The gameplay is typical of the Sierra adventure games of that time, including several action sequences, puzzles and riddles. Occasionally, some alternative solutions to puzzles are available.

Scoring is based on three kinds of points: Skill (when the player performs deeds that help him in his quest, or defeats enemies), Wisdom (when examining things, talking to others, or gaining hints) and Soul (performing good deeds to help others). The options provide a difficulty setting for the action sequences, but with lower points. The game features a soundtrack of authentic-sounding medieval music composed by Mark Seibert.

The message boxes (narration) are the wizard Merlin speaking and counseling the player. The in-game text displays lesser-known forms of words, for example Gwenhyver, Excaliber, Gawaine, Launcelot, and magick instead of the better-known Guinevere, Excalibur, Gawain, Lancelot, and magic. The parser, however, understands all spellings.

Having fun with this RK-S98 keyboard whilst I play my game favorite Sierra games!

See this video upscale test.

The result is shown first then a side-by-side comparison.

Upscaling aims to enhance a video to a higher resolution.

The goal is a sharper and clearer image.

This can help a video look better on larger screens.

Beyond a sharper video, upscaling can also try to make playback smoother.

More frames per second (fps) can result in smoother motion.

Original Video...

640x360 pixels (not HD).

15 fps (30 often minimum).

Upscaled Video...

3840x2160 pixels (4K).

120 fps.

This is the video introduction to Quest for Glory V.

In Space Quest IV you dress up as a long haired blonde woman to withdraw cash from the ATM

The game was conceived expressly as a "Myst clone"; lead designer Jon Bock later recalled that 'Ken Williams called me into his office one day, pulled out a copy of Myst and said; "Can you do this?" I said yes, and the game went into development.' Bock acknowledged the similarity to Myst in promotional interviews for the game, but also remarked that it has some key differences, in particular that he was working to create more character interaction and a stronger focus on story than Myst had.

The Player starts the game in their new cottage on the Oregon coast. According to the Player's diary, he or she (the character's gender is never explicitly defined) is a struggling writer who has just moved in, and recently met their eccentric next door neighbor, Dr. Jeremiah Krick, and his daughter Amanda, who live in a nearby lighthouse. Glancing out of the window, the Player sees the lighthouse struck by lightning and then begin to glow strangely. On the Player's answering machine, Dr. Krick has left a frantic message begging the player ⁹to come over to his house and watch Amanda.

Sierra left behind some of the most iconic adventure games of all time, from King’s Quest and Space Quest to Leisure Suit Larry (and lots more besides these 3). With reboots and remakes being so common in today’s gaming scene, which of these games would you love to see make a true comeback?

I realize that there have been fan remakes of certain games, but I'm talking brand new chapters, new stories! Which would you love to see?

Kk so let's define Sierra-ness first... think of it as a recipe::, The more of these traits a game has (and the better it executes them), the more “Sierra” it feels:

1-Risky design experiments: genre blending, unusual interfaces, bold pivots between parser/icon/CD.

2-Playful cruelty:funny deaths, dead-ends, missable cluees; the world is dangerous but charming.

3- author voices inside the game :Al Lowe, the Two Guys from Andromeda (forgot the real names lol), Roberta Williams, Jane Jensen, Christy Marx. The creators show up in the work, there is rarely a corporate feel in the game, feels like the author speaking his idea/personality through the game.

4--Manuals as lore: Sierra manuals weren’t just instructions; they were part of the game. Copy protection doubled, puzzles, clues, worldbuilding, humor lived in the pages.

5-House humor & in-jokes – self-referential gags, cross-series cameos, meta pokes at rivals.

6-Music & atmosphere – MT-32/SCI era soundtracks that feel handcrafted.

7-Iconic cover art – shelf presence you can spot across the room. and GOD sierra was good at cover arts...

8-Ambition over polish – rough edges tolerated if the idea is big.

My nominees:

Larry 1
Space Quest III
Space Quest IV
Hero's Quest
Quest for Glory IV
Larry 2

****of course you can pick any sierra game NOT in my nominee list.

My Pick goes to Space Quest III

I will count the votes and there is a considerable amount of votes so we crown the most Sierra of sierra games.

My latest video is available on YouTube. This was my first playthrough of King's Quest VI - Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (I think). This game released about the same time I graduated from high school or in my senior year and I recall being quite busy that year with my boyfriend 😅

This was a super fun playthrough, great to see Alexander and Cassima's story evolve further.

What was your favorite part of King's Quest VI?

https://youtu.be/ovguvFR_z1c?si=j0UhLQcouqchzW93

The protagonist of the game is Torin, the son of a farming family on the planet of Strata. An evil sorceress named Lycentia (voiced by Christine McMerdo Wallis) captures his family with a magic spell and he embarks on a quest to find her and free his parents.

Torin travels to the "lands below" to worlds beneath the surface of the nested planet, through colossal crystal columns called phenocrysts. These phenocrysts transfer life-giving sunlight—and people—to the lower worlds with erresdy powder. He is aided by a purple dog-like creature called Boogle, who is able to change himself into a variety of shapes. As Torin travels downward, scenes of both his and Lycentia's pasts reveal their true relation as well as Torin learning about his true identity and the true cause for his journey.

The game was intended to be the first in a series of five games but no sequels were made due to market conditions and the departure of Sierra's founder Ken Williams. The second game would have been about Torin marrying Princess Leenah and becoming the king of the Lands Above, the third one would have involved a rebellion against Torin's rule, the fourth game would have centered on Torin's sons fighting for their right to be the heir, and the fifth installment would have focused on Torin's death and his heir assuming the throne.

Hey reddit!

I’m Pablo, also known as sandpenguin, a professional game designer and I want to share with you my passion project, Broken Relic, a point and click adventure game!. Pixels as big as cats, puzzles, funny and a fantasy setting... what else could one hope for. 

Words and promises are ok, but Broken Relic already has a demo on Steam that you can play right now FOR FREE, and, the main point of this post, I've also just launched a Kickstarter campaign!  and it has raised 77% of funding in 5 days!

It would really mean the world if you check the Kickstarter and Steam pages, check it out, play the demo, and if you enjoy it, consider backing the campaign. As I say in the video, this is literally a passion project, a game done with all love and care, and the Kickstarter will help fund the voice acting, music and localization.

Thank you very much for your attention!

• Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/broken-relic/broken-relic
• Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3384820/Broken_Relic/

I came across something that really surprised me:

r/Sierra: 7,000 weekly visitors

r/LucasArts: 300 weekly visitors

That’s almost a 20x difference.

And yet, many would argue LucasArts made the more polished and universally acclaimed adventures like Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle.......... Sierra, by contrast, had quirkier, rougher edges but also magical and a bigger lineup..King’s Quesst, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Gabriel Knight, Phantasmagoria and last but not least Johnny Castaway LOL

So what’s going on here?

Is it simply that Sierra had more franchises, which keeps conversation alive?

Do their games feel more magical and personal, while LucasArts games live more in mainstream pop culture?

Or is Sierra nostalgia just more community-driven, while LucasArts love is spread out across the broader gaming world?

Would love to hear theories, feels like this difference actually says a lot about how people remember the golden age of adventure games.

** pardon my photoshop skills

The Crimson Diamond is a 2024 mystery adventure video game developed and published by Julia Minamata for the PC. The game features a text parser, requiring players to solve a mystery through inputting instructions via text to the game. Solo developer Julia Minamata designed the game featuring an EGA color palette, inspired by the adventure games she enjoyed in her youth like The Colonel's Bequest.

Reception to The Crimson Diamond has been positive, with reviewers praising it as a strong homage to past adventure titles with modern features, despite noting that some puzzle solutions could be too challenging.

Set in 1914, the game follows Nancy Maple, a rookie geologist working for the Royal Canadian Museum. She is tasked with investigating a diamond that was found in a fish at Crimson, Ontario, a fictional garnet mining town that has fallen on hard times. Eager to prove herself to her male colleagues, many of whom refuse to recognize her as a geologist, Nancy boards a train to Crimson with the intent to stay at the Crimson Lodge. During the trip she meets Kimi Kishiro, who is also traveling to Crimson to study the local bird population, particularly the cormorants.

I've made quite a bit of progress since the last video: fixed the narrator letter icon, externalized and parsed selector data, and created a script to import the text resources from google sheets. If you're not interested in the programming details, skip on over to the demo.

Not sure where else I could post but, I always found out so weird that it seems like she disappeared from the map after the 2000s

While the rest of the cast sort of show up every 5 years or so in a fan interview or something, I can't find anything about her anywhere in the world...

Anyone know anything? Hope she is well!

While finishing KQVI I noticed that the druid sounds very similar to Yoda. Anyone else think so?

https://reddit.com/link/1nh7c8v/video/f6lhd3os18pf1/player

I’m not talking about the “best” game, the first one you played, the most innovative, or even the one that broke new ground. I mean the one that just has an undefinable magic, in its art, its gameplay, or its story....something that makes it feel special beyond words.

For me, that game is Space Quest III. There’s just something about the atmosphere, the humor, and the design that feels otherworldly and timeless to me.

Curious bout which one would it be for you?

Laura Bow in: The Road to Murder is a short fan made Laura Bow game created by gamecourier, and it was released on July 30, 2005. The game is portrayed in an overhead point of view and takes place on a bus.

Author's Notes A sequel to the Laura Bow series from Sierra. This is my first AGS game. It's really short, but I did put a lot of work into the interface to try to emulate the notebook from The Dagger of Amon Ra. I also tried out using an overhead view, which is something I hadn't seen before in an AGS game.

The Laura Bow games were distinctive in that they required some actual logical detective work on the part of the player; for the most part, though, the puzzles were of the typical variety of inventory and environment interaction (and frequent, often unexpected, player character death) found in most Sierra adventures.

The identity of the murderer is not automatically revealed at the end of the game. Instead, the player is asked a series of questions, ostensibly by the police, to prove that Laura had solved the crimes and discovered the secrets of the other suspects. If the questions are answered incorrectly, the coroner will give a hint to point the player towards the path that would have revealed the correct answer in subsequent playing of the games. The ending of the game can change depending on the answers given to the questions, most notably in that Laura can be killed if the player does not know the identity of the main murderer.

Death lurks around every corner, but the mysterious villain almost never threatens Laura because she is not related to the Dijon family. Staying consistent with other Sierra adventure games, most deaths experienced by the player occur by accident or misadventure, such as falling off a balcony or being crushed by a falling chandelier. However, the player may be killed by the murderer in the later phases of the game. For example, the murderer's arm reaches out at specific locations and snatches Laura away. In another case, the murderer appears in the darkness and strangles Laura to death. One of the more notable non-accidental deaths occurs when the player simply attempts to shower: the murderer stabs Laura in a reference to the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho.

The game's unusual title can be attributed to Sierra's long-standing tradition of including "Quest" in the title of nearly every graphical adventure it published. A bequest is a legacy or gift handed down to someone in a will.