King's Quest

aka: KQ1, King's Quest 1, King's Quest: Quest for the Crown
Moby ID: 122
PC Booter Specs

Description official descriptions

Sir Graham is a brave knight who is sent on a quest to retrieve three treasures that were stolen by deception and stealth: a shield that protects its bearer from invaders, a mirror that foretells the future, and a treasure chest that is forever filled with gold. If Graham takes these treasures back to the royal castle, then the ailing King Edward the Benevolent of Daventry will hand over the crown. During his travels, Graham will meet characters that will either help or hinder him.

King's Quest is commonly considered the progenitor of third-person-perspective adventure games. As opposed to earlier graphic adventures, the player is able to navigate the protagonist on screen in eight directions, creating an effect of three-dimensional exploration. The player character can also be obscured from view when hiding behind an object, is subjected to gravity, and has different animations for actions such as picking up an item, falling, swimming, etc. Graham can be moved around with arrow keys and perform various actions when the player types commands, normally consisting of noun and verb combinations (e.g. "Take flower", "Talk man", etc.).

The game world consists of a cyclic outdoor area with places of interest (houses, characters, etc.) that must be found through exploration. Much of the kingdom is accessible to Graham from the beginning, and there are only a few restrictions imposed on traveling. In order to complete the game, the player has to procure certain items and use them in correct situations or with specific characters. Some of the puzzles rely on fairy tales, and a good knowledge of those makes them easier to solve.

The game awards the player points for most of the actions he makes Graham perform. Since some of those are not crucial to completion, it is quite possible to finish the game without having attained the full score. Some of the tasks in the game have multiple solutions, though the game may grant the player less points if he chooses the simpler one. Many hazards await Graham on his journey, and death is frequent if the player is not careful. The game can also be rendered unwinnable by failing to collect a specific item or wasting it.

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Screenshots

Credits (PC Booter version)

11 People (8 developers, 3 thanks)

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 68% (based on 19 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 186 ratings with 12 reviews)

How a fairy tale expert can become alligator food

The Good
The first thing we need to understand when attempting to analyze King's Quest is its historical significance. It was more than just the first installment of a long and successful series; more even than a template its creators have been building upon ever since. It was, in fact, the first real adventure game where you navigated an on-screen character through the only kind of world that this perspective allowed to be called "three-dimensional" that time.

Before this game, all we could do in adventures was, at best, view still screens with text and some graphics representing locations. Only action games allowed us to move around a little digital incarnation of ourselves. The great achievement of King's Quest was transferring common mechanics of adventure genres into a world ripe with hazards that suddenly became so much more real because they actually physically happened to our avatar. It's one thing to type "N" or "W" and another to quickly run away from a maniacal ogre as he begins chasing you. It might be fulfilling to type "go upstairs", but certainly less so than actually doing it and trying not to fall down. When you pick up an item, you can see exactly how it is done. When you swim underwater, you stay with your character instead of letting the game do it for you.

It is customary to mock Sierra for inserting too many death scenes in their games. In some games they really overdid this mechanic, and it started to feel cheap as adventure game development was advancing and designers found better means to convey danger and make their worlds more absorbing. But this hardly applies to the first King's Quest, where this design philosophy was undeniably intentional and where constant danger added so much suspense to what was essentially a stroll through fairly repetitive outdoor areas.

King's Quest remains one of the surprisingly few examples of a truly non-linear adventure game. Even its own sequel, released shortly afterwards, forced you to complete its three "door-opening" quests in a specific order. Here, you can work on finding the three needed objects simultaneously, with nothing to restrain you. You can walk around as much as you want, provided you are careful enough, studying local geography and fauna, and gradually getting acquainted with the land. The freedom of choice gives the game a wonderful feeling of breadth and true adventuring spirit, surpassing in that sense the strangulating linearity of many later games.

The game awards you points for most of the actions you perform. That was one of Sierra's best inventions, again taking something from arcade games and applying it to a completely different genre. This simple feature gave adventures something other companies generally paid less attention to: replay value. You can complete King's Quest without having scored full points. You can, in fact, bypass some of the most confusing puzzles entirely and still finish the game. But then you'll want to play it again and find out what you might have missed. King's Quest also does what many later games stopped doing: offer multiple solutions to puzzles. You can, for example, slay the dragon in the game if you manage to find a rather well-hidden weapon. But a more interesting, non-violent way will yield more points as well.

King's Quest has fantastic graphics. We are talking about the year 1984, and I don't think there was much on the market that looked better than this. Already the very first screen of the game renders us speechless, displaying a colorful castle adorned with banners waving in the wind, fully animated alligators swimming around in the moat, and our fashionable hero proudly strolling with his feathered hat. Most people today are only familiar with the updated EGA version that came out three years later; but the original release looked stunning with its CGA composite mode.

The Bad
The flaws of King's Quest are all too obvious if we compare it to the generally more fondly remembered comedy games Sierra started doing later. Roberta Williams was probably thinking of children when she created the setting for the game, populating its world with harmless characters cut out of various fairy tales that didn't mesh with each other particularly well. A bad witch, a bad troll, a goat who likes carrots, a sleeping giant, a poor woodcutter and a few others are a far cry from some of the creatures you would encounter in earlier Infocom titles. The problem is that the game turned out to be too hard and punishing for children, ending up entertaining adults with magic beanstalk and a gnome whose name couldn't be guessed by rocket scientists.

As a result, the main problem of King's Quest becomes its lack of personality. There is really nothing distinguishing about anything you see or read in the game. The text is clearly written and at times attractive with its underlying energy, but ultimately rather plain and lacking wit and imagination. There is also not much of it, and though it is charming that sometimes you can receive feedback for actions that have nothing to do with advancing the plot, on many other occasions the game stubbornly refuses to cooperate, spouting out saddening strings of "You can't do that - at least not now" and "I don't understand ___".

In the realm of gameplay, this is manifested in the absence of a general "Look" command, which I really missed here. You can get fairly good descriptions for rooms, but as you explore lovely meadows and swim through serene lakes you won't be able to read anything like "Gleaming rays of Helios are surrealistically reflected in the depths of the hydrogen-filled basin, just as your own soul seeks astral redemption for your past karmic misdemeanors" or whatever.

The puzzles rely too much on the player's knowledge of fairy tales. I grew up outside of the Anglophone community that seems to be very fond of that particular genre, and therefore some of the solutions made very little sense to me. It was also confusing to reach dead ends more often than I wanted to, but after a while they sort of grew on me. Seriously, what is it about the modern obsession with absolute security in games? It's okay when games try to trick you, and it's rewarding when you figure out its tricks and avoid its traps.

The Bottom Line
King's Quest is a great technological achievement we should thank for opening the doors to a wonderful genre, but it's also more than that. It's easy to ridicule its shortcomings nowadays, but if you mentally teleport to its time you'll discover a surprisingly involving open-ended adventure with its own peculiar charm.

DOS · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2017

Good start for the good series

The Good
The best is compare the game to what was available when King's Quest was shown on PC-s for the first time. Other adventure games of that time were either text-only or static screens with text descriptions. Compared to that, King's Quest was really vibrant. It was first of its kind in that regard.

Another nice point (on PC) is that even if some other adventure games had static screens graphics, this graphics was mostly CGA and in many cases quite ugly. King's Quest I came with PCjr/Tandy support with already first 1984 release, using all 16-colors and graphics, even if quite low-res, was really nice and full-screen. The game gave fairy-tales vibes to player perfectly.

Regarding gameplay, puzzles were ok (I think I looked into walkthrough only once), many puzzles were possible to solve in different manners (having different points). Exploring Kingdom of Daventry was enjoyable.

The Bad
Story is really simple, a bit naive. Just find 3 treasures in the kingdom to become new king. And yeah, puzzle with eagle was really a bit frustrating (this is the point when I looked into walkthrough).

The Bottom Line
Good start into series, which I enjoyed playing even in modern times for the first time. There were adventure games before, but for me, this one was the first which defined the genre.

DOS · by Vladimir Dienes · 2023

An oldie, but not a goodie

The Good
Well, the title screen is quite nice, what with the beeper song and all... And I guess this game was the first to use Sierra's "move the little Lego-man around and try to guess what to type"-interface, which I quite like. I suppose that if I had played this when it first came out I would have been really impressed with it - the graphics, the gameplay and, indeed, the whole concept of an animated 3D adventure game. Now all I can say is that the yellow geek with the funny hat is pretty smoothly animated. (All right, the graphics aren't all that bad for low-res EGA alltogether.)

The Bad
I didn't like the fact that it's an arcade game with a bad parser and puzzles. I do appreciate the fact that back in those days you really couldn't fit a lot of storyline and a complex parser AND 16-color graphics and animation in an IBM PC. What I don't appreciate is the really pathetic overall plot and mood, and the puzzles that are not only simple but often frustrating instead of puzzling. The idea of adventure games should not be to try everything until you find a solution that doesn't kill you or stop you from advancing - I refer you to the gnome's name puzzle (which was made easier in later versions).

The Bottom Line
King's Quest is not a very good game, and it certainly isn't a good adventure game. It isn't loads of fun to play nor particularly rewarding. However, it is a classic and a ground-breaker, and since its relatively cheap these days, you might as well try it out - its not half as bad as a lot of other games, and not playing it just because its not very good is like not reading "War and Peace" just because its dead boring. (Figure that one out for yourself...)

DOS · by Late (77) · 2001

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Year PCjr? Edwin Drost (9295) Mar 21, 2017
Any other adventure games like KQ1&3? Lain Crowley (6630) Mar 30, 2012

Trivia

Code Decryption

The developers used encryption to hide code from prying eyes. The encryption key was Avis Durgan. However, according to PC Gamer (July 2000), nobody can remember why this key was chosen or who Avis Durgen is -- not even Ken Williams!

.. but Al Lowe does remember:

Avis was Jeff Stephenson's wife's maiden name. I guess he was in love!

Development

Originally developed by Sierra On Line and produced by IBM as a show piece for the IBM PCjr. The game was later produced by Sierra and was the foundation of the best-selling King's Quest series.

Graham

Sir Graham was so named because of designer Roberta Williams' fondness for graham crackers.

IBM Front Cover

Check out the IBM box's front cover--it has a completely wrong description and picture of King's Quest; this is because the box ad copy was written before the game was completed.

Novels

From 1995 through 1996 Boulevard Books published a trilogy of novels inspired by the King's Quest game setting of Daventry and featuring members of its royal family as the main protagonists:

  • The Floating Castle (1995), by Craig Mills, dealing with adventures Prince Alexander experiences between the events of King's Quests V and VI;
  • The Kingdom of Sorrow (1996), by Kenyon Morr, filling in some blanks regarding King Graham's activities between King's Quests II and III; and
  • See No Weevil (1996), also by Kenyon Morr, taking place seven years after the Kingdom of Sorrow and giving Graham's daughter, Princess Rosella, a chance to rule as regent during a crisis.

References

The flag of Daventry, as seen in the throne room, is in fact the flag of Sierra Leone. This is actually a pun referring to the development company, Sierra On-Line.

References to the Game

The website Homestarrunner.com created a game named Peasent's Quest quite similar to King's Quest. It has EGA graphics, text based typing, and the main character Rather Dashing is designed a little like Sir Graham.

Re-release

A complete version of King's Quest is available on Classic Games Collection CD featured with the July 2000 issue of PC Gamer Magazine.

Rumpelstilskin Puzzle

One puzzle, naming the gnome's real name must have been deemed too hard (or obscure) in the original version of King's Quest. I believe the clue was "Think back-wards" or something along those lines. The answer? The player had to write out the alphabet as follows:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
Substitute the letters from Rumplestiltskin with the letter below on the line. Of course most people entered Rumplestiltskin spelled backwards (logical) and this didn't work. In the SCI (1987) re-release of the game, the puzzle was made simpler with Rumplestiltskin backwards being the correct answer.

Technology

King's Quest was the first Sierra game to use the AGI game engine, which was used in Sierra's later games throughout the '80's. The way the engine was setup made it easy to port a game written with AGI to other computer platforms.

Awards

  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 01/2007 - One of the "Ten Most Influential PC-Games". It managed to link texts and graphics and caused the rise of Graphic Adventures.
  • The Strong National Museum of Play
    • 2020 – Introduced into the World Video Game Hall of Fame

Information also contributed by Andrew Shepard; Indra, Joakim Möller, Pseudo_Intellectual, Ricky Derocher, rstevenson, Shai Greenberg, Tibes80, and Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe.

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Related Games

King's Quest: Quest for the Crown
Released 2001 on Linux, DOS, Windows
King's Quest: Collector's Edition
Released 1994 on DOS, Windows 3.x
King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones
Released 2002 on Linux, Windows, 2010 on Macintosh
King's Quest I+II+III
Released 2010 on Windows
King's Quest: Mask of Eternity
Released 1998 on Windows
King's Quest 7+8
Released 2010 on Windows
King's Quest III: To Heir is Human
Released 1986 on DOS, 1987 on Atari ST, Amiga...
King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human
Released 2006 on Windows
King's Quest 4+5+6
Released 2010 on Windows

Related Sites +

  • AGD Interactive
    Download King's Quest 1 remake for free
  • Game Map (Sega Master System)
    Images with maps of all locations and their position to each other.
  • King's Quest Realm
    An interesting sight devoted to the entire King's Quest series. It offers hints, a message board and a superb section devoted to the history of these popular games.
  • King's Quest at Wikipedia
    Includes an entire history and list of creatures, games in the series and more.
  • ScummVM
    supports the DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST, Apple IIgs versions of King's Quest under Windows, Linux, Macintosh and other platforms.
  • Sierra Gamers
    The Official Website of Ken Williams and King's Quest creator, Roberta Williams.
  • The King's Quest series at Game Nostalgia
    An illustrated overview of King’s Quest 1984 up to King's Quest: Mask of Eternity (including various fan games).

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 122
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Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Andy Roark.

Amiga added by POMAH. Apple II added by KnockStump. Macintosh added by Martin Smith. SEGA Master System added by Katakis | カタキス. Apple IIgs added by Garcia. Atari ST added by Belboz.

Additional contributors: Trixter, Paul Budd, Indra was here, Katakis | カタキス, Jeanne, Guy Chapman, Andrew Shepard, game nostalgia, Macs Black, Picard, Patrick Bregger, Jo ST, SoMuchChaotix.

Game added May 18, 1999. Last modified February 13, 2024.