King's Quest: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder

It’s been well over a year since I last delved into the King’s Quest series, the computer games that defined a healthy portion of my childhood – but now it’s time to return to the land of Daventry and the adventures of King Graham, now in middle-age and with two grown children of his own.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, these games may very well be the source of my love for fantasy, mythology and fairy tales, as I really can’t understate how much I lived in these games as a little girl. Distributed by Sierra Entertainment and designed by Roberta Williams, I’ve already covered the first four in the series here. The first two feature Sir (then King) Graham as their protagonist, who wins a throne in Quest for the Crown, and then finds a wife in Romancing the Throne.

The next two games went in a markedly different direction, leaping forward eighteen years and featuring two new characters as protagonists: first Gwydion in To Heir is Human, the slave of an evil wizard who manages to escape captivity before discovering he’s actually the long-lost son of Graham and Valanice, and then Rosella in The Perils of Rosella, Gwydion’s twin sister, in an adventure that picks up only seconds after the conclusion of the third game.

So, now we reach King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder, and it soon becomes very clear we’re no longer dealing with standalone stories, but the interconnected saga of a single royal family. As Graham discovers over the course of his adventure, the actions Gwydion took in King’s Quest III directly shape the narrative of this game – specifically, that in escaping the evil wizard Manannan, Gwydion (or Alexander, as he’s now known) used a magic spell to transform his cruel master into a cat. Now Manannan’s brother Mordack is seeking revenge, transporting Castle Daventry and its inhabitants to his island fortress in order to extort Alexander into transforming Manannan back into human form.

For this reason, KQV feels like a turning point in the series – though not just narratively, but technologically as well. At the time of its release in 1990, there was simply nothing else like it on the market. The immersive graphics, the point-and-click interface, the story cutscenes, the voice acting – all of this was the first of its kind, and it ended up selling half-a-million copies, making it the best-selling PC game between 1990 and 1994.

And yet in hindsight, the game has not aged well. The nicest way to describe it is as a game of extremes: innovative in so many ways, and yet utterly terrible in others. The plot itself is great, especially in providing emotional impetus (saving Graham’s family) that any player can easily invest in, and cleverly making itself a continuation of the previous games to lend it a sense of history and scope. But the gameplay? Oof. There are an untold number of Dead Man Walking scenarios, arbitrary Moon Logic Puzzles and brief one-shot events that occur without warning and result in game over if they’re not dealt with in a matter of seconds. God forbid you override a saved game after you’ve already made a minor error that makes the game Unwinnable. It’s not a very intuitive game, nor one based on common sense.

Yet the graphics are such a massive step-up compared to the game’s immediate predecessor that it’s almost a testament to the speed with which technology advances. Up until this point the games have always demonstrated steady progress in quality, but this is such a drastic leap forward… I mean, take a look for yourself, and keep in mind there’s just a two-year gap between these images:

For the first time, we also get to hear the characters speak, and yet because no one hired professional voice-actors, it ended up being various staff members from around the Sierra offices that lent their “talent” to bring the cast to life. This ends about as well as you’d expect, with stilted line-readings, questionable accents, and a lot of overacting.

All that said, this game is notable for featuring Josh Mandel as the voice of King Graham, which was the first time he took on the role. He would reprise it very briefly at the end of KQVI for a cameo at Alexander’s wedding, but also – even more graciously on his part – in the various fan remakes that were released for earlier games in the series. Suffice to say, he is considered THE voice for the character, and the only consistent voice actor across the series (that is, no other character is voiced consecutively by the same individual).

Some of the line-readings are real doozies, not helped by the dialogue itself. The most infamous one is obviously Cedric crying: “Graham, watch out – a POOOOOOIsonous snake!” which has been mocked repeatedly across the years, though I’m also partial to Graham, on being reunited with his family, awkwardly stating: “my joy knows no limits!” Then he introduces Cassima to his son with the words: “it was Alexander who started this whole mess.” Way to victim blame, dad. Would you have preferred your long-lost son to have remained a slave in Manannan’s house until his premature death?

Then there are the cutscenes, most of which involve pertinent information and the acquirement of new items, but which are so incredibly long that later editions gave players the option of skipping them entirely, complete with a warning to check one’s inventory afterwards.

The gameplay itself is very linear, with a narrow focus that removes the fun of simply exploring a virtual space. Though every screen is beautifully rendered and will have at least one important thing to interact with, there’s no sense of scope as in the first two games, and a disappointedly tiny map.

In comparison, King’s Quest I gave you an entire kingdom to explore, with the opportunity to search for treasure in various places, achieve tasks in any order, evade a number of roaming bad guys, garner bonus points that didn’t impinge on the game’s completion, and wander through locales that had no relevance to the gameplay, but were fun to explore anyway. Daventry was comprised of a whopping six-by-eight square grid, whereas Serenia is a measly three-by-four (not counting the desert or the forest – in fact, the desert is a seven-by-eleven grid, but I’ll have more to say about that later).

Of course, the original format of the first couple of games had their pros and cons, but I miss the immersive world and the possibilities it offered in comparison to the linear path you must follow in KQV. You cannot do much in the township without first going into the Dark Forest, and you can’t survive the forest without first beating the desert, and you can forget about crossing the mountains until you’ve done everything you need to do in the town. It’s very “one step after another,” with no room for play or experimentation – which will always be more fun than a straightforward obstacle course.

What’s more, from a Watsonian point-of-view, many of Graham’s in-story choices are inexplicable. I mean, surely there are more pressing things to do when racing against the clock to save your family from imminent death than to go wandering about in a desert which lies in the OPPOSITE direction from where you need to be going, or setting foot in a forest that has very clear “enter at own risk” signs posted at its entrance. What’s he even thinking??

By the time Graham is making sensible decisions, you’re really just making a series of trades with people in the town for useful travelling equipment (for instance, you trade the spinning wheel for a marionette, and the marionette for a sled) before embarking on a singular, undeviating pathway through the mountains, across the ocean, and to Mordack’s island home.

Nowhere to go but down.

Structurally it’s probably most like KQIII, in that there’s a front-heavy need for gathering ingredients and/or survival equipment in a (relatively) small geographical area, followed by a journey in which said items utilized when required. And yet here it feels like we spend only a tiny fraction of our time in Serenia – mostly the desert or the forest – where the most flexible, enjoyable elements of the gameplay is to be found.

And of course, then there’s the misfire of poor old Cedric, one of the most hated characters in all of computer game history. I didn’t hate him, as he’s easy enough to ignore, but yeah – he did not work out as intended. This talking owl was originally conceived as a character who would act as a helpful guide and source of information to Graham across the course of his journey, providing useful hints and intel along the way. This is decidedly not what exists in the finished game: he’s got an annoying voice, refuses to go into dangerous places where Graham would hypothetically need him the most, and from start to finish, never manages to do anything but state the obvious. The only time he’s plot-relevant is at the very end, when he takes a bullet for Graham. By accident.

Towards the middle of the game, you can tell the developers have just given up on him, with any attempts for Graham to talk to Cedric met with comments like: “I don’t know this area,” or “I’ve never been here before,” or “Cedric is too cold to talk.” This useless irritant also becomes something of a Secret Test of Character for Graham, as he’s given the opportunity to simply abandon Cedric after he’s attacked by harpies on their island home. Tempting, but you can’t win the game unless you save him.

(As it happens, The King’s Quest Companion – the official manual with novelizations of each game – completely recharacterizes Cedric as a wiseass Deadpan Snarker who ribs Graham constantly. Just to contrast, his first appearance in the game involves him pratfalling off a tree branch for no good reason, which is your first clue he’s going to be Jar Jar Binks levels of annoying).

All things considered, you can get through the game fairly quickly – if you know what you’re doing. I managed it in a single afternoon, though of course, half the fun is taking your time and letting yourself get immersed in the storytelling.

***

Our story begins sometime after the conclusion of King’s Quest IV. King Graham of Daventry is in good health, and taking a morning walk in the idyllic countryside. Unbeknownst to him, a dark cloaked figure is performing a powerful magical spell nearby, one that results in all of Castle Daventry disappearing into a swirling portal. By the time Graham returns, his castle and its inhabitants (or at least his family; no one ever comments on the servants, courtiers, guards or any other visiting dignitaries that may have also been inside) have gone.

Luckily, a talking owl in a vest and monocle is on hand to tell Graham what happened, because sure – why not? Telling him that his master, the wizard Crispin, might be able to shed more light on who kidnapped Graham’s family, Cedric sprinkles some magic dust on him and leads him to Serenia, where Crispin can indeed provide some assistance. He identifies the wizard as Mordack, points out the vague direction in which he can be found, gives Graham some white snake that allows him to communicate with animals and an old magic wand (it eventually comes in handy, but not until the very, very, very end of the game) and sends Cedric along to “show him the way.”

Graham is then set lose in the land of Serenia, while Crispin is called away to deal with an unspecified emergency in another land. It’s at this point the gameplay kicks in, with Graham stating it’s time to “get going!” but with very little direction given to the player on how to proceed. You’re stranded in an unfamiliar locale that is absolutely nowhere near Mordack’s island, with no clear idea of what your immediate goal is. Collecting tools? Finding passage? Gathering intel? It’s in stark contrast to the very clear missions laid down in previous games (find the missing treasures, rescue the damsel in distress, escape captivity) and an indication that Graham was perhaps a bit too hasty in following Cedric.

He probably should have lingered a bit in his own kingdom before following the owl, where he had actual tools and resources at his disposal – heck, the entire first part of the game could have easily taken place in Daventry for all the difference it makes, and involved Graham wandering around familiar places in search of what he needs to save his family before crossing the mountains.

But why exactly Graham and his family have been targeted by Mordack remains a mystery, at least at first. Over the course of his adventure, he discovers that Mordack is the brother of Manannan, who kidnapped Prince Alexander as an infant and raised him as his servant, fully intending to kill him once he turned eighteen. Supplementary material tells us that the reason Manannan targeted the royal family was because his sister Hagatha was thwarted by Graham after he rescued Valanice from her clutches (though this backstory doesn’t appear canonically anywhere in the gameplay of KQII) – and so the cycle of vengeance thus continues, as Mordack specifically wants Alexander to reverse the transformation spell he placed over his brother.

As mentioned, this is the most that a King’s Quest adventure has relied on connective tissue from previous games to build its plot, making it a long-distant sequel to the events of the third game. If you were play this one first, you’d inevitably feel like you’d missed out on a lot of backstory, perhaps to the point where it feels a bit confusing. But it’s mostly to the game’s benefit that it relies so heavily on what has gone before, as it brings a sense of scope and history to the story that makes it all the more powerful to experience. If you’ve played them chronologically over the years, then you’ve had four games and nearly ten years’ worth of investment in this family.

It also takes the opportunity to set up for the next game, when Graham meets a young scullery maid called Cassima in Mordack’s castle, a woman who will eventually become his daughter-in-law. After winning her trust by returning her locket, she shares her history with him: she’s actually Princess Cassima of the Green Isles, who was captured by Mordack for the usual “marry me or live in servitude” reasons, and is returned to her home by Crispin in the game’s final moments – though not before an attraction is established between herself and Alexander, who accepts her invitation to visit her in her homeland. These Green Isles will be the setting for the following King’s Quest game, and Alexander’s investigation into Cassima’s situation the impetus for its plot (suffice to say, she finds herself with another unwanted evil suitor).

Still, it’s quite extraordinary just how much detail is established here that is carried on into the next game: specifically that Mordack was a friend of her parents’ Grand Vizier, who isn’t named, but is clearly Abdul Alhazred, the antagonist of KQVI. This connection between the two villains will again be referenced in the next game, when Alexander comes across Abdul’s correspondence mentioning Mordack hidden in his bedroom. We also glimpse Cassima’s parents in the locket Graham returns to her (who become crucial characters later on), and it’s especially poignant when her final words to the royal family are: “I can’t wait to see my parents again.” As we find out in the next game, her return to the Green Isles was met by the news that her parents died in her absence (technically assassinated, though we won’t know that until later on).

All that said, the fact that the Green Isles are heavily based on The Arabian Nights means it’s disappointing (though perhaps not surprising) that despite her Eastern-style name, Cassima has a pronounced American accent and looks like a white girl with a slightly more olive shade of skin than usual. She’s even got a full face of makeup, which is just plain weird.

C’mon, does this look like a Middle Eastern girl to you? Yeah, it was the nineties, but sheesh.

***

As noted, the whole thing is gorgeous to behold. There is genuine art on display throughout this game, both in its backgrounds (and sure, they look a little primitive now, but I love them in the same way I love the grainy quality of eighties’ films) and in allowing for more detail than previous games were ever capable of. For instance, KQII involved a sequence in which Graham donned a black cloak. Though the text assured you he was indeed wearing this cloak, it made no difference to the sprite as he appeared on the screen. Here, when Graham puts on his cloak in the mountains, you can actually see it worn over his usual garments.

Likewise, when Graham has to carry an injured Cedric, the owl doesn’t just disappear into Hammerspace. Graham’s sprite changes to depict him carrying the bird, from screen to screen until he can put him down in the little boat they’ve arrived on. Sure it sounds like a little thing, but it was a big deal back then.

Of course, sometimes the detail could be a little too obvious, as the animated sprites were considerably brighter than the more muted backgrounds, thereby giving away what parts of the screen could be picked up or manipulated, and what parts couldn’t. It’s like the gaming version of Conspicuous Light Patch, and was sometimes used to mitigate Pixel Hunts.

The game also plays a lot with perspective. A simple example is that whenever you investigate something like a barrel or a chest, you’ll be given a small overlaid image of whatever you’re looking at before you can pick it up its contents. 

For example...

More elaborately, Graham usually appears as a four-centimeter-high figure in the foreground of any screen, though occasionally the perspective pans way out, rendering him as a tiny sprite against a much larger landscape (the external view of the town is the best example of this).

This was not totally unheard of in the history of the series, as KQIV also involved two different-sized sprites of Rosella: whenever she was outside, she was depicted as very small, but whenever she stepped inside a house or castle, she appeared much larger. Yet here it’s taken to a whole new level. At one point, the player even controls Graham from a bird’s eye view, navigating his passage across a dangerous mountain path while staring straight down at the top of his head.

If you’re one who truly believes games can be legitimate artforms, then the willingness of these designers to play around with perspective is a highly underrated step in the evolution of video games.

Most of the time. Perhaps the game’s most infamous example of experimenting with perspective is Mordack’s maze, which has to be navigated in order to reach his castle. Not only is it a complex puzzle, but it is presented to the player through his perspective. For example, if he is facing north and exits the screen to the left, the next screen will have him one screen west – as you would expect. However, what the player is looking at is Graham’s view of straight ahead. It is not necessarily north, but whatever direction he’s facing. This makes the whole edifice virtually impossible to map or keep track of… that’s assuming you even realize what’s happening with the graphics in the first place.

At least the second time you have Cassima to follow...

Yes, as crucial an instalment as it is in the series, and as beautiful as it is to look at, KQV is constantly dragged down by its gameplay. One gets the sense that the designers became so distracted by the look of the thing and what their technology could achieve, that they forgot to iron out some of the story-beats (it seems to happen to everyone at some point – see also, George Lucas and Peter Jackson). As mentioned, it plays out too linearly, with very little flexibility or room for multiple options. Often a minor task has to be completed before you can advance, or else you can advance only to discover you’re in an unwinnable situation because you didn’t complete a minor task several hours ago.

For instance, you’re never going to get past Mordack’s cobra-dragon statues without the crystal that you retrieve from the caves back up in the mountains, and you certainly can’t go back to get it if you forgot. If you didn’t pick up the tiny pixellated fishhook on the harpies’ island, then you can’t retrieve the piece of cheese from the mousehole in Mordack’s dungeon, and have no way of powering his machine to charge your magic wand. And if you accidentally give the custard pie to the hungry eagle instead of the leg of lamb, then – you guessed it – you’ve just lost the game.

Sometimes you have only a few seconds to act on a situation, and if you don’t, you lose instantly – without even realizing it. The best example of this is a quick sequence in which you’re passing by the bakery, and a rat chased by a cat rushes past. You have seconds to throw a boot at the cat and save the rat’s life, or else you’ll find no way out of the inn when you’re tied up and trapped there later. Sometimes the game tries to warn you of these quick-action requirements by having the cursor change into a crown to indicate you’re on the clock, but it’s pretty rough going.

And of course, the Moon Logic Puzzles, which include throwing a square of mouldy cheese into a piece of machinery to power it up, biffing a custard pie into a Yeti’s face so he’ll fall off a clifftop, and offering a witch a brass bottle so its genie will trap her inside for a hundred years (in that case I suppose you can experiment as to what’ll happen if you open the bottle yourself, but it’s still a stretch to believe a witch would be stupid enough to accept a gift from a guy she’s just tried to kill without considering that he might have ill intentions).

That’s not even getting into all the Violations of Common Sense within the game itself, such as Graham just standing around in Mordack’s library, waiting for him to appear in the next room, wandering through an endless desert with no supplies, or venturing into a forest despite its clear warning signs when all of his focus should be on crossing the mountains and rescuing his family!

***

Like I said at the start of this post, KQV is a game of extremes. It cannot be understated just how impressive and cutting edge it seemed at the time of its initial release, but its multiple flaws have since aged it in many ways, to the point where it’s probably the least popular of all the King’s Quest games (not counting King’s Quest VIII, which most people don’t even acknowledge as part of the series).

But it has atmospheric music, stunning graphics, and a fairy tale ambiance that’s enhanced by the fact this story could not exist without its predecessors; building on them in order to craft its narrative, ensuing that that past informs the present. It’s not one that you can skip, either for its storyline or its place in the technical progression of the games. And hey, once you know all the annoying puzzles and tricks, you can move through it pretty quickly.

Miscellaneous Observations:

I found two versions of this game out there, which are largely indistinguishable save that the CD-ROM version has a full voice cast, while the earlier diskette version (using either EGA or VGA) does not. It’s difficult to differentiate between them, but from what I can tell the earlier version actually has better graphics for the close-ups of characters talking, even if you can’t hear their voices – Anthony in particular is much more animated; making gestures with his hands and antennae.

It also includes an extra puzzle that pops up either at the witch’s house or at the shoreline, in which you have to decode some symbols on a digital keyboard in order to continue. This was a standard security feature at the time, to you ensure you’d purchased the game legally – though it didn’t take into account that people could eventually just scan and upload the manuals online.

The rest is just minutia, like how the talkie version has Graham make a comment on why Alicia would throw away a beautiful harp, or the ant colony singing a little work song when they retrieve the needle from the haystack (the earlier version just depicts the action). And I’m sure I’ve heard the rattlesnake at the foot of the mountain speak in one version or the other, though neither yielded any results when I tried it out.

I’m also under the impression that in one game, Cedric is turned to stone when he’s hit by the energy blast from Mordack’s hand, while in the other he’s apparently killed and then resurrected by Crispin – but don’t quote me on that. In the version I played, the latter scenario takes place, and I’ve not seen the former in any online Let’s Play videos.

I was also a little confused at the existence of several extremely rudimentary screenshots that kept popping up during searches for this game, but they turned out to belong to an NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) version that was developed later on and released in 1992. By all accounts it irons out a couple of irritating features (such as giving you multiple chances to throw the boot at the cat) but the graphics are clearly inferior.

Eww

I ended up playing the earlier version on-line, but Paw Dugan has a hilarious walkthrough that features audio of the voice cast as well as his own commentary on the proceedings. It’s the best way to hear the wonderfully terrible performances, which include Southern American, Germanic, Scottish and Transylvanian dialects existing within a few mile radius of each other.

Though strangely enough, my first experience of this game was reading it, not playing it. The novelization and walkthrough were included in The King’s Quest Companion, of which we had a copy long before we had the game itself. Granted, there are few things more uninteresting than reading about a game that you can’t actually play yourself (not that this ever stopped me – I also read the walkthrough to Phantasmagoria despite never playing it) but I had vague images in my mind as to what this game was like, even if they existed entirely in my imagination. Those were the days before the internet, believe it or not.

What I’m trying to say is that this game (and the next two) didn’t have quite the same grip on my imagination as the first four did, simply because I came to it a bit later in life… and yet in other ways, it did, as I had to imagine it in my own mind long before I got to experience it properly.

Here’s another fun little anecdote: before the King’s Quest series existed, Sierra released a number of very basic games with even more primitive graphics, such as Mystery House and Mission Asteroid and (most pertinently) The Wizard and the Princess, which came out in 1980. Looking back, it very clearly inspired many aspects of KQV, including a tedious journey through a desert, a poisonous snake, deadly scorpions, the constant need for drinking water, and a village called… wait for it… Serenia.

Even The King’s Quest Companion gets in on the joke. It makes an explicit reference to the events of The Wizard and the Princess, stating that: “Serenia’s King at the time was able to convince a wandering barbarian to [rescue Princess Priscilla, who had been kidnapped by a wizard named Harlin]. The man accomplished that quest but, since he had much more brawn than brain, walked away from the offered marriage and kingdom. He walked off into the endless desert with a bloody broadsword in one hand, and a few gold coins in the other. He neglected to carry any water. Caravan drivers who travel that deadly desert say that the warrior is still there, his bones bleached white, with only one lone boot and a few scorpions for company.”

In other words, this guy:

For the first time since KQIII we get a good look at Castle Daventry’s exterior, and for the first time ever from a decent vantage point. Given the layout, it’s clearly meant to be the same edifice as in the previous games, but it’s nice to see its surrounding gardens from high up (I wonder if they’ve still got those flesh-eating crocodiles in the moat).

Graham is extremely buff for an older guy. Check out those guns:

Mm-hmm.

In a game full of head-bangingly frustrating puzzles and sequences, the desert is easily the most frustrating part of the game (others would say Mordack’s maze, but my strategy is to just click at random until I end up where I want to be – it works surprisingly well). The desert is massive, you have to drink water every seventh consecutive screen or you’ll die of thirst, it’s essentially the first thing you have to do to advance the gameplay, and there’s no in-universe reason why Graham would even set foot there in the first place. If you wander too far to the south, the deadly scorpions will kill you, and if you go too far north, you’ll find a series of cliffs that make absolutely no sense. I mean, can someone explain this to me:

The second image is directly above the first. 
Where did that giant cliff come from??

You also have to find one skeleton in order to acquire his boot (without it, you can’t win the game) and there’s a well that you can avoid entirely, raising the question of why it’s even there in the first place. I suspect this whole area exists simply to draw out the game’s runtime, as it’s easily the most time-consuming part of the game. In perusing my copy of the King’s Quest Companion, I was amused to find pencil marks all over the pages that depicted the desert map – as a young player, I was obviously counting squares.

The King’s Quest Companion goes so far as to suggest that Crispin and Cedric are actually Merlin and Archimedes under different aliases, though from a Doylist perspective, it’s easier to assume they were simply modelled on those characters. Granted, fairy tales are filled with cloaked and hooded greybeards carrying staffs, but it’s a fun theory to ponder. Crispin also mentions something called the “Society of Wizards,” from which Mordack has been suspended several times, things we never learn more about or hear of again. 

Ditto his claim that he’s been called away to an “emergency” in another kingdom. It’s a shame, as it feels like the Society of Wizards would be the natural counterbalance to the Society of Black Cloaks, something that is introduced in the next game (and retroactively included in the remakes).

As well as useless, Cedric is also racist, as when the pair come across the gypsy encampment, he says: “Keep your eye on the gypsies, I don’t trust them.” Rude! Also, the gypsies are perfectly trustworthy, and interacting with them is essential to winning the game.

Roberta Williams has always loved her word games and visual puns, and this game includes a literal needle in a haystack, which can only be retrieved after you’ve befriended the ants.

In fact, quite a few of the puzzles involve Androcles’ Lion situations, in which Graham assists various creatures (a rat, an eagle, a beehive, an ant’s nest) and is eventually paid back in kind. Some of them have extremely punny names, such as King Anthony and Queen Beetrice. No, I’m not even going to tell you what species they are.

But while we’re on the subject, I’ve never understood why Graham is given a white snake to eat in order to gain the ability to understand animals – after all, he was communicating with Cedric before consuming the snake. What was the difference? And don’t say that Cedric had a name and clothing, because Anthony and Beetrice also have those things.

This has got to be the only game in existence in which the player has to take not one but TWO rotted fish with them. Because of course you’d do that!

There is one sequence in this game that I really love, which can best be described as a little “mini-story” within the greater scope of Graham’s adventure. Early on in the game, you come across a prince weeping on a fallen log, and hear his sob story: he’s searching for his love Alicia, who was whisked away by an evil witch on account of her beauty. Later, you come across a weeping willow tree, who sings a sad song in a pool of her own tears while playing a harp – this is Alicia, who the Witch of the Dark Forest cursed into a tree.

(Of course, if you happen across the weeping willow first, and then the prince, it’s a mystery as to why Graham wouldn’t immediately tell Herbert exactly where to find the object of his quest).

When Graham ventures into the Dark Forest, he eventually finds another tree with a tiny locked door in its trunk; this of course holds Alicia’s golden heart, which can be retrieved after obtaining the key in the witch’s house. On returning it to her, she transforms back into a human being and is reunited with Herbert – though they walk off together without even saying “thank you” to Graham. Another odd feature is that they exit stage left, even though there’s nothing in that direction but the endless desert.

But it’s a fun little subplot within the greater scope of the story, and well-constructed when it comes to foreshadowing and problem solving. A lovely touch is that a strain from willow tree’s song (which sounds a bit like “Castle on a Cloud” from Les Misérables) is also heard when you first see the prince, and when you enter the screen that depicts the heart tree, audibly linking the three elements together.

These games always draw heavily on fairy tales and mythologies, and this one has a grab-bag of stories, though not always as explicitly as in previous games, where you would straight-up meet the likes of Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Bears or the Seven Dwarfs. Here we get shades of The Arabian Nights, particularly “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” what with the game’s use of desert bandits and the treasure storehouse that can only be accessed with the words “open sesame.” Then there’s the ice queen, Queen Icebella, clearly a nod to The Snow Queen, while the poor cobbler and his wife are very akin to the couple in The Elves and the Shoemaker, though in this case it’s Graham who delivers a pair of elfin-made shoes to them.

Not to mention the assortment of witches, genies, rocs, mermaids, talking animals and more. But my favourite inclusion would have to be the gnome who is obviously meant to be Rumpelstiltskin, a character that has already turned up twice in the games before (KQI and KQIII). This time he’s here without being explicitly identified – with something of a personality change as he’s now rather more ornery than in his previous appearances. Perhaps it’s just his age, as now he appears with a young grandson.

But it’s definitely meant to be Rumpelstiltskin, as Graham returns a spinning wheel to him (presumably the one that spins straw into gold) and is told his name: “is too difficult to pronounce.” The King’s Quest Companion goes one step further, and has Graham find him deeply familiar to boot.

Just look at his little forest home! This image fills me with joy. It must have done a number on me as a child as well, as I vividly remember writing a story about the gnome’s grandson meeting the little girl in the toy store and becoming friends with her.

Speaking of the toy store, the town of Serenia is another appealing locale, as for the first time an official King’s Quest game features a village with an economy and infrastructure and jaunty town music – and although the game doesn’t shy away from the grand tradition of just stealing things, this time around Graham actually has to pay for what he needs, whether it’s with coin or through trade.  

The township seems to have Germanic vibes, what with the accents and the architecture, and I remember being completed delighted as a kid that you could address the various passers-by and get a “hello!” or “good morning!” in response. There were all sorts of little portraits of life going on in the various stores, like an irate customer trying on clothes at the tailor, or the toymaker carrying on conversations with his little granddaughter playing on the floor (occasionally his son slides opens a door at the back of the shop to voice various concerns) or even the man trying to fix his cart in a nearby alleyway.

I was always one to spin out elaborate stories about minor characters in these sorts of things, and this game gave me plenty of scope for the imagination. Such was my childhood as a fangirl of King’s Quest – writing fanfiction about little pixelated characters.

In fact, when you enter the bakery for the first time, you’ll see a mother and son purchasing a pie from the baker. They add nothing to the gameplay, just the verisimilitude of the scene… but they also represent the winners of a competition that Sierra held in the summer of 1990, in which entrants submitted photographs of themselves in costume for the chance to feature in the actual game.

Austin Hartman and Amanda Logue (whose first names are mentioned in the game itself) were the winners, and well – there they are. What a crazy thing to be able to brag about. I wonder what they’re doing now…

As with most of these games, there is plenty of Narrative Filigree that only exists in order to enrich the world and its inhabitants. Some of my favourite details are:

The little bluebird washing itself in the hollow of a tree:

The bird nest on the roof in the foreground of the town square (not even Graham can see it; only the player):

The goldfish in its bowl on the counter of the toy store:

The rock-creature in the forest (you can actually identify it as such before the elf asks him to move, which would have been very confusing for first-time players):

That you can see the cat inside the bakery before and after you throw a boot at it (along with a baker who looks and sounds like Brian Blessed):

Glimpses of road runners in the desert (if you click the hand icon on them, you’ll hear “beep beep!”):

Even the little dance Graham does if he gets too close to the anthill:

The mountain village that Graham never visits, but which is clearly visible when he’s grabbed by the giant roc:

I’ve always been fascinated by the little mini-stories these details either suggest or can inspire.

The Dark Forest is gorgeously rendered, with all sorts of creepy trees and foliage (some of those plants even have teeth!) and no small degree of Fridge Horror when you take into account the number of frogs that are hopping about the place (guess what the witch does if she catches people in her territory). It’s probably my favourite location in the whole game, and it’s genuinely unsettling to leave the screen with the forked path and return only to find your exit from the place has disappeared. Very Blair Witch.

Less unsettling is that if you’re wearing the protective amulet (thus preventing the witch from turning you into an amphibian) she just follows you around from screen-to-screen, unable to do anything but watch you. She’s not particularly intelligent, as she falls for an incredibly obvious trick, in which Graham offers her the genie bottle, she opens it, and is promptly trapped inside. Girl, why would you do that?

You can only escape the place by capturing a little elf with the allure of emeralds and a literal honey trap (as in, your pour honey on the ground to make it sticky). Once he’s in your hands, he assures you that he’d never take anything without offering a gift in return – though if you forget to squeeze the honey out from the comb, he’ll run off with all three emeralds and never return. Lying lil’ shit.  

In any case, he shows you an exit from the forest through some underground caverns, and if you want, there’s nothing stopping you from returning to the forest and taking the scenic route out through the place, though everyone is gone and there’s nothing more to be done there (I only had to because I’d forgotten to double-back and retrieve Alicia’s heart). 

This is also the case when you take the path into the mountains: there’s only a single screen between the woodlands to the mountain heights, and a caption will pop up to say it’s been “a few hours later”… but if you want, you can make Graham turn straight back around, technically making him walk back and forth for hours on end for no reason. (I also found this out the hard way after forgetting to take the rope from the inn’s basement).

It took until this playthrough to notice that the baby roc which hatches from the giant egg in the nest Graham is brought to in order to provide food, is actually two-headed (which makes sense since there was only one egg). Surely that means the mother would be too, right? Sure enough, if you look closely you can see that she indeed has two heads – though she’s depicted with only one in an illustration featured in The King’s Quest Companion, which may have been the source of my confusion.

There is a strange Easter egg in the mountains in which if Graham throws his cloak over the broken sled, the boat from much later on will appear, floating around the screen with Graham inside until he’s killed by a giant serpent that pops out of the snow. As a matter of fact, this serpent is seen later in the game if you travel too far north while in the little boat, and it genuinely freaks me out. I was killed by one unexpectedly while playing as a kid, and I never forgot the horror of it. Just… urgh.

I find this genuinely horrifying.

Mordack has such a fancy house compared to Manannan, who lived in a two-bedroom manor with minimal furniture and cracks in the walls. Yet Mordack’s place is… well, have a look:

One has to appreciate the opulent angels/birds/serpents décor, as well as the topless winged harpy snake-woman statue in the foyer, the giant pipe organ, the massive dining room (hard to imagine him with guests) and the ensuite library. Keep in mind this place is also situated on a private island. I can’t lie, it would be incredible to live in a place like this, even if it looks like a vision of hell. It gives Mordor, various castles belonging to Disney villains, and the arboreal lair of Darkness in Ridley Scott’s Legend a run for their money.

It’s good that Mordack’s home is so dripping with evil aesthetics, as it also makes up one of the most frustrating parts of the game, since Manannan (in cat form) can appear in any room and immediately sound the alarm, as well as Mordack’s henchman (or woman, I suppose) who looks like a cross between a blue alien and a praying mantis.

Remember the weird alien-like Euchdag in Merlin? This reminds me of that, since some fantasy stories feel the bizarre need to contain a single element that feels like it belongs to a completely different genre. Just to make things more complicated, you have to be captured by this creature at least once in order to retrieve the cheese from the dungeons, after which you get to tramp all the way through the maze AGAIN to end up right back where you started. (You at least have Cassima to follow the second time, but she’ll definitely leave you behind if you don’t keep up).

Don’t get too close to the organ either, as it will start playing on its own and summon Mordack, who can also appear whenever he likes and blast you into pieces.

But that’s just common sense. I’m not even sure why they have that gargoyle on top of it, which turns its head as you go by but for some reason doesn’t sound the alarm (just ambiance, I guess). The most frustrating puzzle is that once you’re in Mordack’s library, you have to wait there for what feels like ages before he appears through the doorway in the next room and promptly falls asleep. Yes, the good old waiting for someone to fall asleep puzzle. It just takes so inordinately long!

Though weirdly enough, the solution to getting rid of Manannan is to throw him a dead fish and then trap him in an empty sack – but if this happens in Mordack’s bedroom then there’s no way to explain how he doesn’t notice the struggling bagged cat on the floor. In any case, his slumber allows you to steal his wand in order to recharge your own with a machine situated in Mordack’s laboratory (using the mouldy cheese as a battery – don’t ask) which leads to an admittedly pretty awesome magical showdown straight out of The Sword in the Stone (Merlin versus Mim) or The Sandman (Morpheus versus Lucifer).

You see, when Graham studies Mordack’s magical volumes in his library, he comes across a number of strange glyphs that allow him to shapeshift into various creatures. As such, it becomes a battle of wits after Mordack confronts Graham in his laboratory: Mordack first turns into a giant winged scorpion, and Graham fends him off by transforming into a tiger. Mordack responds by becoming a dragon; Graham turns into a rabbit to evade the firebolts he emits from his jaws. Mordack shifts into a cobra to better slay a rabbit, so Graham becomes a mongoose. Finally, Mordack changes into a ring of fire, and Graham extinguishes him with a fall of rain.

No matter how you feel about the rest of the game, this is great stuff. I love a good old wizard’s duel.

Throughout this entire battle, Cedric has been lying half-dead on the ground, having flown in through the window with “news from Crispin” and gotten in the way of a killing strike from Mordack.

(Before this latest replay, I would have sworn up and down that Cedric stayed with the hermit to recover from his injuries instead of travelling with Graham to Mordack’s island. This actually would have made more sense, as the hermit could have easily been revealed as a wizard who was stationed on the shoreline in order to keep an eye on Mordack, and the message from Crispin could have come via him. I mean, the old man was friends with a mermaid called Pearl, which calls for all sorts of speculation as to how they knew each other and what their history was. This was another vaguely touched upon plot-point that absolutely captivated me as a child).

Crispin only turns up again after Mordack’s defeat to tell Graham what he already learned ages ago from Madame Mushka – that is, the backstory as to why Mordack kidnapped Graham’s family in the first place. (Is there some subtle commentary here about the superior mystical powers of women that never get listened to? Probably not). Graham listens politely to stuff he already knows, and throughout all of this, nobody even mentions Cedric until Crispin is ready to teleport everyone home – it’s only then that Graham recalls his existence and he’s returned to life.

So, as it happens, Crispin is very much like Glinda. They both seem to be in possession of huge amounts of power, but do nothing with it until the very end of the story, after the protagonist has already done all the hard work. 

Yeah, we learned this about three hours of gameplay ago!

A few little mysteries are leftover, some deliberately, some which are simply baked into the gameplay. Like, how did Cassima’s locket end up in the roc’s nest? (The manual posits she was transported to Mordack’s castle via the roc). Why was Cedric in Daventry when his home is in Serenia? Where was Crispin going and what “emergency” was he attending to? What was the strange device outside his cottage that Cedric warns Graham against touching? When Icebella releases Graham, she tells him: “I know who you are and I have been informed of your quest.” But by who? Her wolves? When Cassima rescues you from the dungeon, she mentions that she’s friends with Dink (the strange stone creature you come across in the maze) and Sam – though who on earth Sam is goes unexplained. Finally, how did Manannan leave Llewdor and reunite with his brother in the first place?

The novelization in The King’s Quest Companion has to do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to explanations, as it also valiantly tries to explain the logic behind Graham throwing a pie in the Yeti’s face (he was about to eat it, then panics) and using cheese to power the machinery (apparently the whole thing smells like old cheese).

***

Most of the woodsy, evocative score is showcased in the credits, which essentially plays all the game’s tunes from start to finish, and because you always have a very small inventory throughout the game (and often either lose or irreparably break things when you no longer need them) it’s very easy to get a perfect score. In fact, I’m struggling to figure out how you could complete with lower marks.

I suppose you could make your way throughout Mordack’s castle without defeating either the henchman or the cat, but you’d have to be very lucky to get that far without encountering at least one of them. But there are no extra points to be had as in the first few games in which the countryside was filled with treasure and you had multiple options when it came to dealing with certain obstacles. Again, KQV is very different from the grab-bag replay-ability quality of the first few games.

This game has my favourite title of all the King’s Quest games, which traditionally switch around a few words in famous proverbs and idioms. In this case, Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder is clearly based on “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” though this game came into my life so early, I’ll always think of “go yonder” as the correct terminology. I also love the implications that the change makes, as it’s not just a play on words or a clue as to what the plot will involve, but indicates the great love Graham has for his family – that he’ll go out into the world and LOOK for them after they’ve been kidnapped.

On that note, I also love the cover art on the box, which depicts Graham looking down on Queen Icebella’s ice palace in the mountains. In my early days of playing this game, I remember being so excited that this scene was waiting for me once I’d finished my business in the town and desert.

And I swear to you, I have never noticed the shadow of the wolf before!

Look back from this vantage point, it strikes me that the first six games in the series very much come in pairs. Quest for the Crown and Romancing the Throne both have Graham as their protagonist, with very similar graphics and gameplay in each one (a threefold quest, random treasures to find, “hot” screens that feature villains you have to avoid, etc). To Heir is Human and The Perils of Rosella are tightly connected to each other (the latter quite literally beginning in the closing moments of the former) and feature Graham’s twin children as their protagonists.

Finally, this game and Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow also have very similar graphics, down to the same frontispiece and musical fanfare (which also gets used in the fan remakes). The end of KQV also heavily sets up a Sequel Hook with the introduction of Cassima and her return to the Green Isles.

So it’s King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride that ends up being the odd one out – but we’ll get to that eventually.