Kingdom O' Magic

Kingdom O' Magic (KOM) is a video game released by SCi in 1996. It is a comedic point and click adventure game, filled with bizarre humour, as seen in the instruction manual: "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".

The game is a parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, as seen in the names of some of the places in the game such as Rivendull and Minar Tragedy.

It was designed by Fergus McNeill who became famous during the eighties for games such as Bored of the Rings (influenced by, but not adapted from, the Harvard Lampoon book) and The Boggit.

KOM was planned for release on four different systems: MS-DOS, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Apple Macintosh but fell through for the Sega Saturn.

Kingdom O' Magic is unofficially being remade, using the Adventure Game Studio engine. More information concerning the remake, can be found at the Big Blue Cup Forums.^[1]

Characters

Thidney the Lizard Bloke, voiced by John Sessions.

"A seven-feet tall bright green lizard, with cherry disposition and a super tail! Thidney enjoys action movies, sport and drinking massive quantities of ale. He isn't brilliant at casting spells but, in his favour, he can sustain a lot of blows to the head with virtually no noticeable change to his mental ability."

Shah-Ron the Girlie, voiced by Lani Minella.

5"9, very intelligent, and built like a babe from planet Comely, she's a go-getting girl who has no desire to work with children or old people, and who hates all animals, especially the cute furry ones. Highly skilled at magic, she has little interest in more physical aspect of combat.

Quests

• The Good, Old Fashioned, Traditional Quest - "Here you and you alone must travel the length and girth of the Kingdom, battling monsters, righting wrongs and lowering property value wherever you go, until you can finally rescue the dragon, steal the princess and kill the treasure!"
• The Magnificent 7-11 Quest - "Flake town is going to be invaded, and you have been personally selected to wander aimlessly round the Kingdom, recruiting between 7 and 11 of the toughest characters you can find to help defend the liberty of the floating metropolis!"
• The Bizarre & Slightly Twisted Quest - "Oooooh it's dangerous! Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to prevent the end of civilisation as we know it (hey, bet you'd never heard that from a computer game before!) by seeking out and uncovering the Lost Lava Lamp Of The Ancient and, time permitting, thrashing the Dark Lord to within an inch of his life!"

Overview

Neither the protagonists nor the quests are pastiches on The Lord of the Rings. The parody instead rests on the other characters of the game and their surroundings. For instance, The High Steward of Minar Tragedy, Don Elrondo of Rivendull and Queen Galadrag of De-Lorean.^[2]

The game world feels quite alive with lots of characters moving around. For instance, there are frequent battles between karate elves and ringwraiths. You can talk with all the characters in the game providing they do not attack on sight. Conversation is handled by giving the player multiple choices to choose from, each directing the conversations in different directions. This is rather much like the old 80's game Law of the West.

Combat is not one of the game's strong sides; after approaching an NPC with a weapon selected, a cartoon cloud covers the altercation before the two combatants emerge and walk away as if nothing had happened, even re-approaching the player for a chat. There are also magic spells to supplement the combat system, but their effects, while humorous, are largely unhelpful.

References

External links

• Kingdom O' Magic at MobyGames
• Kingdom O' Magic at GameRankings
• A cache of SCi's Kingdom O' Magic website