King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella

After two ground-breaking games that re-defined the concept of adventure gaming, Roberta Williams' "King's Quest" series took a bit of a dip with the third installment, as both randomness and the time factor served to cramp the explorers feel to the series (e.g. just wandering around and figuring things out as you go). Unfortunately, this fourth game in the series did not learn from the mistakes of the past.

The plot of this game focuses on Rosella, the daughter of King Graham, who must venture to a far away land to retrieve a magical piece of fruit that can cure her ailing father. It seems like another great KQ setup, but once again the time element ruins it. This time, Williams introduces "real time", where some puzzles can be solved only in the nighttime or daylight hours. Just like in part three, this serves to make the game an agonizing race against the clock, not a wide open adventure.

I have always considered this game to be the low point of the series, although it did introduce some better graphics and the key implementation of the sound game, which provided a much richer audio experience.