Posted August 7, 2015 at 6:15 pm

Walkthroughs = guides. (Hey, not everyone who reads this play video games.)

I was originally going to draw a basic arrow cursor under that narration, but then I remembered that the cursors in the old games were various icons depending on what you were doing. What I wound up drawing is based on the movement icon from King's Quest V. Here is a larger color version of it.

I'd been eagerly waiting for a modern adventure game with a fun tone when suddenly a reimagining of King's Quest leaped from the bushes and attacked my Steam wallet. I knew it was going to exist by virtue of a photo from the most recent E3, but I had no idea it was going to be out any time soon. Granted, it's being released episodically, so really only about one fifth of it is currently available, but I was still caught off guard.

Since then, I've played it, and I really like it. It has fun characters, good acting, a decent story, and replay value in that there are different ways to accomplish the same goals.

It's also a LOT easier than classic Sierra adventure games. It's still possible to get stuck in the new game, but one is more likely to feel like "I should have known" upon looking up the solution than "REALLY?!"

In King's Quest V, for example, there's a moment in which you'll be trapped with no way of escaping if you didn't save a rat from a cat earlier in the game. And I don't mean in a puzzle situation or a moral choice or something. I mean you're walking along, you suddenly see a cat chasing a rat, and you won't be able to complete the game if you don't act fast and use the right item to save the rat, AND you won't realize you've effectively just gotten a game over until later.

Granted, you could save your game at any time in those old games, so you could make multiple attempts to save the rat if you'd saved shortly beforehand, but still.