Let’s do another discussion, this time the topic is spiritual successors. Have you played a game that is considered a spiritual successor to another game or game series? This can be an open-source recreation of a popular game or an indie game developed by the original developers or fans of the game.
I always loved the Quest for Glory games, originally called Hero’s Quest. I enjoyed the mixture of point-and-click adventure game mixed with RPG elements. The fantasy world with anachronistic elements, the humor, and the whole journey of the hero from humble beginnings to becoming a king.
So when I discovered Heroine’s Quest, I had to try it out, and I fell in love with the game. It feels like playing a new Quest for Glory game. You play as an anonymous heroine this time instead of a hero. You can choose your class at the beginning of the game and assign points to your skills like the original games. It has beautiful 2D art and amazing music. The story is inspired by Norse mythology and is enjoyable and funny. It has a few Easter eggs related to Quest for Glory. For example, if you give your character a name the same as one of the potential women you could marry in QFG5, the game gives you Hera’s ring, which you could buy in that game, implying you are playing a descendant of the original Hero.
OK then what was it? Didn’t like it?
Just didn’t get “addicted” like the first one maybe? It was over ten years later, and then again around COVID, and never since my teens have I had such a small library of games as I did when I played So You Want To Be a Hero?
I see. I always enjoyed the whole series.
I just realized, its kinda relavent that I had the deluxe version of QFG1 with the little cheat/hint book, and started playing it at a point in my life where I didn’t even understand most of the hints. Re-visitting that game over and over, losing and forgetting the little red-lense that made the answers in the book visible, squinting at the answer blocks like I was trying to magic-eye summon the answers, realizing a lot of the answers were implied in the questions … at one point I was manually-editing save-files as the “easier” option to do what I wanted in-game (whether this coincided with recreationally-consuming mass-quantities of cough-syryp, I don’t recall) …
There’s just a bajillion little bits of my experiences with that game from the ages of 8 to 16 that no other game has a chance in hell of re-creating, living-up-to or improving-upon, on its own(same goes for Heaven & Earth, Battle-Chess, Chess Master, Metal Marines, Rampart, and so many others, plus most of the main-stream hits of the time). I’m still going to play the others, can’t wait, but I’ve also been telling myself that for 30 years.