King's Quest III: To Heir is Human (aka King's Quest III Remake/King's Quest III Gold Edition) is a VGA-style fangame remake/reimagining/retelling of Sierra Entertainment's King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human by Infamous Adventures. It was released on June 19, 2006. A slightly expanded remake offers new material including; new cutscenes, a few new characters, expanded narration or dialogue, additions and changes to some of the plot, full speech, new or modified locations, and Easter eggs. Most of the original puzzles remain intact (other than the spell system was streamlined) or item placement changed. The game received the AGS reward for best documentation in 2006.
Background
The young baby Gwydion is kidnapped from his castle by one of the castle's staff and brought to Manannan. The boy has a hard life growing up as his slave. As is the tradition, the evil wizard will kill the boy upon his eighteenth birthday. That date is fast approaching, and it is up to Gwydion to thwart Manannan and his brother Mordak's plans, escape and find his way home.
When his master isn't watching Alexander explores Llewdor to create spells that will allow him to defeat his master. Along the way he meets the Three Bears, an Oracle, defeats Medusa, and meets other citizens of the country.
Once he defeats Manannan and leaves Llewdor, he escapes pirates, an abominable snowman, and defeats a three-headed dragon, meets a wise gnome, saves his sister, all before he can be reunited with his family. Alexander spends weeks helping his father repair the damage to the kingdom. When they are finished, Alexander and his sister are called to the throne room in their finest regalia by their father. The magic mirror is restored and Graham passes his adventure's cap to his son.
Some time later, Mordack travels to Llewdor to rescue his brother to bring him back to his island. The evil wizard burns the house, so that none would use it again, and discover Manannan's secrets.
Features
All 16 color backgrounds redrawn using a 16-bit colour scheme, to match later games in the official series Enhanced close up cut-scenes and dialogue pictures help immerse the player into what is known as the first plot driven chapter of the King's Quest series Original music by professional music composer A new interface (no more typing) New content includes item placement changes for some of the magic spell items. Removal of the magic spell system (all magical spells are automatically prepared and cast without the need of the player to be precise, assuming they have all the ingredients on hand). New close-up cutscenes interspersed throughout the game (such as when defeating Manannan or after climbing up into the mountains). New locations added, which make up the boundaries around the north and south of Llewdor. Daventry is completely reimagined, with new geography, locations and layout. Some of new areas are inspired by King's Quest 5 and KQ1 SCI remake (the staircase is replaced with the suspension bridges in the cave to the Dragon's roost). Many new descriptions and narration on each screen, most of the old replaced or rewritten, some conversations are now extended, or new conversations as well. A new cutscene between Mordack and Mannanan in Mordack's castle during one of his journeys from Llewdor. A new and original prologue story showing one interpretation of how Gwydion was kidnapped, Alexander dreaming, and extended scene with closeups of Manannan talking Alexander overlooking the land below. A completely reimagined oracle scene showing Graham, Valanice and Rosella's decision to be sacrificed and the guards taking Rosella away. A reimagined reunion scene outside of the castle of Daventry after Rosella is rescued. Further changes to the ending which instead of taking place directly before KQ4, it moves events of KQ4 to several months after Gwydion's return. If all points are collected an additional cutscene is seen where Mordack returns to Mannanan's house and burns it down. The magic map's functionality has been changed, that it can only teleport to a few key locations in each area (depending on which release of the game it may not work out at sea at all, with a message saying its magic is limited at sea).
Development
Infamous Adventures released the game on June 18, 2006. The game was made by the team because they wanted to see if they could do it, and prove they had the drive and ability to recreate the game with updated graphics and sounds.
The official announcement for the game read:
