Initial release date 31 July 1996 | Genre Adventure game | |
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Developers Square Enix Europe, The Sales Curve Publishers Square Enix Europe, GT Interactive Similar Square Enix Europe games, Adventure games | ||
Kingdom O' Magic is a video game released by SCi in 1996. It is a comedic point and click adventure game parodying fantasy fiction. It can be played with either of two available protagonists, Thidney or Sha-ron.
Contents
Kingdom O' Magic was planned for release on four different systems: MS-DOS, PlayStation, Apple Macintosh, and Sega Saturn. However, only the MS-DOS version was ever released.
Themes
The gameKingdom O' Magic is filled with surreal humor. For instance, the instruction manual claims that the game was "First published in 1876 under the title '101 fun things To Do with Trolls'. However the version on CD-ROM is specially calibrated for short people with red hair."
It was designed by Fergus McNeill. As in his previous games, Bored of the Rings and The Boggit, the game makes humor on J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. Various elements in the games are parodies of Middle-earth characters and locations, such as "The High Steward of Minar Tragedy, Don Elrondo of Rivendull and Queen Galadrag of De-Lorean.
The game's closing credits sequence plays the theme to the 1970's British cartoon Roobarb, but there appears to be no other relationship between the works.
Plot
Beginning the game, the player can select between two protagonists: Thidney the Lizard Bloke (voiced by John Sessions) or Shah-Ron the Girlie (voiced by Lani Minella) from planet Comely. According to the on-screen descriptions, Thidney is skilled at combat whereas Shah-Ron is skilled at magic.
There are three quests:
Gameplay
The player is surrounded by many NPCs moving around, such as karate elves fighting against and ringwraiths. The player can interact with non-hostile characters, triggering a Dialog tree: conversation is handled choosing from multiple responses, leading to different directions of conversation.
Combat occurs when approaching a NPC with a weapon selected. Then all violence is covered by a cloud as seen in many cartoons, and then the two combatants walk away as if nothing had happened.
There are also magic spells to supplement the combat system, but their effects, while humorous, are largely unhelpful.
Remake
A team had begun making an unofficially remake of Kingdom O' Magic using the Adventure Game Studio engine.