HELLO I don’t know anything about King’s Quest! I’ve never even heard of it before. What’s it like, and how did it inspire your work?
Hello! Thanks for asking! This is going to be a bit of a long answer, so apologies in advance for the long post. XD
King's Quest is a fantasy game series by Sierra Entertainment, and the original series is made of 8 games (plus a reimagining of the same name that was released in 2015), all going in chronological order if I'm not mistaken. Depending on which game in the series you played, it involved a combo of point-and-click and typing in commands and/or just point-and-click to solve puzzles, complete tasks, and get past enemies to achieve some overall goal (often defeating a Big Bad at the end for story reasons).
Also, if you die (and there are MANY ways to die, ranging from nightmare fuel to straight-up hilarious), the narrator will make fun of your death. Literally. Just search up a compilation of deaths from one of the King's Quest games on Youtube and you'll get what I mean.
This franchise also has three books that are very hard to find used copies of nowadays, but I discovered that someone scanned them and shared files of those scanned copies on Reddit if you want to read those (I also have plans to read them and writing book reviews for each of them this year). Said books take place inbetween certain games, though, so be careful of spoilers.
As for my personal experience, I grew up playing King's Quest V in particular on the computer, mistook the title of it to just be "Sierra," and then I literally spent DECADES trying to find the game series again and only re-discovered it last year! It's now available through platforms like GOG.com and Steam for you to purchase and play for yourself.
The thing about King’s Quest, and I’ve mentioned it before, is that EVERY ITEM in each game is always useful for something. It might be an immediate task you find shortly after you find the item, or it might be much later in the game. If you forget to grab an item, or use the wrong item at the wrong time and realize later on that you actually needed it for a future task (some items are used unconventionally which doesn’t help, like using a pie to get rid of a Yeti in King’s Quest V), then you’re stuck. Walkthroughs exist for most if not all the games online to prevent this nowadays, but it’s still easy to screw up something and have to restart from an earlier save point.
I thought about this for a while, while replaying the games, realized that there weren’t really any fantasy novels I’d read that played with that element, and it led me to think: Why don’t I just try writing a novel inspired by King’s Quest? My goal is to capture the tone of the game (it’s a mix of lighthearted and darker moments, honestly) in its writing, but also add in the challenge of every item the main characters use HAS to be useful, even if used in an unconventional way. It’s been super fun writing this novel so far for sure!
