Genre: Casual Adventure
Release date: October 25, 2016

The fifth episode of the new King’s Quest is out, coming about a month after Chapter 4.  I have to say I’m impressed by how quickly the game was released, after having to wait 3-6 months between previous releases. The new King’s Quest is framed with old Graham telling stories to his granddaughter Gwendolyn.  

Chapter 5 highlights on Graham’s failing memories, with Gwendolyn helping to fill in the gaps. The game feels like walking through the mind of an Alzheimer’s patient, with little details constantly changing. Gwendolyn takes over more of the story as Graham’s health continues to fail. The story chronicles Graham’s final battle with Manny and includes a lot of exploration through the lands of Daventry we’d already seen.

As stated in my reviews of previous chapters, I love the art style of this new King’s Quest. The bulk of the game takes place in the same lands we explored as part of Chapter 1. There isn’t anything new to say that I didn’t cover in reviews of previous chapters.

The voice acting continues to be great. This chapter seems scaled back in terms of the number of characters, focusing primarily on Graham, Gwendolyn, and Manny.

The puzzles of this game touch on all types of adventure puzzles and, collectively, they comprise a really good balance that makes The Good Knight feel more meaty than some of the past chapters. Included are an escape-the-room style puzzle and a fetch quest. There are some logic puzzles and even an entertaining interlude into the art styles of past King’s Quest games. From a gameplay standpoint, this chapter captures the gameplay of classic point-and-click adventure games much better than the previous chapters.  

The game wasn’t without frustration though. In one puzzle I had to open a lock, and I brute forced my way through it. In another puzzle, I struggled due to some confusion when trying to match colors to make a music box play. The choices you make in the earlier episodes seem to have little-to-no relation to the Chapter, other than a few references to Graham the Brave. The dragon doesn’t return in this episode, despite many expecting him to.

The new King’s Quest series is far from perfect, but it does hit a lot of the notes I’d expect from a King’s Quest. The first King’s Quest game came out more than 30 years ago, so I feel a bit vested in the character of Graham, and the developers really pulled on my heart strings for this one. I hope the story will continue.

+ Amazing Graphics + Varied puzzle types makes for interesting gameplay + A heartfelt story