King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

About King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992) is Sierra's point-and-click adventure, written by Roberta Williams and Jane Jensen, in which Prince Alexander seeks Princess Cassima across the Land of the Green Isles.

King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow in Depth

A few months after King Graham rescued his family from the wizard Mordack, Prince Alexander cannot stop thinking about Princess Cassima, whom Graham also freed. When the Magic Mirror shows her and a pattern of stars, Alexander sets sail, only to be shipwrecked on the Isle of the Crown. The vizier Abdul Alhazred tells him Cassima is mourning her dead parents and cannot be seen, then sets his genie on Alexander and spreads word that he is a foreign assassin. With the help of the jester Jollo, Alexander uses a magic map to travel between islands drawn from the Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland, classical myth, Beauty and the Beast and druid lore, and even descends into the land of the dead.

It was the second King's Quest with an icon toolbar, for walking, looking, acting and talking, in place of the text parser. Play revolves around logic puzzles, conversation and using collected items, and the island-hopping map is the only way to reach other islands. The boxed Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles adds background and doubles as copy protection: the Cliffs of Logic guarding the Isle of the Sacred Mountain cannot be passed without it, and a poem in it encodes the solution to a puzzle in the island's labyrinth. A 1993 CD-ROM version added more voices, a slightly different opening and more detailed art and animation.

Making King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

Roberta Williams met newcomer Jane Jensen, later the creator of Gabriel Knight, in May 1991, and the pair spent five months designing it, Williams writing the love story to make players connect emotionally. John Shroades painted 80 backgrounds, motion capture of costumed actors produced more than 2,000 character actions, Chris Braymen composed the MIDI music, and Jensen scripted over 6,000 lines of messages for the SCI1 engine. Williams put the budget at about US$700,000, with more than 20 people working for 14 months. Released in October 1992, it topped the DOS charts into December. Dragon gave it five stars, Computer Gaming World called it "Sierra's finest adventure to date", and it is widely seen as the high point of the series, though PC Format disliked its sudden deaths.