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The idea of being a king is endlessly fascinating. What would you do? Who would you kill? And, most importantly, who can you trust? Worn down every day by myriad disputes, planning for the enemy at the gates, constantly paranoid about inside jobs. "What infinite heart's ease," moans Shakespeare's Henry V, "Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy?"King of Dragon Pass is an old and quite remarkable text-based game about the long and tortuous route to the titular crown. At its beginnings you take control of a small clan that settle into an unremarkable position in Dragon Pass, choosing their beliefs and lore in a brief history. From here everything is your decision, meaning that, apart from some helpful advice from a clan ring of seven, everything that goes wrong is down to you.
First released in 1999 on PC, this reworked version somewhat streamlines the original's interface as well as making the detailed art look immeasurably superior. King of Dragon Pass plays out through static interface screens that cover everything from trading caravans to building temples, and its plentiful incidents are communicated entirely through pictures and text. If you have thoughts of Zork or similar old-school text adventures, put them aside. What distinguishes the game is its non-linearity, huge range of situations to deal with, and the way these combine into quite incredible consequences. Basically it's like reading a choose-your-own-adventure book, with a strategy sim between the lines.
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