Kind of on the short side and lacks some of the witty humour the genre is generally known for. And yet I enjoyed it. Lovely 80s fantasy soundtrack, pixel art, and general mood. There is one bug where the narrator just skips all the time together with his textbox, but I found save and load (Which is a seamless transition by the way) fixes it.

It is truly a shame that the planned sequel will never see the light of day. For this seems to be just a prologue for that one.

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A fairy tale in the best traditions of Point & Click games of the 90s. Without complex puzzles, with good music and a pleasant, kind story. Unfortunately the game is a bit short. But if nostalgia is tormenting you, it’s worth playing!

A nice 2-3 hour story. Checks all the boxes of an adventure game

If you enjoy indie games that have a home-made feeling to it, this is perfect for you.

A very nostalgic little fairy tale game, that secretly teleport players back into early 90x

(Completed this game on itch.io, please ignore my playtime)

Wonderful game, short and sweet. I loved it!

You join Finn the Bard on his quest to write 'the greatest ballad ever' as he undertakes "The King's Challenge".

The Order of the Thorne - The King's Challenge is an adventure point & click game from the developers of Quest for Infamy, it's done in a retro-esque style that reminds you of the King's Quest games. The artstyle is a pretty pixel style with detailed backgrounds, artworks and little less detailed sprites. The gameplay includes going around the world, gathering things, using those things to do other things and get other things and playing songs on your lute.

The game is pretty fun and definitely worth investing the four hours it took me to complete the game 100%. There were some annoyances, like not having an autosave and the fact that the game crashed on me multiple times, which resulted in lost progress and repeated steps. Though, the game was quite easy to re-do steps in, as long as you remembered the stuff you were supposed to do.

The soundtrack was lovely and I very much enjoyed the narration and the fact that all of the characters were voiced, though some of the characters had very annoying voices that made me grind my teeth lol. The songs Finn was playing were also very nice and I wish there were full songs of those clips.

In the end, definitely recommended to play this game! I am super glad that I got this game from my streamer friend, VitriolPlays, and she has told me multiple times how awesome the devs are as well.

Small quest game with retro visuals. If you like retro graphics this should be quite pleasing. The quest is ordinary for the most part and only takes a couple of hours to complete, though I did look at a walkthrough sometimes. The music puzzles can all be done after finishing the main story by reloading your file, if you don't want to try to learn the songs during the game but still want all the achievements. A nice way to spend a few hours, might make you hate pixies.

Incredibly charming <3

I am so disappointed! I wanted a nostalgia trip to the 90s ala Westwood/Lucas and such, and I really wanted to like that game, but after 7 hours (and I reckon that is more than enough) I am so bored... The game is not awful, just not good in general, and absolutely far from enough to keep me playing! In details:
- The drawings are alright, actually average, not great, not bad either, but nothing that attracts your eye. Truthfully, sometimes it is even boring to look at, the forest is huge and repetitive, and compared to a masterpiece like Kyrandia 2, this game is just above mediocre.
- The voice over is sometimes alright, sometimes poor - not too cringy, but barely...
- The story is okay, and though I will probably never know the end it had some kind of plot, but bare minimum... Really nothing fascinating.
- Gameplay is traditional for an oldschool point and click: inventory with odd items to mix, dialogues, moving from screen to screen...
- Terrible interface, the menu seems to have been made 30 years ago... really? Couldn't they have made it modern style?
- A few bugs, like one bug where all "non important" NPCs have some dialogues without voiceover (just text) and their dialogues are skipped fast forward and you don't have time to read... terrible.
- But mostly: the texts and dialogues... is what probably kills the game for me. How dull and boring these are. I am baffled, it is so mundane and uninteresting, like some kind of educational or religious material without any pertinent content... and I was always expecting some kind of switching moment, like, suddenly a flip of tone with more depth, but nothing. You get dialogues in the style of "Hello Lovely Fairy, how are you?" "Good and you Mr Bard?" "I'm fine, what are you doing?" "I'm on an adventure!" "Oh this sounds great! well good luck!" "Thank you Lovely Fairy!" like... literally... A point and click in the style of Lucas or Westwood is NOTHING if there are not crunchy dialogues, witty texts and hilarious descriptions, in a Pratchett kind of style. Here, in this game, I even posted a screenshot on my profile where I am in the forest, and I click "Look" on a stone, and the text appears "It's a stone". Like... not even sarcasm.
This was the limit for me, I can't take anymore and play it more, I am sorry but this is asking too much, I just have to conclude the game is simply bad and boring.
- Little word about the music: awful. Like, I am not sure if it is a joke, but they don't make sense, the melodies for the Lute have a melodic structure that makes no sense, and the BGM is sometimes unbearable, so amateurish, some sort of silly compositional writing. I just don't get it here either.

If you are a VERY casual player, or never played an point and click, maybe... but, no, not even maybe, if you never played an old point and click, just buy an old point and click! Just buy a Lucas or a Westwood, they are GOLD compared to this. And if like me you are a veteran of this genre and wanted to see what could be done nowadays, WALK AWAY. You will waste your time. Sorry for the devs, the game seems to have worked nonetheless so good on them. Just not for me.

Conclusion: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2764433891