Tips and FAQ

[Ziggurat | Alex]

Here are some tips for getting the most out of Search for the King!

A note on copy protection

The original version of Search for the King required referencing manual materials to get past a copy protection screen. You will be presented with this screen early in your gameplay session. In this version, the copy protection is bypassed – just select the item in the dialog box that looks different from the others to proceed.

Gameplay Tips

This game uses the mouse or arrow keys/numpad for navigation and a text parser for interacting with creatures and objects. Just start typing anywhere to use the text parser. The game recognizes many words, and a good one to start with when entering a new area is "look". Once you've identified points of interest, you can use the word "examine" (followed by the entity you wish to examine) to get more detailed information. To interact with an object, you may need to ensure you are standing close enough to it.

The speed of the game can be changed from the in-game menu (accessed with Escape key). It may be helpful to set a lower game speed while solving puzzles that involve timing.

The numpad can be used for movement (8 for up, 6 for right, etc.). This can be especially useful for precise diagonal movements in narrow walkways (the 7, 9, 3, and 1 keys on the numpad move diagonally). It may help to double tap a key if you find yourself walking further than you mean to with a single key press, and again we recommend taking advantage of the game speed option to slow your movement down in close quarters.

DOSBox Tips

To make this game playable on modern systems, this version of Search for the King is played through DOSBox. Launch options from Steam are included for full screen and multiple windowed resolutions.

If you are having trouble running the game at full screen, you may want to change the fullresolution parameter in the dosbox_fs.conf (and any other .conf files you use to launch the game). We found that most systems run best with this parameter set to fullresolution=desktop by default, but saw some configurations (like the Surface Pro X) where changing this parameter to fullresolution=original was necessary for the game to run properly.

You can make adjustments to how the game runs via the .conf file for each resolution in the install directory's dosbox_windows folder. We recommend backing up any files before changing them, as changes could produce undesired effects.

Useful DOSBox shortcuts

• While in windowed mode, Control+F10 toggles locking the mouse to the window. This prevents the mouse from wandering outside the game area onto anything outside the game window.
  
• Alt+Enter can be used to switch between windowed and full screen mode while in any resolution view. This is also useful to use after exiting the game in full screen mode to close the DOSBox window.
  
• To close DOSBox and exit the game completely at any time, press Control+F9.