Game:

King's Quest IV (1988)

Duration: 29:37

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1

From the beach we find the unicorn fairly quick, and since it runs from us, the only way to get anywhere with it we need to use Cupid's bow and arrow, and Rosella is a good shot as she nails it first try. With it no longer running from us we use the bridle we found on the island in order to mount it to ride it off to the castle. "The unicorn seems paralyzed with fear at the sight of Lolotte's henchmen." is what the text box says when it reaches the path as we're taken to the castle again by our arms. That's more than gotta hurt a bit. Lolotte has another task for us and it's in an area we've been avoiding and that's the ogres' house.

Being around those areas is virtually a death sentence as the ogre and his wife can come from any direction and grab you. So you only should go into these areas when it's time. And getting into the house is more than a smidge tricky this time due to the lack of a parser system you can't type "toss bone" or whatever straight away, but with using the UI to our advantage we manage to give the big dog his bone fairly quickly before he gets too close.

Before we set about getting the hen, we need to get the axe that's upstairs, and then hide in the closet till we know the ogre is in the house. We watch him eat and get the hen before he falls asleep, so it's a matter of quickly snatching the hen up and making it out the door and well away from the house and areas of danger and going back to the castle, where Lolotte tasks us with the clearly more evil of tasks, getting Pandora's box! She has no idea where it is, but obviously we can get an inkling it's somewhere we haven't been yet in Tamir by gaming logic.

With the axe in hand we scare some nasty trees stiff as otherwise they would kill us when getting into arm's reach of em, and one blocks the path to progress where we find a skull cave. Hypothetically we could've come here before going to the castle but it would've been vacant. Well, stuff would be there but no one would be around. Heading there now though, the witches are inside and one chases after us while two pass a glass eye between each other. They rely on that eye to see and are otherwise blind without it.

Getting the eye here is a bit easier since we just need to get close enough to make a grab for it, but not too close or else they'll grab us and into the cauldron we go. Regardless we take the eye with us, but upon heading back inside they give us a black scarab which as they say, protects us from the undead and we'll need it. So far we haven't come across any undead but we do in fact need it. And this is when time suddenly advances to night when we exit the cave. As I said in the first part, we are in fact on a timer as the game does have a clock that advances. If we were really floundering around, it could've become night before we reached this point.

But since we accomplished everything that could be done in the day during the day, the game advances several hours to night here and well, we're now safe as can be, relatively speaking. Since indeed, the dead now roam and the only place we didn't really explore save for opening the secret passage and getting a shovel we had yet to use, we hadn't really went around the mansion. And well, it's now occupied with various ghosts who's items we have to find. In their graves no less. Even if you KNOW which grave to actually go to, even in day, it will be empty. So you can't sequence break, you have to get each item as each ghost appears.

And well, due to how things are in this version, I shockingly managed to get every item and not have a zombie get close at all, so hypothetically I could've done this portion without the scarab, hypothetically. But you need it since, while I never encountered it since I always advanced the game to night by getting the scarab, a zombie guards the mansion door from the bushes, and will kill you when you approach. Having the scarab scares it off. If not for that literal progress halter my avoiding the zombies the way I did here would've been impressive.

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