Quest for Glory I: So You Want To Be A Hero is a computer game originally released by Sierra in 1989. The game was innovative in its combination of elements of roleplaying games, which focus on developing a character's traits and abilities, and adventure games, which focus on solving puzzles to advance the story. The hero completes various quests in a fairy tale environment in order to save the town of Spielburg from a gang of brigands. A remake with improved graphics was released in 1992, and that is the basis of this page.
My main purpose here is to follow up on an idea which came to me in 2015 in the context of a user interface course in graduate school. I am taking much of the interface of the game, including the graphics for the game's text boxes and menus, and applying it to a website. Originally this applied only to Quest for Glory IV, but here I am applying it to Quest for Glory I.
In the 1992 version of the game everything appears different depending on whether it is day or night, including the cursors, menus and text boxes. This was an unusual idea for games of the time and must have made it more engaging. I am trying to approximate this with the "night mode" option, which you can activate by clicking the text in the footer.
Downloads
All five of the original games in the series can be had cheaply from GOG.com. This set of the games includes a remake of the first title with far better graphics, but unfortunately those of the second game are still rather primitive. You can however download a greatly improved 2008 remake of Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire.
A new "role-playing adventure game" entitled Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption has been developed by Sierra designers Corey and Lori Cole, who were responsible for the Quest for Glory series. The title has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from both players and critics. The game is intended to be the first of five similar titles, and a more casual game entitled Summer Daze at Hero-U is listed on Steam as "coming soon."
A well-received 2013 game based on the series, entitled Heroine's Quest is free to download. The story, based on Norse mythology, takes place in a region cursed by a frost giant to be in endless winter. The heroine must thwart the giant's attempts to bring about the end of the world and restore the normal change of seasons.
Many more QfG-related resources including screenshots can be found at a fan page called Quest for More Glory, or at Blake's Sanctum, while help for various problems, including the game's manual, is available at Sierrahelp.com. Sierragamers.com supplies the hint book.
Game Images
Here are some screenshots taken from the game, to give a sense of what this page is attempting to emulate. A screenshot from the 1989 version is included to show the contrast betweeen that and the 1992 remake.
Icons
Here are some icons from the game. The icons are used to interact with the environment in different ways; for example, the mouth icon is used to speak with someone, while the walking icon you can see in this page's navigation menu is used to walk somewhere. The dragon's head is a waiting icon, displayed during predetermined sequences in the game in which the player cannot intervene. The icons appear different depending on whether it is day or night in the game, so they are presented in pairs below.
An attempt has already been made by others to implement some of these as extensions to an operating system.
