♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (5:09) “King's Quest III” by Sierra (1986)
• (1:10:34) “King's Quest ZZT” by Hydra, MeBo (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/kqzzt/]
Finally seeing if King's Quest is as much of a Sierra game as I've been told.
Yes. Yes it is.
First a good hour of prince Alexander mostly just wandering around a wizard's home and the town at the foot of the mountain where he lives as a slave. It's a rough life for the kid.
I was surprised by how complex the world was. An in game clock that determines who is where and doing what? Impressive stuff. And if you could make it down the awful road to town without falling to your death for touching the wrong pixel, it seemed like a decently sized world to explore. At the very least, I suspect I would have loved it as a kid, regardless of whether or not I could make any progress.
Now though, oof, Stair Quest indeed. I didn't want to return to the house and I didn't want to restart and descend again even if I could find more items and clues for what I should be doing. Oktrollberfest was two months ago. So instead I mostly just wandered around still managing to find a number of unexpected ways to die, even when trying to do dumb things to get myself killed! Perhaps the most impressive was the secret tree house and climbing too high up the ladder only to plummet to my death, though dying in the desert not from dehydration or a scorpion sting, but _Medusa_ was definitely a surprise.
So while comparing Quest for Glory to its ZZT version made the ZZT game feel stripped down to its most minimal components, the ZZT King's Quest game by Hydra and Mebo was far more enjoyable. Released in 1997 (practically yesterday), the authors seemed to want to spend more time in the game's world, and less time falling to their deaths, creating an original fan game in which Manannan's cousin Ravenlos is amassing an army to conquer Daventry. Alexander is made to set out into the world and find a way to stop him before his much nicer new home is overtaken.
You get to revisit a number of locations from KQ3, with much of the game spent in Llewdor including a return to the home of your miserable childhood. RPG battles are of course a key component, with fights against Ravenlos loyalists and Ogres. There's a new quest to save the centaurs from the ogres that have been hunting them, as well as meeting a fairy queen who also wants to see Ravenlos deposed before his eyes set upon her kingdom. In this game, prince Alexnader poisons a water supply. It's really something.
But most importantly, it's fun and straightforward. It's very clear where you should be headed and what to do at any given time, making it a breezy adventure with its share of nods to the source material. And because it's a new adventure rather than a retelling, it has its own space to exist rather than be something that has to be directly compared to Sierra's game. Thanks to an hour-ish of KQ3, I can appreciate it even more.
♦ Play directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/kqzzt/
♦ Originally streamed on December 7th, 2025 ♦
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