Tuesday 1 October 2024

Game 156: The Legend of Kyrandia, Book Two: The Hand of Fate (1993) - Introduction

Written by Michael



Way back when, in 1992, Westwood Studios tried something a little different.  They had been known as competent designers of games, in all sorts of genres, but they hadn’t really had a big hit yet, and they were only ever credited as a designer while another company’s logo graced the box.  But their acquisition by Virgin Entertainment opened a door for them.  Now, they were able to distribute and market their own games.  And their debut adventure title was a beaut.  


This scene looked even more gorgeous on my 15” ViewSonic CRT monitor, if that can be believed.


Game designers Michael Legg and Brett Sperry had discovered a fun MUD to play online called Kyrandia  They bought the rights, took the walkthrough, and added characters with personality and quirks to the puzzles.  


Wait, has that ever happened before (ahem, Softporn, ahem)?


They developed a high-level graphical adventure game.  The screenshots in the magazine reviews and ads were breathtaking.  And because of it being released around the same time as King’s Quest 6, some connections were either made or imagined, especially in the eyes of the reviewers at the time.  Even the main character, Brandon, gave off a little bit of the entitled prince vibe from Alexander.


The game did well enough; not Sierra or LucasArts numbers, mind you, but healthy sales figures nonetheless.  It had some flaws, but was better than a lot of the third-party stuff out there.  A maze.  Limited inventory (and puzzles that required more inventory space). A couple of potential (but arguably fair) dead-ends.  More importantly, it did well enough that the new corporate owners gave the green light for the sequel. 


Meet the protagonist of our second game, as we met her in the first.


So, what’s to expect in this sequel?  Well, it seems that the land of Kyrandia is disappearing around us, piece by piece, rock by rock. We’re playing a young mystic that needs to mix potions and cast spells, and deal with characters whose moods can change based on our actions.  That’s all according to the back of the box, along with notes about the state-of-the-art lighting system and lots of humor.


What we learn from elsewhere is perhaps more important.  According to sources I scanned (trying not to be spoiled), it seems there’s no dead-ends and there are some alternate solutions to puzzles.


So, now to me.  It’s been a long, long time since I’ve played this.  Every time I intend to replay the whole series from over 25 years ago, I get into the first game, and then get sidetracked before I get to this one.  I remember very little about the game, except needing to mix potions of different colors, and that we’re going to see a big giant hand at some point (you could say, it’s our... fate).


By this time, I had completely stopped buying games on floppy, so I’ll be playing the CD-ROM copy that I’ve owned for nearly three decades (and still works great).  Like many of the CDs I had at the time, this one has traveled with me from my upstate New York childhood home, to school in southern California, to various places I’ve lived in the mid-Atlantic before returning to the town I grew up in.  Thank you, handy three-ring binder full of discs.


Sorry, Sierra.  This is WAY too many damn floppies.  Very effective form of copy protection -- give the thief carpal tunnel.


Going without floppies?  Well, not completely.  That would be too scary.  I still played shareware titles and still engaged with a little old school “sneakernet”, but by this time, the BBS was my domain (and a little, tiny bit of “Internet” with a capital I that I started to have access to, through a BBS gateway.)


So, without more delay (I could tell stories all day, you know), let’s check out the game.  I’ll be playing this in DOSBox, with my real, true-life MT-32 by my side.  Two reasons -- first is authenticity, the second is that, in ScummVM, every time I took a screenshot, it cleared all the text off the screen. Grrr.  As for DOSBox, you can’t enable subtitles until you’re playing the game, and the game doesn’t save that setting with your progress.



After learning the game was made by Westwood and Virgin, we’re presented by a giant gloved hand, presumably “The Hand of Fate”.  After the first time you’ve viewed the introduction, relaunching the game provides some choices here to view the introduction, start a new game, or load a saved game.  



The story we’re told: the land of Kyrandia is disappearing, tree by tree, rock by rock.  The mystics are baffled.  Remember them from the first game?  People like Kallak, who got himself turned to stone last time, and a newcomer, Marco, who brought a big giant hand with him.  


Hey, look, it’s Darm and his dragon!

Are they witches?  They all have their animal familiars.  A dragon, a giant hand, and, um, whatever type of marsupial Faun is.


Marco’s giant inflated glove apparently has some expertise with these situations, and tells us about an “anchor stone” that needs to be retrieved from the middle of the earth.



The youngest mystic, Zanthia, drew the shortest straw and was given the task.



And after the meeting, outside her office, she makes a plan, with her animal sidekick, Faun.  She says she has enough blueberries to get where she needs to go.  And then walks inside her laboratory...



...and finds it’s been ransacked.


If we stand still for more than a few seconds, she occasionally bursts out with whining about “Who would do this?” and “Who could be mad at me?”


But now, we have control.  Let’s check out the place.


First off, this has the same interface as the previous game, a one click system.  Click to look at something, and if it’s not nailed down, that click picks it up.  Click an item somewhere to either use it or drop it.  Click others to talk with them.


A notable change from last game, though -- it looks like we have space for more than ten items.  There’s a wheel to rotate the inventory, with space now for 20.  The big empty space on the screen next to the inventory, according to the manual, is for our spellbook and cauldron.


The original promo images for the game were mixed between the old inventory interface and the new rotating shelf one.  I suspect the playtesters started screaming at the designers, chasing them with pitchforks and torches, after playing the first game in the series.


As for talking?  Hey, Faun?  “At least they left my things alone.”  


Click on the broken mirror?  “Looks like my seven years bad luck has already started.”


Most everything worth clicking on either elicits a response, or in the case of a couple of items, can be picked up.  I take a flask and a bunch of blueberries.



After checking out the carnage, I head for the door.  Zanthia stops and insists on changing her outfit,
Barbara Eden style.


Actually, I wouldn't mind living here, but the dampness would wreak havoc on my allergies.


And outside the lab, there’s more blueberries.  And an
incredible track from teenage composer Frank Klepacki.  And to think, this is his rookie stuff, years before the Command & Conquer soundtrack

This seems like a good place to pause.  I’m opening up the sports book for some wagers on the score, and I think you’ll like the odds. The first game in the series scored a very healthy 62, how will this one do?


Session Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 5 minutes



24 comments:

  1. oh yeah, the best Kyrandia. I have a great love for the first one, as you already know from my huge comments when that was played around 6 or 7 years ago. I still think like the first one more than this one, but everyone knows they found their style with this entry (and lost it again in the 3rd one)

    Amazingly, and I think never repeated in the whole history of videogames, they composer was 18 years old when he composed this (and 17 on the first Kyrandia !!!)

    I talked in another post, how I was stuck for years in a very specific puzzle from this game in location 3, I will tell the story again when the time comes of course.

    Best decision they made in this game so far: having Zanthia as the main character, she is probably the most interesting character from the first game, maybe also Brandiwyne and Malcolm himself.

    I had tons of issues with this game back in the day. I first got the floppy version from a friend at school, I think it was 8 disks (or 9), that one worked. But after formatting the drive or a crash, I lost the game, so I got a CD OEM version (very popular around here) with the cover of the first screenshot here, of Zanthia climbing away from Kyrandia. That cd never worked, I can't remember why but it constantly crashed after the intro.

    After a year, I bought a compilation pack, that included the whole trilogy (and it was my first time with the voiced games). Also, not being very proficient with english was a tremendous problem with this specific game, you will know when you start with the potions.

    I will guess a 74.

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    Replies
    1. this is me btw, sorry about anonymous

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    2. Zanthia is a good choice, and while in the first few screens she is kind of whiny, that disappears soon later and she's a competent player, with a little bit of wit.

      You might have noticed, I also commented on Frank Klepacki's age at the bottom of this post, but rather quickly. It certainly didn't happen in any other AAA-titles of the time, although I'm sure some amateurs did some work on smaller titles. Not much data on that. Hey, the first game I played for the blog was written by a 14-year-old! And it was pretty decent, too.

      I purposely chose the CD version's box art for this post, because the original US release was just plain UGLY and had nothing to do with the game at all.

      From an Adventure Gamers' interview with one of the designers: "HOF only did half the sales of the first title. Not a surprise, considering the cryptic ads which forgot to mention the title of the game, and the famous "nuclear explosion" box in the US release. I'm not sure what a nuclear explosion has to do with a medieval comedy game..."

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    3. Frank Klepacki is amazing. I think to this day the original Command & Conquer still has my favourite game soundtrack. The boxed version of the game I got in the '90s came with it on CD and I grew up treating it like an album.

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  2. Don't think this one was posted yet. A whole bunch of Myst and Myst-related games in a Humble Bundle:

    https://www.humblebundle.com/games/enter-mysterium

    ReplyDelete
  3. "whatever type of marsupial Faun is."

    Huh? A faun (otherwise known as a satyr) is a half-man half-goat creature from Roman mythology. The faun in the game (btw the same one that stole the chalice in the first game) is depicted as far too small for some reason; the size of a typical adult faun would be somewhere between an adult human and an adult goat, and even if you assume he's a child, he'd pretty much have to be a toddler who can at best speak a few separate words, not complete sentences. Also the fact that his individual name is the same as the name of his species is more than a bit silly. Anyway, since he's half human, calling him "an animal" seems quite insulting.

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  4. This is one of my favourites adventures, and I think it stands alongside the best point & clicks released in the 1990s. That said, I haven't played it for many years but will very happily play along here.

    I'll guess 69.

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  5. I played this maybe 10 or 15 years ago, and remember it being better in a lot of ways to the first game. Shame it only sold half as many copies! the inventory improvement alone was worth it.

    I'll guess pretty high, cos I think it was pretty good: 73

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  6. No real idea about this one or the last one, so I'll guess 60.

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  7. I was going to bet 68 or 69, but since those numbers are taken, let's go with 67 cause I don't think it deserved to reach the 70s territory.

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  8. I concur that this is the best Kyrandia game, though despite what the intro says, I did encounter a dead-end in one playthrough. Fortunately, it happened early in the game.
    Anyway, since it isn't taken yet, I'm guessing as high as 78.

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    Replies
    1. ah that would be interesting to see, I was under the impression there were no dead ends on this game, but you can probably screw up with the cauldron

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    2. The ingredients usually respawn, I'm interested in what the dead end is.

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    3. Myself too, because I couldn't find anything in the first section. Nyy gur vaterqvragf frrz gb erfcnja vs arrqrq, yvxr Ynhxxh fnvq, naq V whfg erfgberq onpx naq gevrq gb qrfgebl gur yrggref (V pbhyqa'g), so honestly I'm lost as to what it could be.

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    4. there is one which you can destroy but not in part 1: sylvat fubrf cbgvba ohg vg'f bcgvbany.

      afaik, and after research, there's no way to get a dead end at all

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  9. I'll shoot for 75, and knowing Klepacki did the soundtrack means I will go and give it a listen. I still have the original CnC soundtrack on my regular playlist.

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  10. Well well well is this game good or what? (Yes it is.)
    I'll guess 71 since all other numbers that I wanted to guess are taken.

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  11. Played Zanthia's adventure well past my childhood and any socionormative markers of maturity, simply because it made a magical, idealistic impression on my child-self with vibrant fantasy imagery and really catchy tunes (I kept Darkmoor Swamp in first midi then mp3 formats on my old media players...) For me the game's a gem.80

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