King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella

Platforms: Amiga, Apple II, Apple IIgs, Atari ST, IBM PC/Compatibles

Genres

Main Genre:
Adventure
Perspective:
3rd-Person
Gameplay Style:
Puzzle Elements
Setting:
Fantasy

Overview

IBM EGA/VGA version of King's Quest IV
IBM EGA/VGA version of King's Quest IV
King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella is an adventure game released by Sierra On-Line in 1988. It is the fourth game in the King's Quest series and the first game in the series to feature a female lead character. The gameplay is similar to other adventure games by Sierra; the player controls the on-screen character and can navigate around the 3D environment. Players can type short sentences to perform actions, pick up or use objects, talk with other characters, and solve puzzles. The game can be saved at any point; Some parts of the game feature dangerous opponents or landscapes so players will need to restore to a previously saved game when they die.

Story

The story of King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella takes place immediately after the ending of King's Quest III: To Heir is Human. King Graham has suffered a heart attack and is likely to die without help. King Graham's daughter, Princess Rosella, is contacted by the fairy Genesta via the magic mirror; Rosella learns of a magic fruit that can help King Graham and must set off on a quest to locate the magic fruit and return with it. Genesta, however, is in a weakened state and will be unable to offer much help to Rosella; the evil witch Lolotte has stolen Genesta's talisman and she could die unless it is returned. As part of her quest Rosella will need to complete three tasks requested by Lolotte in order to eventually be able to retrieve the talisman back. Once the talisman and the magic fruit are retrieved, Genesta can return Rosella to the land of Daventry to save King Graham. Unlike previous King's Quest games, King's Quest IV has a time limit; if the quests aren't completed in 24 hours the king will die and the game ends. During this time the game cycles between day and night; some people only appear during the day or night, and some puzzles can only be solved at certain times.

Versions

Several versions of King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella were released. Initially the game was released for IBM computers in both an SCI (Sierra Creative Interpreter) version and an AGI (Adventure Game Interpreter) version. King's Quest IV is the first game to use Sierra's newer SCI interpreter which allowed higher resolution graphics, stereo sound with sound board support, and limited mouse support. It also required a more powerful computer; the AGI version was released for players with older computers. The AGI version was only available directly from Sierra and did not sell well; it was also the the last of Sierra's adventure games that had a release in both AGI and SCI versions.

In addition, the SCI version later saw an updated release that reduced the number of disks the game shipped on from nine 5.25" disks to eight 5.25" disks (both also shipped on four 3.5" disks). In order to reduce the amount of disk space needed the updated SCI release simplified the detail and complexity of some of the background graphics. Also, the updated release no longer had seperate graphics for the same location in both day and night; instead, the daytime graphics were used with some modifications.

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Game Features

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