Your days enslaved to the wicked wizard Manannan are coming to an end, but can you lead Gwydion beyond his clutches and into the world of Llewdor beyond? AGD Interactive has lovingly preserved and updated the third installment in the classic King’s Quest series of adventure games originally produced by Sierra On-Line and made it available as a free download called King’s Quest III: To Heir Is Human Redux.

King’s Quest III is a classic point-and-click adventure game rendered in a pseudo-3D side scrolling format. The adventure begins in Manannon’s home, your prison for now. A control bar across the top of the screen enables you to change control from things like a hand to manipulate objects in your environment or boots to wander about. You’ll explore your environment searching for clues and interacting with objects that will help you escape. You have Save Game feature at your disposal; plan on using it often as peril is around every corner.

While the game has been modified to run on modern computers with an updated soundtrack and delightful voice narrations, King’s Quest III’s graphics are definitely old-school. Fans of the original game will feel right at home, but younger gamers might be put off by the pixelated graphics. Even back in 1986, reviewers felt the low-res graphics made tasks difficult like finding and identifying clues hidden throughout the game. There’s an upside to the low-res graphics, though: it requires only minimal system requirements to run the game smoothly, so nearly any Mac made in the past few years should work just fine. Don’t let the dated graphics fool you though. There is plenty of challenge here, and thankfully there are many walk-throughs online should you get stuck.

Macworld’s buying advice

AGD Interactive should be applauded for its heroic efforts to preserve a significant genre in computer game history. King’s Quest III Redux is a fitting tribute that will reward fans and expose younger gamers to an adventure classic.

[James Savage is the host of the RetroMacCast a weekly podcast devoted to older Macintosh computers. He used to play Sierra On-Line games on his Apple IIe.]