KING'S QUEST V - THE TEXT ADVENTURE
REVIEW
(STEVE LINGLE)
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YEAR: 2007
SIZE: N\A
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PLATFORMS: Browser-Based
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+ Very interesting idea, making it into a text adventure
+ Maze at Mordack’s castle is easier
+ Handy Compass section allows us to click where we want to go
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- Many dead ends (just like the original)
- Can be hard to find the ‘correct’ phrase for the game to accept
- Restoring a game is tedious and over-complicated
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STORY
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It’s a beautiful day in Daventry. King Graham is enjoying a leisurely
stroll in the forest, taking in all the sights and sounds, and just
thinking how good life is.
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But his good mood doesn’t last for long.
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He arrives home, to find his castle… gone! Just… vanished! Into thin
air! With his family still inside! All that’s left, is an empty space where
the castle once stood. But how? How did this happen? Who would
want to kidnap his family? How can an entire castle just disappear like
that? Graham cant believe it… he stares in utter shock. WHERE IS HIS
FAMILY?
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Luckily, Graham is not alone. A talking owl comes to his aid. The owl
tells Graham his name is Cedric, and he saw what happened.
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Apparently, an evil wizard by the name of Mordack came to Daventry
and whisked the castle away (along with Graham’s family inside),
inside a mystical whirlwind. As to WHY Mordack did that… Cedric can’t
say, but maybe Cedric’s master could help. Cedric is from the land of
Serenia, and his master is a good wizard call Crispin. Naturally, King
Graham is desperate to save his family and get his castle back, so he
agrees to go with Cedric, back to Serenia.
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But as Graham and Cedric dig deeper to unravel the mystery…
Mordack’s true intentions become frightingly clear.
　
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GAMEPLAY
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I’m really excited to have discovered this text adventure version of
King’s Quest V: Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder. Steve Lingle has
done a fantastic job in converting the original Sierra graphic point &
click version… to this text adventure edition. Huge thanks to him for
his work. You can find the game HERE, and it plays in your browser. I
highly recommend you make a free account on that site, so you can
SAVE your progress as you go along.
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The screen is split up into various sections. The Main section takes up
most of your screen, and it gives us a look into Graham’s world - it
describes where he is, what he can see, what conversations he’s had,
etc. The text box is in this section, allowing you to type commands on
your keyboard, in order to tell King Graham what to do. For example,
you may want to ‘Talk To Snake’, or ‘Jump In Barrel’, or even ‘Eat The
Stick’. Your imagination is the limit. However, it can sometimes be
frustrating trying to figure out the correct phrase to use - ‘Play Harp’ is
not accepted, where ‘Use Harp’ is etc.
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The column on the right is further split into 4 sections. The first section
is Graham’s Inventory, and lists everything that he’s carrying. The
second section shows his score, out of a maximum of 260 points. You
earn points by picking up items, using items correctly, and solving
puzzles. The third section shows places and objects of particular
interest. It’s usually worth investigating those further. The fourth
section is a compass. So as well as typing ‘North‘, ‘South‘, ‘East‘,
‘West‘, ‘Up‘, ‘Down’ in the text box, you could click on this compass
instead. Only directions that are currently accessible to you are lit up,
so it’s very easy to see where you can and can’t go.
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As each section fills up, you can simply scroll up & down in order to see
more of it.
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Just like the original King’s Quest V, this game has MANY dead ends.
You could be playing quite happily, until you realise you’re in a no-win
situation because you didn’t pick up that item or didn’t save that
person 2 hours ago, and there’s no way to get back now to pick it up.
You can SAVE your progress at any time, by clicking on the SAVE button
at top right. However, because you’re playing in your browser, you only
get one SAVE slot. So if you make a mistake and then accidentally
SAVE, you have to start again from the beginning. RESTORING a game
seemed to be a lot more tedious, however. I couldn’t see a
RESTORE\RELOAD button anywhere. Instead, I think the only way is to
actually close the game window down, then open it up again, and you
should be able to start again from your last SAVE point. If anyone
knows of an easier way, please let me know.
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I think it’s worth mentioning, that Steve, the developer, has made that
HORENDOUS maze in Mordack’s castle so much easier to navigate.
Thank you Steve!
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The pages seemed rather slow to load themselves sometimes, but that
may have just been my computer.
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GRAPHICS
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Since this is a straight up text remake, there is no graphics to look at.
Screen titles are indicated blue bold text. Graham speech is shown in
red, so it stands out.
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However, having played the original King’s Quest V so many times,
Steve’s descriptions let me visualise each screen, each character, each
item in my head just perfectly.
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SOUND AND MUSIC
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There is no sound or music in this version.
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