King’s Quest III Redux: To Heir is Human

_King’s Quest III Redux: To Heir is Human_ is a remake of the 1986 _King’s Quest_ III by AGD Interactive. The _King’s Quest_ games are classic adventures mainly involving the royal family of Daventry (King Graham, his wife Valanice and their twin offspring Alexander and Rosella), with fairly complex storylines involving mythical creatures and a generous dose of magic.

The team responsible for remaking the game have done a wonderful job of updating it to playable standards: no one born in the 90s could possibly force themselves to play with the
original graphics, and the art of typing instructions to one’s character has been lost in favour of the much simpler point-and-click. The game looks impressive and just old-fashioned enough (the characters’ faces lose their features if their owners wander too far into the depths of the scene) to give a sense of nostalgia.

The gameplay, while initially aggravating in its tendency to send Gwydion – the protagonist
– off a cliff if one doesn’t click in exactly the right place, is intuitive enough to make the
experience enjoyable. Right-click switches your mouse cursor to one of five symbols representing Gwydion’s ability to look, walk, touch/collect, use a particular item, or – when the cursor changes to represent the evil wizard’s evil cat – wait. Gwydion’s escape from the wizard is laborious. Following the general rule of point-and-click adventures, you must collect as many items as possible and use them in the right ways to trigger the next available action. It’s incredibly frustrating when the next part of the puzzle eludes you, but then just as incredibly satisfying when you do work it out.

This is a game for somebody with patience and time on their hands, far removed from the
instant gratification of your modern-day zombie-killers or racing simulations, but it’s worth
the investment. _King’s Quest III_ has an interesting story (made more so by the fact that it
continues on from _King’s Quest II_ and is continued in _King’s Quest IV_) and a variety of characters, and a generous dose of humour to help you along. It had been a long time since I’d last played a game that had me laughing out loud one minute (when Gwydion found “notes to
programmers with the legend of _King’s Quest IV_” with which he was apparently uninterested,
since he had his hands full with _King’s Quest III_) and then frantically writing notes to help
myself (items needed for spells, a list of colours dictating in which order Gwydion should step
on stones crossing a bog) the next, but I’m glad I did. Hopefully now somebody will remake
_King’s Quest IV_, and then maybe by the time I’m 30 somebody will have remade _King’s Quest VII_ and I can relive those hours of my childhood like those born in the 80s can do now with
_King’s Quest III Redux_.