A few of us here at Casualty Gamer are big fans of the point and click adventure games of old. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I heard that a freeware adventure game called A Tale Of Two Kingdoms (ATTK) that closely mimics they style of the classic Sierra adventures had been released almost a year ago and I completely missed it. What was even more surprising, albeit in a pleasant way, was that the game turned out to be really great.

ATTK plays a lot like the old Kings Quest games and even looks strikingly similar, although I’d say ATTK probably looks better than even the later Quest games. Anyone who spent some time with Space Quest, Kings Quest, Police Quest, etc, will feel right at home upon booting up ATTK.

The inventory system is slick and easy to manage, the puzzles can range anywhere from merely head scratching to brain melting (just the way I like it) and it has one of the deepest, most layered stories I’ve ever seen in an adventure game. This one even has a few mini games to play around with.

All that great story telling does come at a cost as the game can be a bit too dialogue heavy at times, but it’s still nothing compared to the Metal Gear series. Fortunately impatient gamers can skip through the dialogue fairly quickly if they’re so inclined.

I was hoping for more of a sense of humour with this game, but the quality shines through in so many other ways that my one minor gripe is certainly forgivable. If you’re still on the edge about ATTK or if you think it sounds too good to be true, follow the link at the bottom of the page to developer Crystal Shard’s site. They’ve got plenty of media for you to peruse, some very impressive quotes from credible gaming sites/magazines in their misc. section and you can even download the game there. As usual, it’s all free of charge, of course.

Just to give you a little heads up now, this isn’t one of those adventure games where you can’t die so watch your back out there. Hopefully this one can keep you all occupied until next Tuesday. See you next time.

Download It Here