Westwood's Legend of Kyrandia marked the beginning of a new series in graphical adventure gaming. The Kyrandia series featured a quality at which Westwood Studios excelled: an ethereal element that pulled the gamer into their fantasy universes. One doesn't merely play a game which incorporates puzzles and magic. Rather, the Westwood gamer enters a fantastic story environment of magic, intrigue, and humour. The Kyrandia series embodies this approach very effectively.
The story of Kyrandia is light and pleasant enough to capture a whimsy that encourages gameplay and involvement.
The interaction between Darm the Wizard of Scrolls and his companion Brandywine the Dragon exemplifies this whimsy. The plot is sufficiently firm-bodied to fill a pleasant little fantasy novel, but the focus of Kyrandia is not to lead you through a game filled with passages of text. The puzzles through which you adventure create a story on their own. The characters with whom the gamer interacts are well and easily defined through good illustration and short amounts of text.
The graphics in Kyrandia, Book 1 are quite pretty. Colourful and bright, they were some of the loveliest of its time. The sound is very reasonable. The music, which can be turned off, was pretty and only occasionally redundant. The sound effects were efficient and at times clever - example,
in the afore-mentioned Darm and Brandywine sequence, one can hear the thump of Brandywine's animated tail hitting the floor.
The game play is enjoyable. Kyrandia introduced the single-action function. In previous adventure games, like Sierra’s King Quest series, the gamer would have to click on the Take, Speak, or Use functions and experiment to see which action worked in which instance. Kyrandia simplified this. Click on an item, and the proper function is automatically conducted. The danger in this simplified system is that it might have made the puzzles too easy. However, it is not always clear which item helps where… in short, the simplified tool function freed the game to incorporate more complex and intelligent puzzles. If you get exasperated during the game, it’s because you haven’t yet figured out the puzzle – not because you can’t figure out which blasted button to click.
The puzzles are relatively easy in Book 1, although they get increasingly difficult in later instalments. Logic and a touch of humour with take you through most of the puzzles. Only occasionally must one resort to trial and error. The pleasant environment of the game makes it worthwhile for play, and the puzzles aren’t so simple that they become boring. The gamer’s attention is easily kept.
Only two portions of the game are particularly annoying. SMALL SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH. First, a maze. Many gamers enjoy mazes, and this includes a clever and reasonably short one in the middle of the game. For myself, I’d rather mess with it for a bit and then find a map of the area. Second, towards the end of the game you will leave one environment and enter another. You have plenty of warning of this environment change, but none to indicate that you cannot return. You cannot return, and four items are required to succeed in the rest of the game. If you don’t have those items… you’re sunk. Do make sure to keep multiple saves.
I first played the Kyrandia series during its original releases. I was eleven when Book 1 was released, and thirteen at the last. At twenty-four, I still greatly enjoy the gaming world of Kyrandia. Kyrandia embodied the best elements of graphical adventures. It is a genre which, a decade of technological improvements and gaming trends later, is greatly missed.
