The Legend of Kyrandia is the first of 3 graphic adventure games, succeeded by "Hand of Fate", and "Malcolm's Revenge".
The game eliminated the previously popular method of the player typing what they want to do, to a much more simplified "one-click" control scheme. If you want to take something, you click it. Use something, click it. Talk to someone, click them. The game takes care of the rest. Your inventory is limited to 10 items, which sometimes makes parts of the game difficult, but mostly because there's tons of stuff to pick up that you never need. During the game, you gain 4 magical powers in the form of an amulet that's clickable through your bottom menu. No pesky mana limits here. Just click and cast. While they may look a little blurry now, at the time these graphics were considered top notch and extremely detailed.
In this episode, you are Brandon, fairly generic, fantasy-themed teenager whose world is turned upside down in just a few minutes. Malcolm, a sadistic jester clad in orange and purple, is turning all of his family and friends into stone, and has brought blight to Kyrandia by corrupting the Kyragem, which keeps their kingdom green and fruitful. Brandon is charged with the task of returned life to the Land. He is forced to solve many problems to find the many magical folk who can help him along the way and teach him some of their powers, before they too are turned to stone by Malcolm. His travels take him through the many forests of Kyrandia, to dark catacombs, to underground rivers of fire, to exotic beaches. Sadly, much of the game is spent in the catacomb.
There is no combat or fighting in the game at all. Moving on in the story is always accomplished by solving some kind of problem or riddle another character presents to you. Luckily, few of them get too tedious, but some can be very difficult because of the small amount of info you're actually given. The most time consuming (and sometimes a little repetetive) part of the game is making it through the catacombs. To do this, you have to collect "fireberries" on underground bushes to light your way, which only last up to 2 rooms away. If you don't find the next bush in time, you'll need to guess which direction to go next. Unfortunately, if you go into a dark room with no berries, you meet a quick death to the scary eyes monsters. Remember rule #1 for playing DOS adventure games: Save now, save often. It's not till later in the game that you find a spell that lets you move through the dark rooms without fear.
This brings about a phenomenon that you don't really see in gamers of any type anymore: drawing your own maps and keeping notes of what's going on. Contemporary games all typically have some kind of journal or quest tracking system, and an in-game map you can access at any time, and is automatically drawn for you. When I was young, I remember my brother drawing a very detailed map of an adventure game we were playing, complete with notes and small drawings of monsters and buidlings that were in it. This was without a doubt the most useful thing to have when playing the game. I had to draw a map when going through the catacombs, marking where the berry bushes were, where I had dropped light sources, and where special areas were. I bet a lot of DOS gamers out there have had to do this at some point. I'd love to see other people's maps or drawings (if you have any, send them to retroarcanum@gmail.com).
Legend of Kyrandia is available for download HERE. The game has an old style copy protection that comes up twice during the game. It will ask you to find a page in the manual with a certain picture on it, and then to type the word on a specified line. The manual can be downloaded HERE. When running the game in D-Fend, it will run the video/sound setup every time you load the game, but you don't actually have to do it every time. After the first, just choose the exit option. During the setup, press choice #1 for both video and sound. Don't be ashamed if you get stuck on any of the puzzles in the game or are not sure what to do. There are plenty of walkthroughs out there on the net if you need a hint (feel free to ask me too)
Haven't decided what to play next yet, but will edit this article as soon as I do! Enjoy!
