little lonely, and so is more than eager to follow the advice of his Prime Minister after seeing a vision of a beautiful maiden trapped in a quartz tower on an enchanted island in the magic mirror.

But unbeknownst to him, Hagatha has been forewarned by the Father as to Graham’s arrival. But how did he know? Hmmm...

As in the original game, Graham’s adventure is centered around a threefold quest, though the keys and doors have been switched out for an enchanted, talking rockface called the Door of Destiny, which needs three Gems of Nature to open. It’s no more or less random than the magical doors of the original game, though apparently the game manual for this remake (which I have been unable to track down) explains the landmark’s history and purpose.

The Gems of Nature not only relate to air, water and earth, but also Birth, Growth and Death, the three stages of life itself. This all matches up nicely to where we know Graham will find these treasures: the Birth Gem is in the ocean, where life began, the Growth Gem is in the sky, inhabited by winged horses and cloud spirits, and the Death Gem is within a castle of stone, guarded by creatures of the undead.

There’s a whole mythology behind the gems that explains what they all stand for, and the expanded puzzles required to gain them matches this Land, Sea, Sky theme.  

The quest for the Birth Gem still involves an underwater adventure, but instead of Graham simply returning Neptune’s lost trident to him, he’s sent to retrieve it from an aquatic race known as the Sharkees (yes, really) that have stolen it. They’re exactly what they sound like: sentient shark-people.

On the back of his trusty seahorse, Graham must delve into enemy waters in order to find the trident and outwit the Sharkees, with the gem gifted to him as a reward should he return successfully. It’s an obvious expansion of this particular sequence, and much more elaborate considering you only needed to type in four commands to complete the whole thing in the original game (give the mermaid a gift, ride the seahorse, return the trident, and take the key).

Here there’s a portrayal of two warring kingdoms and their unique cultures, and even a skippable arcade sequence in which Graham has to escape the pursuing Sharkees through a narrow underwater trench.

The Growth Gem is where things really start to get interesting, starting with the fact that the nice old lady antique store owner (called Milvia in the King’s Quest Companion) is now a woman called Angelina, who – as in the original – tasks Graham with fetching her stolen nightingale from Hagatha’s cave in exchange for an expensive lamp.

However, it turns out that she’s also a wicked witch who wants the bird for a youth potion she’s concocting. In what is a well-staged scene, Graham finds his way into the antique store basement where a chink in the floor provides a single shaft of light, and where he overhears a confrontation between Angelina and Hagatha after the latter realizes her nightingale has gone missing. The ambience of the whole thing is really good!

It turns out that the genie in the lamp has already been freed, but a rolled up carpet (with faded letters claiming it belonged to Al din) grants Graham access to the high cliffs surrounding the land.

The puzzles here are fairly standard: there’s a more logical way of getting past the snake, the empty cave turns out to be the lair of the enchanter, and Pegasus is given more characterization, revealed as a disciple of the Cloud Spirit, who is in possession of the Growth Gem and puts Graham through three (more) trials based on his past, near future and distant future.

First his spirit is transported into his younger self, where he must decide whether or not to take the blame when a ball that he and his friend are playing with breaks a castle window, leading to King Edward coming out to investigate. Next, he’s taken to the point in time in which the three-headed dragon has ravaged Daventry and his teenage daughter sent to be its sacrifice, at which point the Father appears and offers to take it all away in exchange for Graham’s crown.

Set on a balcony overlooking the ravaged kingdom shrouded in smoke and flame, it’s all very Final Temptation, and is easily the most fascinating addition to the story. Naturally, the correct course of action is to deny the Father what he most desires, and stay the course of protecting Daventry by any means necessary.

Finally, flash-forwarding ahead to Graham’s dotage, we get a scene in which he’s preparing to name Connor (yes, the protagonist of KQ8) as his heir, given that his own two children are ruling over other kingdoms – which is ironic, come to think of it, since a significant motivation in seeking out a wife is to gain heirs to his own throne. You can either name Connor the next heir to the throne or withhold the honour (you get the same points either way) and in doing so, gain possession of the Air Gem.

But the most elaborate changes occur in the retrieving of the Death Gem, which completely flips around the alignments of the monastery and the castle, casting the “Dracula” character as a good guy, and the monks as evil werewolves in a Fur Against Fang conflict.

Turns out that the undead ruler of the terrifying castle in the middle of the swamp is actually Count Caldaur (an anagram of Dracula), the former ruler of Kolyma who was changed into a vampire against his will by the aforementioned evil monks who made a deal with the wood spirits to turn them all into werewolves. Yeah, don’t ask me how that works, but the root of the feud is a State versus Church conflict, in which the monks saw Caldaur’s attempts to bring education, independence, and other reforms to his people as a threat to their own authority.

The game even links it into the backstory of the characters formerly known as Little Red Riding Hood and her Grandmother. Here they are reimagined as a little girl called Possum and Lavidia, the now-elderly wife of Count Caldaur, who witnessed him get attacked by a bat while the couple were walking in the forest one night. Since then, she’s lived in an isolated forest cottage, haunted by rumours that her husband has become one of the undead.

It's the most involved of the three Fetch Quests, and has so many great components to it: explaining how Grandma came to have the cloak and ruby ring stashed under her bed, giving proper identities to the ghosts that (in the original game) guarded the exterior of Dracula’s castle, connecting Caldaur to the Society of the Black Cloak (he was once a member and the Father tries to rope him into service, but he formally breaks his association on learning that Graham helped his wife and granddaughter) and some genuinely scary scenes involving Kolyma by night, grave-robbing, the church interior, and wolves in the mist-strewn forest.  

It's genuinely great stuff.

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Once Graham has attained all three Gems and used them to open the Door of Destiny, the final stage of the game does what the original was so lax in achieving – that is, creating an actual climax. There are more puzzles to overcome before reaching Valanice, and a proper confrontation with Hagatha, the author of all this misery.

As ever, the visuals are beautiful, and I’m glad they kept the apricot skies, blue-sand beaches and strange plant-life of the original game. The puzzles involve some rhyming couplets written in the sand, a couple of interdimensional portals (yeah, it’s kinda weird) and a pair of lion statues at the entrance to the quartz tower that play the old “one of us is lying, one is telling the truth” game.

The remake does its very best to infuse Valance with some sort of agency, positing that she’s the one behind the creation of these puzzles (through long-distance telekinesis??) in order to test Graham’s resolve. It’s also established that she’s been psychically watching him make his way toward her, meaning that she’s been given the opportunity to know him from afar and decide that she wants a relationship with him (as opposed to him just showing up, kissing her, and getting married a cut-scene later). It gives them something of a connection at least.

But it’s not perfect, and when he enters her bedroom there’s an unfortunate Sleeping Beauty allusion in which Graham kisses her while she’s unconscious in the attempt to wake her, but in fairness there was very little Stacey could work with here. At least he’s smart enough to include a final clash with Hagatha, and there’s a clever reveal when the couple realize the entire island was magically contained within a glass dome inside Hagatha’s cave.

The wedding takes place in Count Caldaur’s castle (the monastery is filled with evil werewolf monks, remember?) and has even more crazy cameo appearances than the original, including Batman, the librarian, a few townsfolk, the dwarf, Hagatha’s ex-boyfriend (she transformed him into the lion that guarded the door to Valanice’s room) and a family of swans that Graham helped at the beginning of the game.

For a final flourish, the game reveals that Prime Minister Gervain was actually the Father in disguise, having planted the vision of Valanice in the magic mirror and encouraged Graham to go look for her, in order to have free reign of the kingdom while he searches for something called “the Item” in his absence. The game ends with the Father cursing Graham and his as-yet unborn children, and though the newly-married couple close the game by vowing to live in the moment, we know that the Father’s words will eventually come to pass...

And there you have it. It takes several hours to complete this remake, in stark contrast to the ease with which the original game can be finished. The expanded plot and backstories do wonders for creating a deeper, richer gaming experience, one that furthermore integrates itself more fully into the series as a whole.

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When it comes to the actual gameplay, Romancing the Stones also provides more context for the practical side of Graham’s quest. In the original game, Graham just appears, without anything in his possession, on the banks of Kolyma. How did he get there? Where are his people? Why didn’t he bring any supplies? Unclear.

Here, we see Graham get dropped off at a jetty, with the ship and its crew heading back out to seas and the narrator explaining that they’ll return in twenty-four hours, at which point Graham hopes to have achieved his quest.

Along with the pier, more infrastructure has been added to Kolyma, most noticeably a township with a library and an antique store (which has been sensibly relocated from its original site in the middle of the forest). You can’t visit every building, or even venture further into the town than the first screen, but it certainly makes a lot more sense in having an actual settlement in this land!

In some scenes, pre-existing landmarks and distinctive scenery have been adapted into puzzles, most notably the bat symbol and the skulls outside Hagatha’s cave. Other screens remain largely the same, but now have something in them that you have to retrieve, such as the lost duckling in the small lake with the island in the middle (in the original game, it was just a pretty backdrop). A lot is also done with the fragility of the rope bridge, the thieving dwarf, and a knife that is first glimpsed in said dwarf’s underground abode...

Some of the inventory that Graham accumulates over the course of the game is now placed in areas that make far more sense for where you might actually find such things – the net is caught on a pylon a the jetty, and the stake is part of Grandma’s white picket fence. On a further note, many of the ways in which you use these tools has been drastically changed, and negligible items that only existed in order to bump up your score (the bottle, the clamshell, the sapphire jewels) now have specific purpose.  

Of course, in the grand tradition of King’s Quest games, there’s plenty of random stuff too. Graham has to deal with a patch of talking pumpkins that sound like they’re from Brooklyn, a shady merchant who speaks in a Cockney accent when he’s not putting on a grating Engrish affect, and a something in a haystack that we never see, and who never provides an explanation for why he’s in there in the first place.

But for the most part, the expansion works beautifully. I mean, obviously the thieving dwarf would have set up snares all around the forest, and that the poisoned lake would be in the middle of maze-like swamp, or that the land is filled with its own flora and fauna: there is a balmy, even humid quality to the dense woodlands, as well as some wildlife and of course the presence of that village.

The opportunity is taken to plug certain plot-holes (such as why exactly Grandma had a black cloak and ruby ring under her bed), how Graham manages to hold his breath for so long (thanks to the mermaid’s kiss, he can breathe underwater) and even some lamp-shading of problems that remain. At one point someone tells Graham it was foolish to go on a quest without any money, to which the narrator says “good point!” and any attempt to take a shield in the antique store leads to the narrator telling you: “if you needed an indestructible shield, you would have brought your own.”

It also has some nods to other games, from the importance of casting spells correctly (as many players found out the hard way in KQ3), to mentions of the Realm of the Dead (visited in KQ6) and even (as mentioned) a Discontinuity Nod with the appearance of Connor, Cedric, and a quick mention of the Mask of Eternity. And of course, they keep the famous Batmobile cameo.

Speaking of the narration, it can be hilariously sarcastic at times (on opening the letterbox you learn: “inside there is, incredibly, a letter addressed to the house”) and of course – all the in-jokes. So many in-jokes, from Graham stating: “I am stout of heart” to pondering: “I still wish I had an owl to keep me company” to the narrator declaring: “you’re not getting married in THAT church!”

There’s also a book called The Annual Book of General Knowledge you can peruse in the library that’s so full of shout-outs to the other games that I couldn’t begin to list them all, and a chance to use the Door of Destiny to visit other realms such as Past Realm, Future Realm, Galactic Realm and so on, which are naturally worlds based on other Sierra games (you lose immediately if you visit any of them, but it’s a fun Easter egg nonetheless).

Miscellaneous Observations:

First of all, that cover? Is awesome. It also doesn’t match anything in the game itself, as the magical doors, the surrounding ocean, and even Graham himself doesn’t resemble how they’re depicted in the actual game.

I appreciated that Kolyma had a distinctive geographical landscape than Daventry, which was largely made up of forests and rivers. In comparison, Kolyma feels like it has a more tropical clime, what with the shoreline and the palm trees, which turns to marshy terrain in the next screen over. As you move further inland, this changes to small alpine lakes and bluish pine trees, and I love the detail of the long shadows cast by the trees, suggesting late afternoon fading into evening.

But if you thought Daventry was bizarrely void of any people, you’ll be even more confused to discover that Kolyma is populated by an old woman’s cottage, a monastery containing a single monk, and an antique store. Oh, and a castle inhabited by a vampire. How does the economy work? Where’s the infrastructure? Who frequents the antique store, especially when it seems to be closed most of the time?

Yes, I’m being facetious, but I’m still left curious. I mean, who even set up the three magical doors and hid the three keys? Hagatha? Why would she do that? Does every maiden kidnapping have to come with an escape clause?

Another mystery: how did a matching set of diamond and sapphire jewels (bracelet, earrings, necklace, tiara, brooch) come to be scattered around various hiding places in Kolyma?

For the first time it occurs to me that the monastery was probably meant to serve as a deliberate contrast to Dracula’s castle. The good fairy can usually be found outside, and the monk provides you with a cross that protects you from vampiric activity. On the other hand, the castle is surrounded by a toxic moat that cannot be crossed without the ferryman, and the sorcerer also lurks in that area (and unlike in the first game where he just paralyzes you, he turns you into a frog this time around).

Other than that, the locations aren’t hugely interesting. The mermaid provides you with a seahorse to visit Neptune, but as soon as you get on its back, the sequence is largely automatic. The flying carpet transports you to the clifftops, but again, there’s nothing there but the awful Moon Logic Puzzle and an annoying plug for Space Quest I. Even Dracula’s castle is fairly hum-drum once you’re in there.

Other areas are severely limited – for instance, the antique store only opens after you read the inscription on the second door, and closes immediately after you get what you need. It’s only once you open all three of the doors that things kick off.

I’ve always loved the colour scheme, what with the blue sand and the violet waves. More of the game should have taken place here!

This game also has one of the first examples of an alternate ending. If you speak the word “home” before reaching Valanice, then the amulet will transport you back to Daventry, where Graham is seen glumly returning to his castle without his bride.

There are a few fun Easter eggs, from a conversation you can have with the game on looking at the bridge (“Are you entertaining thoughts of crossing it?” “Yes.” “Then go on, my brave fellow”) to being told not to stick your hand in the fire if you get too close to the fireplace in the dwarf’s house.

But of course, the big one is that occasionally Hagatha’s cave also becomes the entrance to the Batcave, with the Batmobile driving in and out to the familiar theme music. You can’t interact with it or the (presumed) driver in any way, but even as a kid who had no idea what an Easter egg was, I knew it was just a fun cameo that had no part in the gameplay.  

Speaking of cameos, I told an accidental fib in my write-up for Quest for the Crown when I said Graham’s fairy godmother never appears again. Turns out she does, as a guest at Graham and Valanice’s wedding. The monk marries them and the good fairy sprinkles confetti/fairy dust as they leave which is cute. Also present is the Leprechaun King, Little Red Riding Hood and her Grandma, King Neptune and the mermaid – all of which make a certain amount of sense as wedding guests.

But also present is Dracula (even if you killed him), Hagatha (the person who kidnapped Valanice in the first place), the dwarf and the sorcerer, plus the giant and dragon from the first game (both of which could have potentially been killed by the player) and a shark. A shark!

I suppose we could infer that the giant and the dragon were under a spell in the first game and are now benign – but Hagatha? Dracula?! I know it’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but oof. Why not bring in the antique store owner? Or even the woodcutter and his wife from the first game if you wanted to fill out those pews. At least they weren’t trying to actively kill Graham at any point during either game.

The remake obviously uses the sprite of Graham from KQ5, but I can spot a few other recycled pixels – I’m pretty sure the snake is also from 5, along with the cobbler’s wife, now repurposed as the librarian.

The internet tells me there is a funny Brick Joke concerning the chandeliers in Caldaur’s castle. Graham admires them and considers getting similar ones for his own home; sure enough, in the AGD Interactive remake of KQ3, they’ve been installed in Castle Daventry.

A mark of a good game is how it builds up to its reveals. Romancing the Stones is exceptionally good at this – for instance, Caldaur’s situation is foreshadowed by the statue of him that Graham notices in the town square, the townsfolk’s reticence in discussing him, and Possum’s hints in conversation with Graham as to the nature of her Grandma’s grief.

On a slighter note, the clues to how Graham can obtain a library card are also amusingly metered out by the librarian noting that it takes several years to fill out the paperwork, and that “the gentleman next door” is one of only a few library members. Sure enough, said gentleman has perished in the time it took him to get a card, and Graham can sneakily retrieve it from under the door right next to the library.  

In the original game, there’s a plug for Space Quest I to be found if Graham looks through a hole in a rock atop the cliffs; in the remake, this has been switched to a similar plug for their remark of Quest for Glory.

Just for fun, I played the game with the objective to get the least amount of points in the quickest amount of time, and clocked in with 113 out of 185 points at twenty-five minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

If it sounds like this review has been mostly complaints, know that I probably enjoyed Romancing the Throne the most as a child, precisely because it was relatively simple to work through (though I don’t think I ever got past the thorn bushes outside Dracula’s castle).

If nothing else, it’s an essential part of the ongoing series, for now that Graham has a wife, he can look forward to having children. Two of them in fact. Whether you play the original or the remake, there’s the beginnings of a bigger story here...