King's Quest: The Perils of Rosella

The fourth instalment in the King’s Quest series feels like a natural follow-up to its predecessor. If King’s Quest III made former protagonist King Graham’s son Alexander its playable character, it makes perfect sense for King’s Quest IV to focus on his daughter, Princess Rosella, introduced at the very end of the previous game in which she's rescued from a three-headed, fire-breathing dragon by her long-lost twin brother.

Indeed, it’s such a no-brainer for the focus to move to Rosella, that The Perils of Rosella literally picks up seconds after the previous game’s conclusion, with Graham deciding to give up his adventurer’s cap (a symbol of his glory days) and pass it onto his children, flinging it through the air towards them as his wife Valanice looks on.

The twins reach up to snatch it from the air, when all of a sudden Graham grabs his chest and lurches over in pain, the victim of an apparent heart attack. He’s taken to his bedchamber, and overcome with grief, Rosella flees back into the throne room, where a voice from the magic mirror tells her there might be a way to save him. In the glass, Rosella can see a beautiful fairy, who tells her of a magical fruit in the faraway land of Tamir which could restore her father to full heath.

Review: The Dagger of Amon Ra

After finishing The Colonel's Bequest (several times) I naturally had to follow up with the game's one and only sequel: The Dagger of Amon Ra.

It’s... not great. The game was written and designed by Bruce Balfour, with Roberta Williams taking a backseat as she worked on other projects. She’s credited as “creative consultant”, which apparently meant she was tasked with making sure the spirit of the first game remained intact and that there was character consistency in the portrayal of Laura.

A switch in creative control doesn’t necessarily lead to a drop in quality – after all, Jane Jenson wrote King’s Quest 6, which is largely considered the best in the series – but there are several problems with this game that leaves it with none of the Replay Value of its predecessor.

Released in 1992, the graphics have advanced in leaps and bounds, going from the 4-bit colour palette and pixelated sprites of just three years ago to rich and detailed scenery and characters. But honestly, I prefer the visual limitations of the first game, largely due to the Nostalgia Filter and the scope for imagination that it provides – often your mind ends up filling in the details of the more unsophisticated graphics.

The Dagger of Amon Ra sees Bequest’s old plantation house in the midst of murky swamplands and raises it a New York museum after closing hours. That’s not a bad exchange as far as ambient locations go, and the designers make the most of the popular 1920’s Art Deco style in order to create the Leyendecker Museum, where most of the game’s action takes place.

Review: The Colonel's Bequest

As a child, I was what you would call a gamer. We owned dozens of floppy disks that ran adventure games designed by Sierra On-Line, many of which fell under the various “quest” titles: King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Hero’s Quest (later called Quest for Glory) and the two Laura Bow mysteries: The Colonel’s Bequest and The Dagger of Amon Ra.

Released in 1989, the inspiration for The Colonel’s Bequest is fairly obvious: storywise it’s based on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, what with a group of disparate characters brought to an island where they one-by-one fall victim to an unseen murderer, but there’s a dash of Cluedo in there too – specifically some of the characters’ colour-based names (Colonel Dijon is obviously a nod to Colonel Mustard) and the setting of an opulent but remote mansion.

It's also a much more sophisticated remake of Sierra’s very first game from 1980: Mystery House, which also involved the player investigating a series of murders that take place in a singular location, and which is considered the very first graphic adventure game ever. Like, the very first ever. Did I mention that it was conceived, designed, written and illustrated by a woman, Roberta Williams? She literally came up with the idea to combine a story with visuals for a gaming format.

She also wrote and designed The Colonel’s Bequest, and was further inspired by her most recent instalment in the King’s Quest series, The Perils of Rosella, which in 1988 was the first graphic adventure game to feature a playable female protagonist (this is somewhat contested: there had been playable female characters before, but Rosella was the first in an adventure, rather than an arcade game).

Review: Gabriel Knight: Temptation

No, your eyes don’t deceive you: there is one more canon Gabriel Knight story, a comic written by Jane Jensen herself for the first game’s twentieth anniversary. With illustrations by Elisa Pavinato and colouring by Bruce Brenneise, you can read the whole thing here.

Given that the story takes place after Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, and coincided with the release of the first game’s remastered edition, I suspect it was written in the hopes of renewing interest in the franchise and continuing the games (the last one ended on an open note, after all).

But since this came out back in 2015 and there’s been no word since on Gabriel’s future, it would seem the attempt was unsuccessful. So let’s just enjoy Temptation on its own terms…

Review: Gabriel Knight: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned

This is the third and final game in the Gabriel Knight trilogy, and as is the case with so many third instalments, it pales in comparison to its predecessors. The ambition is certainly there, with a sprawling story, talented vocal cast, and what was (for its time) impressive graphics, but it’s also overly complicated, difficult to navigate, and somewhat anti-climactic. And those graphics? Have dated horribly. Just horribly.

The pixel art of the first game and even the full-motion videos of the second are still watchable, even beautiful, but this – from the balloon-like limbs of the characters to the garish textures of rock and grass…there’s no beating around the bush, it’s hideous.

Perhaps the toll it took on designer/creator Jane Jensen is clear in the lack of supplementary material she would have otherwise prepared for the game’s release. Sins of the Fathers has a 2014 remake, a comic book introduction, and a novelization. The Beast Within has a novelization. Blood of the Sacred has only a slim comic to give players a grasp of the story, and the fact Jensen never got around to putting this story on the printed page (which would have done wonders for clarifying some of the plot’s murkier developments) suggests she never had the time or inclination to do so.

The game was released in full 3D, but by all accounts the development team had little experience with the format, leading to a number of bugs and omissions that put a huge strain on the schedule and release date. As a result, its greatest claim to fame is sadly one of the most infamous Moon Logic Puzzles of all time, though it should be renowned for the audacity of its storyline, which delves into the patrilineal line of Jesus Christ and the possibility he fathered a child, a full six years before The Da Vinci Code had tourists swarming historical sites and ticking off the Catholic Church in search of evidence for its similar hypothesis.

But you can bet the promotional material made the most of the fact it was released in 1999, with a poster that's possibly one of the greatest and most evocative images ever used for a computer game:

I mean, wow. That's ingenious. And check out the trailer:

You can see how badly the graphics have dated, but the music, the editing, the sequencing – they’re still fantastic, and at its best the game captures that thrill of an ancient treasure hunt beset with supernatural dangers and grand conspiracies...

Review: Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within

Sequels are tricky things to manage, and that goes as much for games as for books and films. They have to build on the previous story without repeating it, raise the stakes without overblowing it, and deepen the characters and expand the world-building without getting too convoluted.

The Beast Within finds the right balance, though interestingly enough, it does not raise or lower the stakes in any significant way – it merely changes them. If Sins of the Fathers was about righting an ancient wrong, reclaiming ones heritage and wiping out a criminal cartel, then The Beast Within is about saving two souls from damnation and preventing a centuries-old killer from harming more innocent people.

It seems simple enough, and yet the story is just as deep and poignant as its predecessor. Set a year after the events of Sins of the Fathers, Gabriel has taken up residence in his family's ancestral home of Schloss Ritter and assumed the mantle of Schattenjäger (that is, Shadow Hunter). Now all he needs is a case, and so who should appear at the castle door but a gathering of solemn townsfolk, seeking the Schattenjäger's assistance...

Review: Gabriel Knight: The Sins of the Fathers

Back in the Nineties I was going through my "supernatural detective" phase. The Slayer was slaying, the Charmed Ones were charming, and in a point-and-click adventure game released in 1993, the Schattenjäger (German for Shadow Hunter) was hunting.

I first glimpsed pictures of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers in computer magazines, and of all the images that intrigued me, it was this one that really captured my imagination:

The mausoleums, the angel statue, the strange lettering on the crypt, the trench-coat wearing hero... I wanted nothing more than to escape into the sheer atmosphere of that place. Then for one of my birthdays, I received the game as part of a special collector's edition (which also included a novelization of the story) and could finally delve into the mystery first-hand.