King's Quest is a video game series with pictures, made from 1980 to 2016 by the American company Sierra Entertainment. It is seen as a classic from the most popular time for adventure games. After the first games became successful, the series helped make Sierra well-known. Roberta Williams, a co-founder and former owner of Sierra, designed all King's Quest games until the series was restarted in 2015.

The King's Quest series tells the story of the royal family in the Kingdom of Daventry as they face challenges and go on journeys. The story spans two generations and takes place in many places as the heroes and heroines battle villains like evil witches and wizards.

Games

• Wizard and the Princess (1980) / Adventure in Serenia (1982)
• King's Quest (PC, 1984) / King's Quest: Quest for the Crown (1984/1987) / King's Quest: Quest for the Crown (Sega Master System, 1989) / King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown (1990)
• King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne (1985/1987)
• King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human (1986)
• King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella (1988 – enhanced Sierra's Creative Interpreter)
• King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (1990) / King's Quest V (NES, 1992)
• King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992)
• King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (1994)
• King's Quest: Mask of Eternity (also called King's Quest VIII: Mask of Eternity) (1998)
• King's Quest, a new version in episodes by The Odd Gentlemen (2015–2016)

Original series

The world of King's Quest includes many kingdoms and magical places. The main characters are King Graham, who became king of Daventry after completing quests, and his family: Queen Valanice, his wife, and his twin children, Prince Alexander and Princess Rosella. An exception is King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, where the main character is Connor of Daventry, a tanner and knight who is not related to the royal family. Later games in the series have more detailed stories, harder puzzles, and better-developed characters.

Technologically, the series was the first to use animation and 3D-like environments in graphic adventure games. For example, players could walk behind objects on the screen. To solve puzzles and move forward in the game, characters often use items they find and keep in their inventory. Other puzzles involve mapping difficult places like labyrinths or deserts, solving riddles, or using logic and creative thinking. Players are encouraged to use all their senses—look, listen, smell, taste, or touch—to gather clues.

The name "King's Quest" comes from the series' focus on quests that often involve becoming a king or helping members of the Daventry royal family save their kingdom. These quests are usually given through a magic mirror, which appears in many games.

In King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown, young knight Sir Graham is sent by the dying King Edward to destroy the witch Dahlia and find three treasures to become king. In King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne, King Graham uses the magic mirror to learn that Queen Valanice has been captured by the witch Hagatha in Kolyma.

Later games like King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human and King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella feature new characters who save the kingdom. In King's Quest III, Gwydion, a peasant, discovers he is Prince Alexander, the lost son of King Graham and Queen Valanice. In King's Quest IV, Princess Rosella saves her father, King Graham, from a dragon and later travels to the fairy land of Tamir to cure him.

King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! returns to King Graham as he tries to rescue his family and kingdom from Mordack, an evil magician. This game is the first without the magic mirror.

King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow follows Prince Alexander as he tries to save his love and become king of the Land of the Green Isles. The magic mirror helps him find the kingdom.

King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride is the only game not involving King Graham, Castle Daventry, or the magic mirror. Instead, Queen Valanice and Princess Rosella save the realm of Eldritch from the witch Malicia. Rosella also meets Prince Edgar, who may become her future husband.

King's Quest: Mask of Eternity is similar to King's Quest I, with a young knight saving King Graham, Queen Valanice, and Daventry from danger. The magic mirror again plays a key role in showing the kingdom's troubles.

Many parts of King's Quest were inspired by fairy tales, especially those in Andrew Lang's Fairy Books. The games include creatures, characters, and situations from myths, folklore, and classic stories. Some puzzles are based on these tales, giving players who know the stories an advantage.

The idea for King's Quest came from an earlier game called Wizard and the Princess (Adventure in Serenia). This game followed an unnamed hero, later called a time traveler from the future. The connection to King's Quest made it part of trivia questions. The fifth King's Quest game returned to Serenia, the land first seen in Wizard and the Princess. The King's Quest Companion book explained how people from the real world visited Daventry, blending history and myths into the games. Most games are set "a long time ago," a few centuries in the past.

Many Sierra games included jokes, references, or characters from King's Quest. For example, Cedric from King's Quest V appeared in other games as a joke target. Rosella and Graham were also mentioned or appeared in other Sierra titles.

Over the years, the King's Quest games were released in collections with bonus material:

• King's Quest 15th Anniversary Collector's Edition (1994): Includes games from KQI to KQVI, plus King's Questions, Graham's Board Game Challenge, and concept art.
• King's Quest Collection (1995): Adds more bonus material and a demo of KQVII.
• Roberta Williams Anthology (1996): Includes King's Quest I–VII, Wizard and the Princess, and other Sierra games.
• King's Quest Collection Series (1997): Features more games and bonus content.
• King's Quest MASK/Collection Bundle (1998): Released with King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, including the game and earlier collections.

Cancelled games

In 1990, the developers at Sierra made changes to King's Quest by adding a new design and using better technology. They planned to remake King's Quest II and King's Quest III, but after the 1990 remake of King's Quest I sold poorly, the idea of remaking the other games was stopped.

Between September 1996 and January 21, 1997, because of complaints about the content in King's Quest: Mask of Eternity and Phantasmagoria by Davidson & Associates, a group of managers was placed above Roberta Williams. They started working on their own version of KQVIII while ignoring her version. Their version removed combat, violence, and possibly religious themes. At the same time, Williams continued working on her own ideas, including her own story and puzzles. The Davidson team created their own story and puzzles for their version of KQVIII. Davidson's involvement ended when they left the company in January 1997, and Williams regained control. However, this caused problems for her version of the game, as it lost time and money and faced other technical issues from the Dynamix engine and other problems.

There have been several attempts to make a ninth game in the King's Quest series, but all of them were canceled before production began. None of the three development attempts went past the idea or announcement stage, and they did not receive official names. These attempts were described as the next game in the "King's Quest" series in released information. The names "King's Quest 9" or "King's Quest IX" are unofficial terms used by the media to refer to the next game in the series. The idea of a ninth game was discussed with Roberta Williams after the release of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity.

The Prima's Official Strategy Guide for King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, written by Rick Barba, mentioned King's Quest IX as the next game in the series if a new one was made. Roberta Williams shared some ideas for a King's Quest IX between 1998 and 1999, but her version was never developed. Since then, the ninth game has been in development four times, with three different companies: Vivendi Games, Silicon Knights, and Telltale Games, between 2001 and 2013. The series was later rebooted by The Odd Gentlemen in 2015.

After the release of King's Quest VIII (Mask of Eternity), Roberta Williams sometimes talked about ideas for a follow-up game or changes she would have liked to include. She did not share many details about the next game, and the project was never started or canceled.

During the production of King's Quest VIII, it was decided that Graham was too old to go on adventures, and Alexander was less likely to go on adventures because he now had his own responsibilities as king of the Green Isles. This led Roberta to introduce a new character, Connor, who could have influenced future games if she had had the chance to develop them. Rosella was still a possibility for future games, and Williams suggested that Connor might meet her. This idea grew to include the possibility of a love triangle between Connor, Rosella, and Edgar (from King's Quest IV and King's Quest VII). She also had ideas to add multiplayer features as early as the development of King's Quest VIII, but these were cut and she hoped to include them in future games. Some ideas included a massive multiplayer online (MMO) game where players could collect and share items to solve puzzles or fight monsters together.

Vivendi Games (under the Sierra branding) worked on a ninth game between 2001 and 2002, but it was canceled before production began. The game never passed the prototype stage, and images of two designs for the playable character were leaked. The designs showed an older, bearded King Graham with a giant sword, wearing armor, and able to flip in the air, suggesting it might have been a third-person action-adventure game, similar to the 3D Legend of Zelda games. This, like later attempts, was described as a new King's Quest, not necessarily King's Quest IX, even though the media referred to it as King's Quest 9.

Silicon Knights worked on a prototype for a King's Quest game before Telltale Games acquired the rights. This information was shared publicly through documents from a lawsuit between Silicon Knights and Epic Games.

Telltale Games announced their plan for a ninth King's Quest game at a press event on February 17, 2011. They signed an agreement with Activision, then the owner of the rights to the classic Sierra On-Line adventure series, to create new episodic games based on those series. The first series they planned to work on was King's Quest. Development did not progress far, and the game never received an official name beyond referencing the franchise.

Telltale intended to follow the format of their previous games, like Tales of Monkey Island, by continuing the series with new episodic games and multiple series. They aimed to keep the story of King's Quest consistent with the established canon and include the challenge and possibility of death from the original games, but they planned to make the gameplay less frustrating.

Telltale asked Roberta Williams, the creator of the series and a designer on all the original games, if she would help with the new project. She declined, saying she had retired from making games, but she offered advice that was described as "very valuable" by developer Dave Grossman. In May 2012, Dan Connors confirmed that Dave Grossman was in charge of the King's Quest project, and Telltale was working on how to proceed. The project was canceled in April 2013 by Telltale's senior vice president of publishing, Steve Allison.

Fan-created games

Many fans have created their own versions of King's Quest, including new games and retellings of the original ones. These games have been made by different developers. Mike and Matt Chapman, who are known for creating the Homestar Runner cartoon series and games, developed a game called Peasant's Quest. This game is mostly based on King's Quest I but includes references throughout the game to other games in the series, such as King's Quest II, King's Quest III, King's Quest IV, and The Black Cauldron.

Reception and legacy

King's Quest had a big influence on its type of games, shaping the style and look of early graphic adventure games like Maniac Mansion and other LucasArts games. The first King's Quest game used a type of 3D gameplay that was considered groundbreaking and became common for graphic adventure games. It was the first in its genre to let players move their character around objects on the screen from a third-person view. It was also the first computer game to support 16-color EGA graphics. Even though the PCjr, the system where King's Quest was originally developed as a technical showcase by IBM, did not sell well, the game was later released on many other systems and quickly became a top-selling title.

The King's Quest series became known for its unique stories and for pushing the limits of technology and graphics with each new game. King's Quest III had twice as much content as its first two games and in 2006 was listed on Time's list of the 50 Best Video Games of All Time. King's Quest IV was among the first games to support sound cards, the first adventure games to use a mouse, and the first to feature a female main character. It became even more successful commercially despite some doubts about whether male players would accept playing as a female character. The series continued to innovate with King's Quest V, which introduced an icon-based interface. This game received praise from critics and won several awards, including a spot on Computer Gaming World's 1996 list of the greatest games of all time. King's Quest VI was praised as one of the best adventure games or even video games overall.

In 1996, Next Generation ranked the King's Quest series as number 79 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time," noting that the series' humor, storytelling, and classic puzzles made it one of the most consistently high-quality game series in computer gaming history.

By 1994, the King's Quest series had sold 2.5 million copies, making it the best-selling computer game series at that time. According to Sierra, total sales of the series reached 3.8 million units by March 1996. By 1997, the series had sold 7 million copies.

King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, which included action elements and used real-time 3D gameplay, did not do well in sales or reviews. In 1998, after declining sales under new management by CUC International, Sierra was sold to Vivendi.

By 1993, Roberta Williams was seen as the most popular game designer at Sierra, known for creating the King's Quest series. The franchise is noted as one of the few major video game series created and maintained almost entirely by a female designer.