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I don’t know why, but KQ4 always seemed to be a bit spooky to me. Something about the emptiness of Tamir, the risk of death everywhere you turned and even the music seemed very eerie and melancholy. Does anyone else feel this way?

It isn’t truly SCARY—like in truly horror story sense—but it’s very subtly spooky. It isn’t blood and gore, or any of that, yet it still manages to be very creepy. I’ll explain why if you care to read, please tell me your feelings later on and whether you agree—your thoughts and anything you’d like to add:.

To start off, the land you walk around in, Tamir, is very empty. There’s not even any music that accompanies you from screen to screen—The land is empty; silent; seemingly for the most part, deserted. You’re alone, and each minute you waste is precious time lost. It somehow feels very desolate; abandoned—like if you were to explore a ghost town or a long abandoned building. That in itself is kind of eerie—picture wandering around a long dead, mostly ghost town, filled with not much more than some poor people and a creepy, downtrodden and forgotten little cemetery with crumbling graves.

It seems like death awaits around every corner. You have the Ogre, who can pop up out of the blue, chase you, and you don’t know why he’s chasing you, and the music which accompanies him is pounding and intense. He’s almost like a real life psychopath or serial killer chasing you. Consider it from Rosella’s POV - or that of a younger player - it can be quite scary, especially if you’ve watched a good number of horror films.

Next, consider the Troll, the entrance to whose lair is littered with bones…You never see anything of him, just his eerie, shining eyes in the dark; And from him, you hear nothing but an ominous “Grr” in the blackness of the cave. He, like the Ogre, pops up anywhere and when he does, you’re doomed no matter what you do, and, once again, for no reason at all, he just wants to kill you. You don’t even see him, but it’s those glowing eyes and that sudden jumping out of the dense blackness—at any moment- to pull you away to a terrifying, unknown fate which makes it scary. The game’s death message enforces the horror of your plight by telling you: “Fate be what it may, you are dragged off to meet it.”

Then we have the night sequence later in the game. You have to help wailing, frightened, unhappy ghosts. You have to narrowly avoid the clutches of re-animated, rotting zombies which hunger for your flesh—and in the middle of a long abandoned house, you’re greeted by the frightening sight and eerie sound of wailing, restless spirits.

Perhaps most disturbing about your night in Haunted Mansion is the cries of an unseen, dead baby. In the midst of the night, you’re startled in the Mansion by the sounds of the infant’s violent wailing from beyond the grave, and you see a rocking cradle with no baby inside. Imagine just this moment if the game had had voices—imagine hearing the baby’s cry, the zombie’s hungry growls and grunts, the ghosts’ wails and moans. You have to dig up these ghosts’ graves, feeling amongst their rotting corpses, and reach into their very coffins to get items to pacify their restless souls, all while the putrid zombies surround you, hoping you’ll take off the Scarab so that they may enjoy their dinner.

You have to narrowly avoid as well three ravenous, treacherous, foul and ugly witches, who share but an eye (meaning one’s eye socket is eyeless; just picture that); and you have to carry the witches’ eye in your hand, and dart as they throw themselves at you, trying desperately to catch you so as to eat you—A dangerous game of cat and mouse around a boiling cauldron. One wrong step, and you’re dead. Notice a pattern here? Or how about the little forest of trees who only wish to embrace you—so as to crush the life out of you in their twisted arms.

And beyond the horror, there’s a great sense of melancholy, even the happy moments; For example, the cleaning of the Dwarves’ house. The music which plays when you clean the Dwarves’ house somehow comes off creepy, melancholy—with an apprehensive undertone to it, a bittersweet sort of sadness to it. Almost a nostalgic sort of sound—a gleaming bit of very dim light amidst the darkness. Even the “points” sound sounds nothing like the point sound in the other games. It too sounds almost a little desperate, like, “Yeah, you got a point. Try and survive the rest of this now.” It’s not a rewarding sound.

The game actually kind of reminds me of like an early version of Resident Evil in some ways, less blood and gore though But a similar concept—a very basic psychological form of horror underpins this game.  Death lies at the turn of every corner. Creatures seek to reach out, grab and devour you, and you must either move fast or succumb to fate. Never again in any King’s Quest game do you have so many creepy creatures out to get you; never again in KQ do you confront the nighttime; never again in King’s Quest is death and fear handled quite seriously—Even in KQ6, you have a campy moment with the skeletons dancing. Nothing like that here. I just think there’s a very heavy, desperate sense of urgency, a feeling that you’re in this alone, or eerie sort of sadness to it. Never before and never again is your mission as urgent: Your own father’s very life, and that of an already battered Kingdom, lie in your hands.

Never before or again do you feel so alone—You are but a lonesome, defenseless princess (usually, in fairy tales, the swooning damsel in distress) who just has been saved from what seemed like certain death at the hands of ravenous dragon, only to watch your father succumb to a strange, very possibly fatal illness, and within only hours of being in the despair of the dragon’s lair and meeting your brother for the first time in 17 years, you’re thrust into a strange, very hostile land; Any misstep could lead to death, and you have many creepy, violent beings wandering the land who crave to eat your flesh. No friend accompanies you on your mission; No aid is truly given, except at the end of the game. And at the end of 24 hours of fear, panic, and horror, you’re forced to kill in order to survive.

Even so, the horror is played very subtly under the surface of it being “just another KQ game”, and I wonder if Roberta might’ve been subconsiously driven by her well known love of horror stories while designing it—Remember she designed the first Laura Bow game around the same time as KQ4. Perhaps somewhere in the back of her mind, the idea of doing a scary story was brewing—and this was a subconscious outlet for it. Roberta is well known as a fan of horror stories, Steven King and the like—She has professed to like them about as much as she loves fairy tales and fantasy.

The game is scary in the same way that that old show Unsolved Mysteries was scary—No blood and guts or gore, but enough to keep you awake if playing it’s darker moments on a dark night.

To cap off these thoughts, consider this moment of the game:

Tamir suddenly drops to night—a time even more perilous and scary than daylight there, and as a little, eerie piece of organ music drones, the moon, as pale as death, rises up in an ocean blue sky, hovering over a landscape which you know already is full of danger, and the game informs you:

“Like a heavy blanket, darkness enfolds you.”

Beautifully Written!
i agree, the atmosphere can be quite scary, especially when i first played it at the age of 10.
this makes me wanna play it again

That’s an interesting way of looking at it. The whole country of Tamir had a sense of having fallen into disrepair, the haunted house and dead family being part of that. I put it down to Lolotte’s influence having poisoned everything. Supposedly Genesta would be dead within 24 hours after losing her amulet. But Tamir seems to have been in decline for quite some time. So even before Lolotte stole her amulet, Genesta must have been unable to cope with Lolotte.