I must say that I really enjoyed this game. Being raised on old King's Quest games, this is right up my alley. It's a fairy tale where you don't solve problems by fighting people, but by being kind and asking questions. And you get a lute and have to learn songs to play which reminds me of another favourite game Loom! The only drawback is that the game is very short. On my initial playthrough I only missed one achievement.

On the other hand I look forward to the sequel...

The good

Throwback to old school adventure games
Smart sense of humour
The narrator is a hoot
Tells a pretty good story
Easy to get a perfect game if that's your thing
Colourful world, sprightly music

The bad

Lots of backtracking
Moving around can be tedious
Too short
Minimal replay value
Some of the voice acting is pretty ordinary

Having played the alpha and beta versions of the game, I've been looking forward to reviewing the game now that it is finally out. As per my reviews of games I have backed, I was in on the Kickstarter for the game so if that is too biased for you, you might be happier elsewhere!

The King's Challenge is a good old fashioned adventure game where you wander over a nice large map, meeting folks, collecting a rather odd assortment of goods, and then helping others help you in your goal. You play as Finn the Bard, the son of a well known bard. You aspire to be like your father and you enter the King's Challenge to help inspire you to create a great ballad. Unlike many games, you don't have a sword, dagger or even bad breath to take on your challengers; you have a lute. You learn to play songs on the lute that help you progress through the game. A nice nod to Loom but many of the Sierra adventures get nice little nods as well. Finn is a fun character, young, ambitious and willing to learn, he survives by his wits, not his brawn.

Like their title, Quest for Infamy, The King's Challenge offers a variety of places to visit, multiple characters to interact with, lovely backgrounds and sprite work, and fine music and dialogue. Unlike QFI, the King's Challenge is a G rated game and is a game that the younger set can enjoy too.

I would describe the puzzles as "medium" in difficulty; there are plenty of clues and the more you chat with others in the game, the easier the puzzles become. The objectives are clear and quite logical and help often comes from where you would expect it to come.

The game also sets up the universe for future titles. You meet several characters who knew your father and thus you learn about the Order of the Thorne and yourself as the game goes on. The game comes to a nice conclusion but clearly sets the stage for further chapters. I, for one, am looking forward to the further adventures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raUGjB2JUhQ

Infamous Quest liked the Kinq's Quest games and didn't own the license. They looked around the room at each other and said, "Let's just make a King's Quest game but call it something else." They all nodded in agreement and set out to make a nostalgic video game that older gamers would appreciate.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqTE_aLj78I



Order of the Thorne: The King’s Challenge is the first episode in a series. It follows a Bard named Finn who wants to create the ultimate adventurer ballad. He sees the opportunity to create this song by taking part in The King’s Challenge to find the missing Queen of the realm.


The dialogue in Order of the Thorne is very much in the classic style of games like King’s Quest. Everyone is polite, honorable, and happy go lucky in the way that only fantasy characters can be. Needless to say, the game takes its world very seriously during dialogue but is not without its comedy as well. It does get a bit long-winded in places but it remains nostalgic of the genre.

That being said it doesn’t have a deep conversation system and most characters are fairly one dimensional. There will be a few places where you’ll just want to skip through the dialogue to get back to the adventure.

The voiceover in-game is for lack of better words is “standard” for the genre. No one particularly stands out as believable denizens of this fantasy world. It definitely gets the job done with the eclectic cast of characters. There are far too many pleasant townies, but it does help showcase the more interesting characters like Esmerelda the Spider-Lady and Skelton the Dwarf.


I make more comparisons to King’s Quest as this game immediately begins with a contest to find the King’s wife. It’s as straight-forward as it sounds and it propels the player to stumble through Crann Naoimh and get into all sorts of shenanigans. Mainly, it’s everything you’d expect from a King’s Quest title and that seems to be the point.


Your standard point and click gameplay for an adventure title. Nothing really stands out as an advancement, beyond the Simon says style guitar playing. Finn will discover a person or object that requires an item he has discovered while wandering the land. He can combine items and use them to solve problems or complete quests only to collect more items and repeat. Fortunately, this game has a clear goal when it comes to puzzles and doesn’t allow us to wander around confused about all these items in our pants.


Nothing really stands out in the music department other than the fact that it can get a bit loud despite being on the lowest setting.


I feel like I’m making a lot of mentions of King’s Quest, but that’s exactly the nostalgic look that this title is trying to hit. Sierra would be proud to see that their visual style have been properly replicated. While it’s not exactly the most detailed of titles, it does paint a unique world filled with slick character portraits, beautiful backgrounds, and old-school pixel animation..


Combining all the things I’ve played in this game, It’s very obvious that this title is targeting the earliest fans of the genre.. It really makes no advances to the adventure formula, and generally doesn’t take much from modern adventure titles. This is a great game for those people that saw the newest King’s Quest and harrumph’d at the lack of 2D pixels. Order of the Thorne: The King’s Challenge is definitely worth a look for adventure seekers. I’d personally catch it on sale myself, but if you’re looking for a true old-school adventure title… dive right in.

I really enjoyed this game. If you like the older style of the Sierra/Lucas Arts Games you will feel right at home here with the hand painted backgrounds and great music. The Puzzles made sense and ranged in difficulty, none of them being punishingly hard. There also are not any dead end puzzles or deaths. So, if you enjoy a good adventure game that will take you back in time a couple decades to the "Golden Years" of the genre give The Order of the Thorne - The Kings Challenge a try. There is also a demo you can take for a test spin before purchasing the game. Thank you very much for the great game Infamous Quests team and I am looking forward to the next two games you have already announced and have in the works.

I'm really surprised that this game was published in 2016 because it is so retro that the graphics options even has support for CRT monitors(!!!)

This game is a pretty short point & click fantasy adventure game in which you play Finn the Bard, a competitor in the annual King's Challenge to win fame and reward. There is no violent gore and the story itself is rather lighthearted and wholesome, as Finn the Bard helps various NPCs and is generally an upbeat kinda guy to all he meets. I thought the voice acting was pretty decent for a small indie game (mic quality may vary with some actors but did not bother me overall).

There is an inventory system where you store items you find, occasionally combining them to create new items. There's a bit of an open world aspect to the game as you're able to travel around as you like -- provided you figure out a solution to a few obstacles on some paths -- and during gameplay you'll find a map to refer to. You will backtrack all over the place during play as there's no fast travel. I'm not aware of any kind of hints system within the game, but I never felt any of the puzzles were too obscure. There's a Lute system where Finn can play songs he learns to sometimes change his environment; if you play the Lute in "hard mode" you'll have a minigame of memory for each song.

The game advertises a sequel at the end, though when that will be published is anyone's guess. I did not run across any game-breaking bugs in my playthrough.

TIP: If you're like me and have a hard-wired habit of pressing 'M' in games to access the map, be aware that in this game pressing 'M' will turn off your mouse cursor! Press 'M' again to get it back.

This is the first installment of the in-development Order of the Thorne anthology series by Quest for Infamy developer Infamous Quests. The game takes place in the Faerie Realm where the King has proposed a challenge: If anyone can find his Queen, who has hidden somewhere in their kingdom, he will grant them one wish. And so Finn the Bard takes up the challenge out of a selfless wish to help every musician far and wide.

The King's Challenge is a traditional adventure game which reminded me quite a bit of the early King's Quest games and Loom. Take my comparison to King's Quest with a pinch of salt though, as I only played a bit of the original first game at a friend's house many years ago, and the AGD Interactive remakes of the first two games are to this day the only games of the franchise I have ever completed. The reason why I also compare this game to Loom is that you get to play songs on a lute, which will sometimes have effects that are required to solve puzzles, like putting people in a certain mood.

Choosing a song on the lute will display a sequence of notes that you will then have to repeat in the correct order for the song to be played. If that sounds tedious or difficult though, you can switch between hard and and easy mode at any point in the game. The easy mode will just play the song at the press of a button, freeing up your hands to do something else in the meantime.

Most puzzles in the game are of the conventional variety though, and even though none of them are particularly hard to figure out, I found them enjoyable and they all fit well in with the theme and setting of the game. This game uses a two-button control scheme, with left-click for interaction and right-click to examine things. There are no dialogue puzzles, but you have to talk to a rich cast of characters to acquire information that you need to get through the game.

One thing I greatly appreciated about this game is that there are a lot of scenes stretching out from the huge tree housing the Royal Court, which gave me a sense of exploring a vast kingdom. But even though there is a big area to cover in search of the Queen, the scenes are connected in such a way that it never takes you long to get back to the massive tree in the middle. I also never found myself "pixel hunting" in any of the scenes, since objects of interest either stand out in their placement or are signposted through dialogue or cutscenes.

The story is well written and concise, with several nods to fairy tales and classic adventure games. There wasn't anything in the writing that really stood out to me, but I appreciate a game that delivers its story efficiently and with respect for the player's time, and this game certainly does that. There are few things I find more annoying in a game than clicking on a hot-spot for the second or third time and be forced through the same long-winded speech again, so I value it all the more when a game gives you just enough information on repeat delivery of dialogue to nudge you along in the plot and puzzle solving.

Like Infamous Quest's previous game, this one also uses the now open-source AGS engine[github.com]. This means that the Linux version also has many of the limitations and issues of other games using the engine, and I've been unable to Alt+Tab out of the game or switch virtual desktops. Features like the Steam overlay and screen capture do not work, and achievements only occasionally unlock at the moment. You can launch a graphical settings panel that I don't think I've seen in any previous AGS games on Linux, which saves you the trouble of having to manually edit the acsetup.cfg file if you want to put the game in windowed mode or change graphics filters.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed The King's Challenge, and I wished I could have continued playing when it was over after three hours of play. The ending and post-credits scene allude to things to come in the next installment, Fortress of Fire, which I can now almost not wait to experience.

NOTE: This review was originally posted on GamingOnLinux[www.gamingonlinux.com].

The Order of the Thorne - The King's Challenge is the second game from developing/publishing company Infamous Quests; it is in fact their newest release, at the time of writing (August 2016). Their first game, titled Quest for Infamy, was released in 2014 and currently has a sequel in the works. While The Order of the Thorne - The King's Challenge has an entirely different story and characters, it still retains many of the attributes that make the games from Infamous Quests stand out in a crowd.

You are a bard named Finn, who has just recently journeyed into the land of Uir. This magical realm is home to many faeries, pixies, gnomes, elves, and trolls, among other fantasy creatures and races. Finn wishes to be as great of a bard as his late father, and he seeks to write out an amazing ballad. He visits King Quilhairn of the Faerie Kingdom, and chooses to take on The King's Challenge; a quest where he must find the King's wife, and bring her back safely. There are other contestants who have come from far and wide to also participate in the event.

Although finding the Queen is the primary goal of this title, it's also the least involved. You will solve many other side puzzles before you reach the end, a well as witness many events and get to know the opposing challengers more. During your time with The Order of the Thorne - The King's Challenge, you will find that you can neither fail a quest or die, it even states so at the beginning of the game. As such, the only true complexity that one will encounter is knowing where to go to trigger events, such as meeting the gnome or finding the seer, and figuring out how to solve them.

The game is a wonderful throwback to old-school point and click adventures, more so in the realm of Loom, The Bard's Tale, and King's Quest; albeit not as convoluted in gameplay or problem solving. There are only two buttons that you'll need to play the game, which are the left and right mouse buttons; left click will cause you to walk to, and interact with, any given place and object while right click will examine the object and instantly move you to the area you've clicked to walk to. There's also a small mechanic for the lute that Finn carries with him, and if you set "lute mode" to hard you can play along with the songs that he learns along the way; if you leave it on easy, the game will do the work for you.

Graphically, the game is retro-beautiful. It really does look like it was plucked right out of the early 1990's and re-released on Steam. The pixel art is verdant, plush, and lusciously detailed, everything from the character sprites to the amazing landscapes and portraits are a pleasure to look at time and time again. There are over 30 scenes, and easily more than 10 character portraits and sprites to enjoy. Even though there is no fighting, dying, points of no return, and essentially little challenge, The Order of the Thorne - The King's Challenge really excels when it comes to adventuring between scenes and interacting, both examining and touching, every object that is clickable. The reason for that being primarily that the game is filled with whimsical, sarcastic dialogue that is fully voice acted, whether it be the narrator or the different voices for each role.

Sadly, this title is a very short experience. I fully explored every area by clicking on every object twice, and I talked to every NPC while listening to their dialogue (instead of quick reading and skipping through it), and my playtime only amounted to roughly three hours. For the price of $10.99 CAD, even though the graphics and audio are both masterfully crafted in a retro brilliance, is far too much for a game of this short duration. However, I happened to grab this one on sale for $3.29 CAD, which I find to be an honorable price for the enjoyment that I had while playing the game.

The only real downfall that people may find with The Order of the Thorne - The King's Challenge, is that the game is actually episodic; something that is not announced on the store page at all. Even though you get a "full" game here, the ending is left wide open with a teaser scene from the next game, so there is obviously a next chapter planned; although it looks as if there will be a different protagonist. At this time, Infamous Quests are not working on the follow-up, but instead focusing their efforts on the next installment in the Quest for Infamy series. If you don't mind going on with the knowledge that there could potentially never be a follow-up to The King's Challenge, then I highly recommend this game to any fan of older point and click adventures.

The Horror Network Curator | Group Click for Gore

It's ok.

It's pretty easy and lacks a lot of what makes games of this type memorable - humour or a compelling story. The voice acting is ok, aside from the narrator, but suffers from the same issues as Quest for Infamy, which is poor audio quality that really clashes with the quality of the graphical art which is outstanding. At least the lip smacking is gone but some of it sounds like it was recorded on a $10 microphone while other sound clips are crystal clear. All of that would be minor if the story were excellent.

I hope the next installment is better, but the ending of the first one didn't leave me terribly excited for it.

As the king of the elves calls for his annual challenge, you are on your way to participate in the competition which this year requires you to find the queen, hidden somewhere in the kingdom of the elves. Equipped with nothing more than his lute, Finn the Bard gets ready for a very enjoyable adventure that entertained me more than many of the modern Telltale, Daedalic, etc. games.

'The Order of the Thorne - The King's Challenge' is an old style point and click adventure that reminds a lot of 'Kings Quest' and the old 'LucasArts' games. It’s short, lovely, funny and heart warming. Take a break from the AAA scene and relax for a couple of hours with caring elves, treacherous pixies, introvert fisherman, nasty gnomes, helpful turtles, beautiful ladies and a spider woman with the most sexiest voice ever (please tell me one more time I may not pass...)

Pros:
- good music
- good puzzles
- you can't die
- great humour
- great narrator
- very good voice acting
- visit a graveyard with tombstones for each developer
- most sexy voice of a spider lady in a PC game ever
- easy achievements

Neutral:
- pixel graphics (I won't put them on the cons list because they are still beautiful)
- some might say the game is too short. I think it's OK. It took me six hours to finish the game. But I took my time and enjoyed playing it slowly.

Cons:
none