You are able to scare them off, but only after you find the right object with which to do so, and you will probably encounter monsters before that and need to save/restore a few times in the process. Random monsters also appear to kill you, such as rattlesnakes that will poison you if you try to leave. The desert itself is a maze, one of two in the game, with very little to distinguish each screen from the last. This includes unreasonable and unknowable deaths, such as when you’re crossing the desert and pick up a rock only to discover a snake behind it that kills you, while elsewhere another rock does not, although you can’t know which is which because everything looks the same. For the most part the puzzles are fairly logical, and by mapping out your locations you are able to explore the world without getting too lost.Ī list of negatives is easier to compile, as Adventure in Serenia does just about everything that is now frowned upon in modern adventure games. The graphics represented a vast improvement on Mystery House, which only used black and white line drawings, while the parser-based gameplay is similar to other popular games of the era such as Infocom’s text adventures. In context, though, in the early 1980s this was one of the best adventures available for the IBM. As a game played in 2019, it is obviously archaic and really only holds up because of its nostalgic value. This long after its debut, it’s hard to come up with many good things to say about Adventure in Serenia. “Inventory” will display a list of everything you are carrying, while pressing the control keys brings up some of these commonly used inputs pre-typed. Saving the game is accomplished by simply typing “save game” while “restore game” will resume from where you last recorded your progress. Pressing the Ctrl button advances the text if there’s more than four lines. Adventure in Serenia has a two-word parser input, formulated as a verb followed by a noun (such as “throw rock”) for taking actions, along with movement between screens by typing the direction you wish to travel (such as “north” “up” or “in hole”). Played in a first-person view, a static picture is displayed with text appearing at the bottom of the screen. It's a shame, then, that the most available version Sierra rereleased in later years is for the IBM, using the standard four-colour CGA palette of cyan, magenta, grey and black (although you can change this to an equally horrible alternative palette by pressing F2).Īs one of the earliest examples of a graphical adventure, its appearance is of course primitive at best. Sierra changed the name to Adventure in Serenia for the IBM version, but from what I understand the nature of the different versions comes down to the colour schemes used, with the original Apple II version having arguably the best, with six colours and a dithering system that allows for the appearance of more. Originally developed in 1980 for the Apple II computer system as Wizard and the Princess, it was eventually ported to almost every system imaginable, but for the purposes of this review I played the IBM Boot Disk version (1982) through the DOSBox emulator. Unfortunately, nearly 40 years after it was initially released, it certainly shows its age in almost every respect.Ī precursor to their flagship King’s Quest series, the second game Sierra On-Line (then called On-Line Systems) released after their massively successful Mystery House improved upon its predecessor’s successful formula by adding colour graphics for the first time in an adventure game. Everything about this game feels like a fairy tale, from the premise of rescuing the damsel in distress from the clutches of evil, to magic spells, to the characters you encounter such as giants and gnomes and talking snakes along the way. You must journey through the land to find her, traversing deserts, rivers, forests and finally the wizard’s keep.

She has been kidnapped by the evil wizard Harlin, who is holding her captive in his castle beyond the mountains to the north. As the unnamed protagonist of Adventure in Serenia, you’ve been tasked with rescuing the Princess Priscilla and return her to safety in the titular village.

Serenia fantasy gamedp