Fan remake of King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella Retold is out

June 23, 2021, 23:24 Evgenia Germanova

Longtime fan of classic Sierra quests and folk craftsman Arseny Kondratenko (DrSlash), who once started as a beta tester for Team VSB (which gave us the somewhat garish remake Space Quest II: Vohaul Strikes Back, see link), in early May pleased us with the release of a conceptual improvement of the fourth part of the "king" series - King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella Retold with the addition of full-fledged mouse play.

This variation is made on the Adventure Game Studio (AGS) engine and completely repeats the script of the original game with the original EGA design. Only now, using the mouse to not only move, but also to perform all game operations. It completely removes the secondary language barrier, that is, the need to type grammatically correct commands from the keyboard in English. Yes, and even guess from the fabulous context, what variant of the verb they want from you. Of course, this approach somewhat simplifies the game, but makes it much more accessible to new players and non-native speakers.

Right-click to choose one of four actions: move (man), inspect (eye), use (hand), or talk (head). Pressing the left button sends Rosella to perform this action. By the way, moving with the keyboard is also possible.

The adventure begins where the third part ended - King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human. King Graham passes the adventurer's hat to his children and falls to his death from a heart attack. On her father's deathbed, his daughter, Princess Rosella, flees in tears to the throne room, where she receives a magical message through a mirror. Now it's up to her to find a rare fruit to cure the king and at the same time save the distant Tamir from the evil sorceress Lolotte.

According to player reviews, this adaptation of the KQ classics turned out to the glory! Taken only the best of the different ports of the game: the music for the Roland MT-32, sound effects from the Apple IIGS and ambient sounds from the Amiga-release. Also, additional animation footage from the earliest PC versions. The author claims that the entire plot, lyrics, and puzzles are completely consistent with the original. It seems that only the character names in the dialogue titles are missing, looking superfluous, because they are constantly mentioned in the text as it is.

And those lucky ones who missed this game in their time have a great opportunity to catch up and immerse themselves in the amazing fairy tale adventures (and horrors, yes, yes) of Princess Rosella.

And there's one more innovation. When you start the game, you'll be asked if you want the game to be timed so you can't die or lose. And even if you choose the safe option, they'll specify that you'll still have to try to get the best ending. So go ahead and sing along!

Download King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella Retold available on the AGS website. Versions are available for all major operating systems - Windows, Linux and MacOS.

The game's video is not available on the web yet, so you can watch the intro video of another (unfinished) VGA version of the fourth part and compare with screenshots from this adaptation:

And this is the trailer of that very Space Quest II remake (2011) from Team VSB:

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)