From Monochrome to Monarchy: The History of King's Quest, Part Three
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Combining anti-piracy protection with gameplay, King's Quest III's manual included the spells that the player seeks to cast in-game. After gathering all ingredients, the player must refer to the game's manual for instructions on how a given spell must be cast. A number of factors, some unintentional, served to keep the game's tension meter high. Players only have so much time to cast spells before the wizard reappears. Spells must be typed exactly as they appear, as typos can result in fatal side effects. Unintentionally, finding the artifacts required for spell-casting caused players more than a bit of frustration: due to the AGI engine's ability to allow players to move in front of and behind backgrounds, certain areas such as a winding staircase were unwittingly difficult to navigate. The ticking clock, combined with the dexterity required to guide Gwydion up and down stairs with the arrow keys, made for far too many accidental deaths.Tracking down ingredients and forumulae, and then concocting spells in the wizard's cellar was brilliant. And fun.
Players weren't only bound to Manannan's estate. AGI, always in the process of being enhanced to keep up with Roberta's imagination, presented players with a game world that was at least twice as large as in any previous King's Quest game. Getting lost was not an issue: the game automatically composed a map to keep track of everywhere the player had been. Likely intended to eliminate the burden of becoming lost--useful, given the oft-used time constraint--automatic map-making made its first and last appearance in King's Quest II, perhaps due to player complaint that automatic map-making made the game too easy in some regards.
After morphing Manannan into a cat, players must find their way from Llewdor and return to Daventry, where they must then save Princess Rosella from her position as the three-headed dragon's main course.
