Part 1: Welcome to Kolyma

Hello everyone, welcome to King's Quest II. I'm going to leave things in the capable hands of the game's narrator for the intro. So just kick back, relax, and be thankful I didn't include a video. Because the world's most ear splitting pc speaker rendition of Greensleeves is playing over the whole thing.

: Good day! So you want to hear another story about Graham, eh? Did I ever tell you about the time he journeyed to the land of Kolyma in search of a lovely young woman? No? Well in that case, stay a while, and listen...



: Sir Graham is now King of Daventry. Under his wise rule, Daventry is properous. He is loved by his people. Unfortunately, there is a problem. King Graham needs a queen for companionship and to provide an heir to the throne. He has searched high and low for the right maiden, but he remains alone.



: An idea comes to him! He goes to the magic mirror and looks into its depths.



: He sees a vision of a quartz tower. To reach it he must pass through a magic door in the nearby land of Kolyma.



: The scene then changes to show a beautiful girl locked within the tower! Graham now knows what to do.



: Bravely, he sets off to find the land of Kolyma and the beautiful maiden.



This is most likely y'alls first look at the classic AGI interface. Graham has an unfortunate case of jaundice, or secretly lives in Springfield. I'm not sure which is more likely. The AGI engine has a text parser constantly at the bottom of the screen.



There's also a menu up top if you hit Escape.

The Sierra menu shows you "About KQ2" and "Help". About tells you that "King's Quest ][ was Designed by Roberta Williams" while Help shows you a list of hotkeys the game uses.

File lets you do the usual Save (F5), Restore (F7), Restart (F9), Quit (Alt-Z) functions. Even in 1987, games were using F5 as the quicksave hotkey.

The Action menu tells Graham to swim if he enters water (=), Look at Objects in his Inventory (F4), and look at his inventory (Tab). Yes, F4 and Tab both do functionally the same thing.

Special lets you turn sound on/off (F2), use a joystick (Ctrl-J), and pause the game (Esc). For the love of god, if you turn up the game speed, turn the sound off. KQ2 was before the era of midi sound, and all the game's sound effects are PC Speaker. For the non-technically minded out there, this is the speaker that sits on your motherboard and is used to typically announce problems with your PC during boot up.

Here's a PC SPeaker version of Vampire Killer. Yeah. So, please, do your ears a favor if you play this and turn sound off.

The only menu we really need to concern ourselves with is the Speed function. This control's the game's speed, not Graham's. In the DOSBox version of the game, setting it to Fastest will make Graham move at your processor's clock speed.

I'm not playing in DOSBox. Instead, I'm playing this series in ScummVM, which is a little nicer with regards to speed emulation. I've also made some gifs of Graham's various walking speeds.



Slow. As agonizing as it is to watch, believe me, it's worse to play with.



Normal is a little better. This is the game's default speed. It's still way too slow for my tastes.



Fast is what most people play it on thanks to the aforementioned DOSBox emulation. It's decent, but let's crank this bad boy all the way up to 11.



Look at Graham go! This is the speed I'm going to be doing this LP on. For reasons that I'm sure are entirely unrelated, my total recording time for this game was only 34 minutes.

I should also take this time to mention that in the SCI and AGI engines, Graham starts walking when you hit an arrow key, and only stops when you hit it again. This game also has more precarious platforming than the first, so bear that in mind with some of the bullshit we'll have to pull coming up.



So before we get started, here's a TIMG version of the game map. The main game is technically larger than KQ1, by one map square. The first game was an 8x6 grid, while this one is 7x7. There are also a few more indoor squares to explore.

We start off on A1 and we need stuff from all over. So let's get to wandering!

: It's been a while since my last adventure. Need to remember the basics...
: Just wander around lost until you stumble across something on the ground, and then pick it up.
: Thanks disembodied narrator voice!



We're 3 screens south of starting, on D1. In spite of looking suspicious, the log is just random scenery.



: Graham notices a pretty clamshell lying on the sandy beach. When he picks it up, he sees that there was a sparkling sapphire and diamond bracelet under it!



The inventory screen is just a white page with a list of all the items we're carrying. If we hit F4 and select an item, we get a neat little picture of it.

: The bracelet looks like it would fit a small wrist. It is a circlet of diamons surrounded by beautiful blue sapphires.

: This is just an ordinary clamshell. There doesn't seem to be anything special about it.

: Graham opens the clamshell and discovers that it is empty. There is nothing special about it.

What a pity. Feels like there should have been something inside, you know? The sprite doesn't even change if you open it. Oh well, let's move on.



: Graham notices a rusty trident lying in the grass. He picks it up and carries it with him.

: The trident is rusty and corroded. It looks somewhat like a pitchfork.

We're on screen F1, two south of the clamshell, or two north from where we started. The world of King's Quest II loops around north to south like the first one.



Over on screen A3 we find a cute little cottage.

: The mailbox has the words Grandma's House on it.

Let's loot it!

: Lo and behold, when Graham opens the mailbox, he sees a basket of goodies.



Over one screen to the west, we have a small waiting game. The basket of goodies is part one of those puzzles you just need to know is there. You're more likely to find the person we're waiting on before you find the basket.



After a minute of hanging around...

: It appears that Graham has run into Little Red Riding Hood! She looks a little troubled.

: Excuse me, miss. Is everything alright? You look troubled.
: Little Red Riding Hood starts sobbing.
: I was out picking some flowers, and someone stole my basket. Please help me get it back, mister! My grandma is very sick and the basket was for her.
: Is this your basket? I found it hidden not too far from here.
: Gratefully, Little Red Riding Hood accepts the basket of goodies.
: Oh thank you so much, mister! Here, you can have these flowers I was picking. I can always pick more.
: Little Red Riding Hood happily skips off toward Grandma's house.



She'll bounce around like that as long as you stay on the screen with her.

: The bouquet of wild flowers is very pretty. The sweet scent is delightful.



It's going to be pretty likely that you accidentally wander into a body of water while exploring Kolyma. You can press the = key to make Graham start swimming. I assume you can also type "swim" into the text parser to get the same result. It's only ever required once in the game, but it's handy to know just in case.



Anyway, if you remember the map I posted up above, you'll recall that there was a lake in the middle surrounded by dead trees. It's hard to miss, as it takes up the 12 middle tiles in a 7x7 grid.



So I'm going to save really quick. You shouldn't swim in this lake. I know I just got done telling you how to do just that, but...



So 10 of the tiles in the middle of the map are completely impassable for now.



To close out this first update, here's the death message for King's Quest II. Sadly, we're still 3 games out from the puns starting. They only became a staple with King's Quest V. So don't expect to see very many deaths beyond some really stupid shit you can do.

NEXT TIME: Robbling Kolyma Blind.

List of Points

+0 - Free clamshell
+7 - Gaudy bracelet
+3 - Rusty trident on the beach
+1 - Checked the mail
+2 - Mail fraud
+4 - Traded basket for flowers

Total: 17/185

Register of Deaths

Swimming in Poison