King's Quest 3 Redux

So, the team once known as 'Tierra' and now as AGDI has finished another classic game remake/update, this time of King's Quest 3. For the remake side of things, the graphics are pushed up to VGA and full voice acting is added. For the update, as well as fleshing out some of the character relationships, there are several puzzles that have been altered or added and a whole new area for extra adventuring.



While everything is now point-and-click, you will STILL repeatedly die walking off cliffs if you're not careful. It just wouldn't feel like kq3 without that stupid evil mountain path, now, would it? Similarly, you are very likely to blow yourself up spellcasting at some point. And yes, there are time limits. Save early, save often!

Game Webpage - the download is free and it runs on both Windows and Mac.


... Now, as I've already finished it, a couple of comments that you might want to skip for spoilers.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but after the first task at the beginning of the game, my wizard demanded food at every possible opportunity, no other chores ever. Which means that my first attempt at the game had to be scrapped an hour in because I'd run out of food items before being able to solve the necessary puzzles. I started over, having now carefully planned out what had to be done when, and got through it with one 'trip' left to go, so you don't have to do a completely perfect speedrun to win, but it does seem unforgiving. EDIT: Apparently there is a way out of that and I didn't actually have to restart. The bears will make more porridge if you eat the first bowl. Oh well.

The interactions among the royal family felt a little awkward and not as well thought-out as the other characterisations. I can see why they didn't want to dig too deeply into the iconic characters and I'm going to have more to say about Rosella in a later post, it just felt distinctly weaker than other parts of the story.

Unless I missed something, which I may have, the changes rendered one spell absolutely useless - it now gives you nothing but fluff. The spell that was already useless, I never managed to cast. And I had an item I never figured out what to do with... but those are my failings, not the game's. :)