King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (also called King's Quest V) is a 1990 video adventure game created by Sierra On-Line. It was first released in November 1990 and used VGA technology to improve the game's graphics. This was the first King's Quest game to use a point-and-click interface instead of typing commands. The title is a joke based on the saying "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."
King's Quest V sold more than half a million copies and received several awards. Later, a CD-ROM version with spoken dialogue was made by Sierra employees. A version for the Sega CD was planned but was never released.
Plot
At the start of the game, a view of Castle Daventry is shown. Suddenly, a mysterious cloaked figure appears and uses magic to create a whirlwind. The whirlwind covers the castle and lifts it into the air, making it disappear. King Graham is the only member of the royal family left behind because he was walking outside when this happened. He returns to the castle and finds it gone. There, he meets a talking owl named Cedric.
Cedric saw the cloaked figure and tells King Graham that the figure is a powerful evil wizard named Mordack, who took the castle. Cedric then takes King Graham to the land of Serenia, where a good wizard named Crispin lives. Crispin gives Graham an old wand and a piece of white snake that helps him talk to animals. Graham begins his journey to find his family.
Later, Graham learns that Mordack is the brother of Manannan, a wizard who was turned into a cat by Graham’s son, Prince Alexander, in a previous game. Mordack has captured the castle and the royal family out of revenge. He threatens to feed the royal family to Manannan unless Prince Alexander agrees to change Manannan back to his human form. Graham travels through Serenia, collects helpful items, and reaches Mordack’s island to save his family.
Cedric stays with Graham throughout the game to offer advice and help. Cedric is rescued from danger several times and accidentally saves Graham’s life near the end of the game.
At the end, with help from another prisoner, Princess Cassima, Graham fights Mordack in a magical duel. He uses spells from Mordack’s spell book to defeat him. After Mordack turns into a ring of fire, Graham calls a rain storm to put out the fire and destroy him. The good wizard Crispin then restores the castle and royal family to normal. Crispin sends Cassima back to her home in the Land of the Green Isles and returns the royal family to Daventry.
Although the game is mostly on its own, it connects to other games. The land of Serenia was first visited in an earlier game called Wizard and the Princess. During the game, Graham finds the skeleton of a man in the Serenia desert, which is identified as the Wanderer, a character from Wizard and the Princess. The story also connects to King’s Quest III, where Prince Alexander turns Manannan into a cat, which is why Mordack is angry.
The game’s ending links to its sequel, King’s Quest VI. In that game, Cassima is a slave to Mordack. Before being sent home, Prince Alexander says he wants to visit her in the Land of the Green Isles, which happens at the start of KQVI. Cassima mentions her Vizier, who first introduced Mordack to her. In KQVI, the Vizier is part of a group called the Society of the Black Cloak. Mordack may have been part of this group or known to it. The music from Cassima’s part in Mordack’s castle is later used again as a love theme for Alexander and Cassima in KQVI.
Versions
King's Quest V was the final game in the series to use EGA and Tandy graphics with a resolution of 320×200. The EGA version included 16-color graphics at this resolution, while the VGA version used 256-color VGA graphics at the same resolution. Unlike later SCI games, the VGA version did not support changing these graphics to 16 colors at a higher resolution of 640×350 on EGA cards.
The diskette version (both EGA and VGA) required the player to use spells throughout the game, which meant the user had to check the manual for instructions as part of the copy protection. This feature was removed in the CD-ROM version. The disk version had a slightly different game interface, similar to the one later used in the NES version, with an extra "walk" option. Some animated characters, like the rat, ant, and bee, had close-up images of their upper torsos that showed full animation, including arms and antennae. For example, the ant lifted a golden needle in these animations. These close-ups and animations were changed or removed in the CD-ROM version, which only showed close-ups of characters' faces.
Released in 1991, the CD-ROM version used the High Sierra Format, which is not connected to the publisher's name. This version added voice acting and included many changes to the story and dialogue compared to the floppy disk version. Many descriptions were revised, and new lines were added to characters who did not originally speak. For example, the snake and some villagers were given short quotes, even though they did not interact with the player in the floppy version. Some characters had close-up images from the floppy version, but these were placed on colored backgrounds and surrounded by frames (which sometimes hid details). The snake received a close-up image for its new speaking parts, and some characters were given additional lines.
A version of the game for the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in June 1992 by Konami and developed by Novotrade.
A version for the Atari ST was planned for release in Spring 1991 by Sierra Online's magazine, Sierra News Magazine. However, the project was canceled. Sierra's Srini Vasan and Sierra UK tried to continue development for the Atari ST, but Sierra Online stopped supporting the platform entirely soon after.
Development
The game had a total budget of about one million dollars. Sierra used animation methods similar to those Disney used for The Little Mermaid, such as tracing live actors' movements to create the characters' shapes and animation frames. Background scenes were drawn by hand, painted, and then converted into digital images. For the CD version, voices were recorded and used for speech, and many text boxes were removed to help the game fit on the disc.
Reception
King's Quest V sold 250,000 copies by February 1993, and sales later reached more than 500,000 copies. By the end of March 1996, Sierra On-Line reported that the total sales of the entire King's Quest series had passed 3.8 million units. In November 2000, PC Data noted that King's Quest V sold between 300,000 and 400,000 units in the United States alone.
In 1991, Computer Gaming World's Scorpia praised the game's VGA graphics, sound card audio, non-typing parser, and user interface. However, she criticized the large desert map, which she called mostly unnecessary. She said the game was best for new players because of its simple puzzles and also described it as a "pleasant diversion" for more experienced players. In the same year, Dragon magazine gave the game 4 out of 5 stars.
In April 1993, Computer Gaming World's Charles Ardai described the voice acting in the CD-ROM version as "wooden." In April 1994, the magazine noted that the voice acting quality ranged from excellent to mediocre, with some parts being annoying. However, the CD version was still preferred because of other improvements. In 2007, Adventure Gamers gave the game 3 out of 5 stars. Allgame gave the original PC version 4 out of 5 stars but gave the NES adaptation 2.5 out of 5 stars.
King's Quest V won the 1991 Software Publishers Association Excellence in Software Award for Best Fantasy Role-Playing/Adventure Program. Computer Gaming World named it the 1991 Adventure Game of the Year and added it to its Hall of Fame in 1992 for being highly rated by readers over time. In 1992, readers of MPC World voted it "Best Multimedia Fantasy/Adventure Game." In 1996, Computer Gaming World ranked King's Quest V as the 94th best game ever. The editors wrote that Roberta Williams surprised Sierra traditionalists by moving the parser out of the way to showcase some of the most beautiful graphics ever.