Escaping the Desert
Now that you’ve got some loot from the dead adventurer, it’s time to use his stuff to get out of the desert. First, you need to set a trap for the jackelope so you can trade with the field mouse.
Puzzles in the Desert
The whirlwind drops Valanice off in an uninhabited desert wasteland with grim, forbidding music. Although not much is going on around her, this was one of the “scary” levels for me when I was a kid.
There are a number of things in this desert that can horribly kill you, and when you die, you’ll get a message from Valanice poking fun at herself for your bad choices, and a chance to start over right where you left off.
Intro Video
The game starts with one of the two protagonists, princess Rosella of Daventry, singing a Disney Princess-esque “I want” song on a cliffside atop a scenic waterfall.
Grow up, young lady
That’s what they all say
It’s time to settle down
Put childish things away
Aren’t you happy? We’re delighted
You’re going to be a bride!
Yes, I’m so excited
I want to run and hide!
I want to go to a land beyond dreams…
It’s time for Rosella to get married off to some dude, and she doesn’t want to. Specifically, she would rather have a magical adventure, in another world, which, fortunately for her, is exactly what her game is going to be about.
ITS A FUCKING IKEA ADVERT BUT JUST WATCH IT
GUYS YOU HAVE TO WATCH IT I LITTERALY SPAT ON THE COMPUTER SCREEN
THERE BETTER BE REACTION GIFS OF THESE BY TOMORROW
i’M FUCKING SOBBING
this changed my life
I am thinking of liveblogging some games! I would probably start with King’s Quest 7. It was the first game I owned or played, with the second one being Kyrandia 2: Hand of Fate.
King’s Quest 7 is about the daughter and wife of the protagonist of the original King’s Quest, Rosella and Valanice. During a conversation about Rosella’s less-than-exciting arranged marriage prospects, Rosella catches sight of a magic dragonfly flying into a mysterious pond, and dives in after it, following it to an alternate world. Valanice dives in after her to bring her back to safety, but the two of them get separated as they fall through to the other world, and each has their own adventure in alternating chapters.
Legend of Kyrandia: The Hand of Fate is about the alchemist Zanthia, a minor character from the first installment, who gets dragged into an unwanted quest to save her disappearing world by fetching a magical anchor stone from the center of the earth.
Together, these games set a strange precedent for me, because I emerged into the world of computer and video games as an eight year old thinking that graying queens fighting scorpions, princesses solving the problems of the ghouls of the netherworld, and snarky female alchemists hitchiking to the center of the earth were standard gaming fare.
It would continue to confuse me for more than a decade that as games evolved and consolidated into the genres that people liked the most, they would mostly involve looking over someone’s shoulder while they shot at stuff in a beige landscape.
