Welcome to Dev Game Club, where we continue to discuss a pair of very early Sierra adventure games, beginning with 1984's King's Quest: Quest for the Crown. Having finished the game, we discuss the ways in which different puzzles work and what aspects are frustrating and how it might all have gotten that way. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.
Sections played:
Finish King's Quest 1
Issues covered: getting through without hints, remembering puzzles and forgetting stuff, rule-breaking and rocks, leaning into fairy tales, thinking about the game away from it, the better manual, verbs with rare usages or no usages, the Rumplestiltskin puzzle, good for streaming or not, dying from the rock, timing and waiting, the difficulty of the game Deadline, things not appearing on screens, characters that don't appear all the time, not knowing what you're not seeing, the well and figuring out what to do there through dying, dealing with the dragon, solving puzzles multiple ways, timing your throw at the dragon, using water in the pail all over, supporting lots of weird choices, finding the use of the bucket and not experimenting further, verbs you use only once, looking at objects in your inventory, XYZZY, piecing together a series of steps, the Leprechaun puzzle, multiple solutions as a usability issue, losing the goat, giving treasure to the troll, fallback solutions, being able to ignore various obstacles, encouraging exploration, no RPG-style combat, the Fairy Godmother spell, dealing with the witch, lack of mapping between manual and game, eating the witch's house, the fullness of the world, climbing the beanstalk and being high on the foliage, fighting the parser, thinking the pebbles might be for the wolf, sick fairy tales, a sleeping giant, navigating the beanstalk, differences in world structure between different adventure games, proving out the capabilities of a new engine, showstopping spots in an adventure that's more linear, playing a game together, ARGs and the appeal of playing with a crowd, breaking Tim Sr with Space Quest, giving away carrots, goat eating your carrots, top-down design vs bottom-up design, 500K copies sold, relegislating the sexism, The Boss, aspiring to be Solid Snake, getting interested in real world topics via games, creators who are drawn to real-world issues, not fully embracing a difficult topic, having a hard time getting that stuff funded, various examples, escapism in entertainment, fun MGS bits.
Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Roberta and Ken Williams, Deadline, Infocom, LucasArts, Ron Gilbert, Edge of Tomorrow, Wizard of Oz, Advent, Grimm Fairy Tales, Space Quest, Day of the Tentacle, Zork, Two Guys from Andromeda, Mark Crowe, Scott Murphy, Reed Knight, Super Metroid, Super Mario World, Metroid, Quest for Glory (series), Manhunter, Betrayal at Krondor, Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Blarg42, Final Fantasy IX, Metal Gear (series), Bioshock, Tom Clancy, Far Cry 2, Hideo Kojima, This War of Mine, Papers Please, Cart Life, Valiant Hearts, UbiSoft, Far Cry 5, Sean Vanaman, Jake Rodkin, Firewatch, Gone Home, Wolfenstein, Star Wars, Yoji Shinkawa.
Next time:
Play until you reach the first planet in Space Quest
Links/Notes:
Note - the XYZZY Awards still exist!
Dialog with Campbell et al about your mono TV
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