King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella

King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella was the first in the series to place a female character in the lead role - Princess Rosella, daughter of King Graham, who sets out on a rescue mission after her father falls ill with a mysterious disease. To save him, she must obtain a magical fruit from a distant enchanted island, facing witches, fairies, and other fairy-tale creatures along the way while solving classic adventure puzzles based on collecting items and cleverly using them in the right place. The game continued the series' tradition of weaving European fairy-tale motifs into one cohesive fantasy world. Talking animals and magical helpers accompany Rosella on her journey; the player must correctly time many actions and combine items in a way typical of Sierra's adventure games of the era.

Technically, this was one of the first Sierra titles to fully take advantage of the capabilities of the era's 16-color EGA graphics cards and the emerging VGA cards, offering a significantly more colorful and detailed environment than previous installments. On DOS computers with sound card support, the game also offered digitized music and sound effects, considerably enhancing the fairy-tale atmosphere compared to the earlier beeps of the internal speaker. Contemporary reviews praised the game for its visuals, atmosphere, and the boldness of building a story around a female heroine, which was still an exception in adventure games of the time, though there were also objections to the overly unforgiving traps leading to the character's dead-end death.

King's Quest IV is regarded today as one of the high points of Sierra On-Line's early era and evidence of how rapidly graphic adventure games evolved visually and narratively in the second half of the 1980s. For genre fans it remains a pleasantly playable fairy-tale classic, albeit with the typically merciless adventure-game dead ends of the time, which today's player will probably appreciate better with the help of a walkthrough.

Why play: For genre fans, this is a pleasantly playable fairy-tale classic from Sierra On-Line's peak era, albeit with the typically merciless adventure-game dead ends that today's player will probably appreciate better with a walkthrough.