As I sat down in a darkened theater for a demo of The Odd Gentlemen's revival of my beloved King's Quest series, I was nervous. Considering the amount of time it has been since I've experienced an official entry in the ongoing chronicles of Daventry, I'll admit I was a bit apprehensive with what seemed to be sweeping changes to the tried, true, and (some who aren't me might argue) tired point-and-click adventure mechanics. The look and sound seemed on point, but without personally experiencing it for myself, I wasn't sure that this new game would take me back to clicking on pixels or finding golden bridles under bridges as effectively as a trip to ScummVM would. After my demo, helmed by lead developer Matt Korba, and some hands-on time of my own on the show floor, I'm feeling pretty darn good about it.

I'm now beyond certain that The Odd Gentlemen understand the sense of humor that made me love the series in the first place. This is evident from the start with the first episode's title: A Knight to Remember. The first of many quasi-awful puns, A Knight to Remember situates the retooled adventure firmly alongside its predecessors, and sets the tone in an appropriate way. The game's framing narrative presents us with an elderly (but not rebooted) King Graham, voiced to grandfatherly perfection by the legendary Christopher Lloyd, as he delivers life lessons to his grand-daughter Gwendolyn. Each episode of the game sees her facing a challenge in the present time period, and Graham delivering a story of his adventurous past. How he (via the player) chooses to frame the story and the decisions made throughout have an impact on the way dialogue pans out and how Gwen might choose to handle her own trials.

As it turns out, the gameplay isn't all that dissimilar from a thoroughly modernized version of the classic titles. While you aren't swapping between different context icons or pixel-hunting, there are tons of things in the world to interact with, and each of them has multiple lines of exposition, should you choose to interact with them over and over again. King Graham doubles as the game's narrator, and there are lots of entertaining and funny lines. In one case, trying to go west when the game expected you to go east produced multiple different admonitions from the King, finally culminating in his irritated proclamation that, "a sudden gust of wind blew me to the east!" with accompanying animation. There were also numerous jokes about a hatchet in Graham's inventory being a catch-all solution to far too many adventure gaming puzzles, with Gwen insisting it be used on every problem the young king encountered. While it's difficult to really convey the tone without experiencing it for oneself, I'm comfortable saying it's the same combination of medieval melodrama and goofy humor that made the original games Princess Bride-like in their execution.

Puzzles seem to have multiple solutions, and also lots of dialogue for the times when you'll undoubtedly use the wrong item (perhaps even intentionally). How Graham chooses to solve his problems will have an impact on the narrative, though Korba was keen to point out that his team isn't looking to create a Mass Effect-like "you made this choice and this now the outcome of that choice!" type of cause and effect, but something more subtle that creates a personal version of the adventure for each player. The characters you come across are voiced by some of Hollywood's finest, including Wallace Shawn (you know him), Zelda Williams, Chris Lloyd, Richard White (Gaston from The Beauty and the Beast), and others, and everything I heard was well-acted and delivered with just the right comedic timing.

The team seems to have had a great time building their game into something reminiscent of and true to the spirit of its predecessors yet possessed of its own identity. There's a lot of fun taken with the format, such the dissonance of young Graham ungracefully solving a problem as old Graham narrates it in a much more dignified fashion, or in the multiple conflicting statements made to silly effect as you investigate objects over and over again. The art style seems colorful if simple in still images, but looks beautiful in motion. We were told that the 3D objects in the world were modeled, printed out, hand-painted with watercolor, and then scanned back as textures in the game, and it shows. There isn't a whole lot else that looks like this game, and considering that was true for much of the original KQ games, that's a great stride for the team to have taken. There are also a bunch of nods to the classic games. The Magic Mirror is used as the game's inventory menu, standing in certain areas of Daventry elicits musical cues from King's Quest V, an NPC makes an offhand mention of Llewdor, and picking up inventory items lets out the delightfully familiar sound effect from King's Quest VI. Even a long tumble taken by the not-quite-yet-King is similar to the tumbling sound effect heard in KQV and VI.

I could go on and on about the small details that have made me happy to have finally seen King's Quest: A Knight to Remember in action. While it isn't quite the same kind of adventure game as the seminal King's Quest VI, it seems to be a unique kind of experience that fuses a modern sensibility with the same attitude as its legendary siblings. As a person whose first gaming memories involve Prince Alexander climbing the Cliffs of Logic and eating mint leaves, I'm happy with what I saw and can't wait to experience the rebith of Roberta and Ken Williams' series.