Games | A Tale of Two Kingdoms | | Author: | Crystal Shard | | Resolution: | 320x200 at 16-bit color | | Downloaded: | 210010 times (95 Mb) | | Genres: | Fantasy, Drama, Original | Length: | Full length games |
|  | | Added on: | 15 July 2007 | | Website: | http://crystalshard.net/atotk.php | | Content advisory: |  None  None  Rare, mild | | Ratings: | AGS Panel:   (what is this?)
Player rating: 81% | | Awards won: |  Best Puzzles 2007
Best Animation 2007
Best Use of Sound 2007
Best Documentation 2007 |
A Tale of Two Kingdoms is an epic faerie tale, in the classic style of the famous Sierra and LucasArts graphical adventure games. It is a full-length game with an atmosphere of fairy tales, magic, and intrigue.
Featuring five different endings; several sidequests and alternate solutions; teamwork with non-player characters; 75 minutes of high quality music; and director's commentary.
PC Zone UK has named it the Freeware Game of the Month, November 2007.
Games For Windows magazine has done a feature on ATOTK, January 2008.
GamePro magazine has done a feature on ATOTK, January 2008.
The ancient kingdom of Theylinn is beset by enemies both from within and without. Within the castle walls, nobles vie for the old King's favor, and not everybody is happy with the sole heir to the throne, princess Rhiannon.
Meanwhile, danger approaches, in the form of an invading army, a hostile giant, and a mercenary troop who are ancient enemies of the Theylann king.
And there is mystery yet. For hidden within the borders of Theylinn lies a second kingdom, named Thierna na Oge, where the faeries reign. Little is known about this shrouded, exotic realm.
Updated as of Jan 21st, 2012. Patch available at the website link, and already included in the full downloads below. Includes Hungarian translation.
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| | User ratings for A Tale of Two Kingdoms: | From 60 peoples votes so far: (vote here)| Visual: | 90% | | Immersion: | 76% | | Puzzles & Pacing: | 73% | | Overall Enjoyment: | 81% |
You can see a detailed breakdown of the votes. |
| A Tale of Two Kingdoms was brought to you by: | | | Other games by Crystal Shard: |
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MOTLPAA (Non-adventure games)
Quasar (Newly added games)
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Root of all Evil (Medium length games)
Warthogs (Medium length games)
| | User comments about A Tale of Two Kingdoms: |
Posted by Cogliostro on 2011-07-11 at 10:06 (IP logged):
For the record I cannot believe I did not play this gem earlier. When I first stumbled across it my immediate reaction was - Wow! This'll eat weeks of my time, and put it off until just recently
Others have praised the game for music and playability and graphics, let me applaud you for RESEARCH!
Who in the bloody blue blazes pulls Taliesin out of mythology and works him into a story?! Who uses the fae and bothers to work in pranks and changelings babes and being caught for centuries by the queen?!
My hats off to you non-linear play as well - It drives me nuts some times - but it was beautifully managed.
Posted by Arjunaz78 on 2011-06-24 at 19:53 (IP logged):
both of download link (this site & game homepage) are broken..
Posted by Natalie on 2011-03-04 at 06:53 (IP logged):
What a great game. Well written, enjoyable graphics, characters, and puzzles. Similiar to Sierra games that I loved, but also in a category all its own. Unfortunately, games like this are so hard to find but I sure wish there were more adventure games like this!
There was only one minor con:
[hide] I wasn't allowed to save my game in the goblin camp, and the opportunity to escape was short. I wished I could have saved it while in the cage so I didn't have to go through that whole long sequence of getting caught, waiting for dark, etc. each time before getting another chance to escape. I'm sure from the author's point of view, getting the object needed and getting out of there seemed pretty straightforward, since the object was in plain sight. However, what threw me off was the fact that you could enter the tent- I thought there must be something you had to do in there. [/hide]
Posted by gamemaster468 on 2011-01-30 at 22:11 (IP logged):
Hey there. I havn't beaten the game yet, but so far, the game is great. I'm lovin every minute of it. I really enjoy the music as well. My favorite part so far is when you have to escape the castle. Very well done. My only complaint about the game is that I think the intro cutscene is a bit to long. But other than that, great job.
Posted by Tenchi on 2010-07-19 at 09:39 (IP logged):
Absolutely LOVED this game..I rave about this game to anyone who will listen..
Posted by marbar on 2010-05-21 at 22:13 (IP logged):
One of my favourites! I think every fan of ags games and classical point&click adventure should try it...for me a must-have! :-)
Posted by Anagram-Daine on 2010-05-04 at 01:19 (IP logged):
It gave me that nostalgic Kings Quest V adventure fix I needed. It is a grand adventure game that is an instant classic.
It also contains modern day gaming mechanics, by which I mean; multiple endings, side quests and multiple solutions. I also liked the Honor and Wisdom points; the best solution gives out the most points, which is a really neat factor, and adds replay value.
Its a great game, its lengthy, and I wish there were more like it.
Posted by Valentijn on 2010-01-29 at 12:19 (IP logged):
I played this game over two years ago and I have fond memories of playing it. There's just so much in it that it doesn't matter at all that the main story is, basically, rather shallow. I loved trying to catch all the cutscenes. The multiple solutions & multiple endings made me want to play this game again right after finishing it the first time.
One tiny annoyance: the 'oldspeak' (mayhaps, methinks, thee and thou). It feels forced and is often used incorrectly ('thou' being used as the polite form, when it should be 'you'!)
Overall, this is an AGS masterpiece that holds its own alongside the Classics of Sierra.
Posted by Justin on 2009-09-17 at 22:41 (IP logged):
Fantastic game! Right down to the easy installer and shortcuts. This game has it all! Great graphics, animations, cut-scenes, music, and puzzles! This should be on the top of your to-play list. Obviously a lot of effort was used to make this game.
Posted by AdamGeld on 2009-04-01 at 02:34 (IP logged):
A superb game! The visuals are truly a feast for the eyes, the music and sounds are fantastic, and the difficulty is well balanced. One of the best AGS games I have played.
Posted by foxyfox555 on 2009-02-09 at 18:20 (IP logged):
Hello, my name is Joel, from the french AGS forum.
I want to translate your game in french.
If you agree, send me an email to this address:
kaldaya@hotmail.fr
and I contact you. Thank you. :)
Posted by shayavr on 2008-11-19 at 07:00 (IP logged):
The graphics is excellent and it is obvious a lot of work has been done here.
But for me it was too "heavy".
The lack of humor really made me quit on this game.
And the characters faces always seem to be so sad...
Posted by mac on 2008-11-10 at 18:42 (IP logged):
this is a classic.one of the best games i have seen,i've seen them all,so far.great game.
Posted by Stan on 2008-10-22 at 12:36 (IP logged):
This is a boring Kings Quest wannabe!
Posted by Sephie on 2008-10-13 at 04:20 (IP logged):
it might look something like The Longest Journey but this game is more A Kings Quest-esque old school fare with eye pleasing art and some interesting characters. Sadly the most interesting and lovable characters are probably the ones you will see least of in this game
The story is for want of a better word a little on the fruity fantasy side. Far too fairies for my personal taste each one more irritating than the next.
intentional humour is sparsely scattered, a game like this needs humour in a large dose badly as a diversion from the various annoyances that will niggle at you as you play. This would include the fact that you spend a lot of time trudging around between locations. At times the manner in which the characters speak can be gruesomely hackneyed and horrible to witness.
All this aside the game is pretty, it's stable and most of the puzzles make sense with a few noted exceptions. It looks very nice and that is to it's credit.
Posted by Just Adventure on 2008-06-04 at 18:01 (IP logged):
A Tale of Two Kingdoms simply blew me away. I know money shouldn’t be a measure of quality, but here is an independently produced game available for free that I could have easily shelled out 30-40 dollars for back in the middle-late 90’s.
It also proves that a time-honored format that many of us geeks wistfully pine for can be successfully married with new material. If it isn’t the first of its kind, it’s still a milestone. Its hefty download time can be excused by the facts that a) it’s free and b) its brilliant.
Posted by wnsk on 2008-04-25 at 18:58 (IP logged):
The assassin 'puzzle' was too difficult (clues were not helpful), and not finding out who he was leaves a very dissatisfying taste to the conclusion.
There were too many 'optional' subplots -- they should be made easier to solve and integrated into the main plot.
Posted by HR on 2008-04-18 at 18:22 (IP logged):
The graphics were good, and the sound track was amazing. The set up of the plot was really good too.
Unfortunately, I think some of the puzzles did not make much sense. I also thought the plot, and especially the character, did not develop very well.
Posted by rbaleksandar on 2008-04-01 at 23:50 (IP logged):
Facinating! It reminds me of Quest for Glory. Ahhh, the old days. Thanks a lot. Everything is excelent - gameplay, story (a little bit trivial, but still very interessting), puzzles, sounds and visual. Thanks :)
Posted by Curly on 2008-03-10 at 17:00 (IP logged):
It tries to mimic Sierra’s style as close as possible and does it almost flawlessly. Beautiful hand-drawn backgrounds and melancholic soundtrack create fairytale-like atmosphere and everything from characters’ animation to sudden deaths lets the player feel like in early nineties. All this wasn’t done just for sake of making another mediocre quest clone. Quite the contrary – it looks like this style was chosen purposedly as the most suitable for telling full-length entertaining story. Game features colourful gameworld with many intriguing characters, interesting puzzles ranging from easy to really clever (some with alternate solutions), sidequests and teamwork with non-player characters.
Posted by eb on 2008-03-08 at 20:47 (IP logged):
tried it, and was a bit disappointed.
some of my major concerns were the really badly designed puzzles (exactly those kind of puzzles that killed off adventure games in the first place), i mean, why would a vase lie in the middle of the a floor, and in it hidden the king's scepter, which everyone is frantically looking for. how? how did everyone who is looking for this scepter not see the vase in the middle of the floor in an otherwise empty hallway? how did the king manage to lose his scepter into a vase? how did the scepter fit into the vase? where did the vase come from? this is the 1st puzzle in the game (felt really tacked on) but it just didn't get any better.
storywise i there's a lot of things that doesn't make sense. sometimes you just don't know what your suppose to be doing.
some of the backgrounds were really beautiful, unfortunately some of them just wasn't. inconsistency is the game's biggest flaw. where some backgrounds would have fitted nicely in a commercial games, others (like the city street bgs) just felt very amateurish.
so too the sprites. too many people with different sprite style, i guess. i could recognise big brother's sprites a mile away.
the whole murder mystery thing seemed like a disaster.
it seems a "selling point" of the game is its "multiple solutions" to puzzles. its all good and well having multiple puzzle solutions, but when the puzzles itself is really badly designed, it kinda makes the whole ordeal pointless.
in the end, i think this game has great potential, but inconsistent graphics, poor puzzles and a dicy murder mystery conclusion really breaks the experience. game design is what it comes down to i guess.
it seems the designer read a lot of things of what people wanted in an adventure games (eg multiple solutions) and just threw everything into the game.
though, commendable effort! and like you've said, 10000 downloads can't be wrong. just wondring what they can't be wrong about.
Posted by Anonymous on 2008-01-26 at 04:42 (IP logged):
The game seemed good, it got good ratings and visually was great. But i found the game diificult, and even with a walkthrough had a hard time at the end, well at least trying to get the good end. It was easy to miss important objects too. there were a few objects that if you didn't get in the beginning of the game, you were screwed as far as getting the right ending, or even not able to do certain side quests. i finished with the worst end, and didn't want to play again.
Posted by Andy on 2008-01-05 at 03:09 (IP logged):
Now this is an adventure game I won't soon forget in a hurry! I am so proud I made it to the end without any hints or tips! But I know it was not the best ending, so I'll keep trekking along to find a better one before I go galore on the walkthrough.
This game has so much effort and charm to it that I feel like it's bad that I have played this game for free. But tho, the joys of AGS/BigBlueCup.
I love that you can muddle through the game without having to solve every puzzle to progress, but still with good difficulty. It sure beats trying to find that one last thing to do to progress in a game and you're exploring all over the place on a huge map with no idea where to look.
Then there is the music and cutscenes and animation that just make this game excel in my book.
Posted by LittleQueen on 2008-01-04 at 01:15 (IP logged):
I think thought the game was awesome! The character art, the background art ... beautiful!!
I LOVE adventure games of this sort. I am HOOKED! Fabulous work, guys!!
Posted by ashes48 on 2007-12-11 at 00:30 (IP logged):
awesome work on this game, the random side quests were a great thing in my book!
Posted by JayBTV on 2007-11-21 at 16:55 (IP logged):
I played through this game and thought is was amazing. Great graphics, fantastic music, and tons of different paths.
Definitely recommended!!!
Posted by Dee on 2007-10-21 at 15:48 (IP logged):
Hmmm, I'm at the Fey part and this is what I feel about the game. The graphics have some irregularity between the style of the screens and sprites but they are quite all right.
Much of the music I've heard so far generally suits the mood while some of it seems to over-rely on effects and well, the song in the city sounded way too pop bland for my tastes.
In terms of puzzles, it's a bit messy. Many of them are quite fun, really. But it's better to only scatter and mix a few of them while ensuring that the other puzzles open up in progression once you've completed the first batch or so.
Furthermore, the events or clues required to solve the puzzles should not be overtly random.
The story, though, sounds pretty interesting. I guess I'll just have to see if I can beat this darn maze.
Posted by Nightfable on 2007-09-23 at 17:55 (IP logged):
Absolutely wonderful game, I've had tons of fun playing it! I love the backgrounds, colors, animated portraits, music... the list goes on and on. Especially the fact that there's so much to do and that there's so many ways to complete the game.
Bravo, a true masterpiece!!!
Posted by seaduck on 2007-09-22 at 15:13 (IP logged):
In spite of the vibrant graphics, this game is so incredibly boring, that I ran away screeming after being tortured with some 15 minutes of the "intro" (understand: poorly written and boring voiceover).
So there were some kings and their kingdoms and some were bad and some were good and they fought some great battles and they fought for some long years and... and why should I care I say?
But then, Sierra-style games are not my cup of tea anyway...
Posted by King Looie on 2007-08-27 at 23:46 (IP logged):
I started to play this game and thoroughly enjoy it. As almost everyone else has already mentioned, the overall quality is very good.
What I really like about the game, though some seem to be put off by it, is that you cant get a 100% score by trial and error. Yes, some puzzles can be considered "unfair" because there is no clear hint to try this or that.. the only way to find these things is to make up your mind about what you like to do and then try to make it work.
Most games can be solved by simply trying everything again and again, but in this game it is possible to continue with a suboptimal solution so you'll have to be really careful if you want a perfect score. Two thumbs up.. as far as I've come so far (restarted 3 times already..) this design seems to be effective (if the idea actually was to prevent trial-and-error solutions..).
There.. btw, I just made a forum account just to write this comment. ;)
Posted by JJ on 2007-08-13 at 10:11 (IP logged):
Awesome Graphics, divine music, great gameplay, loveable characters. A wonderful adventuring experience you'll have if you play this.
On the flipside, some of the puzzles were quite ambiguous. You will most possibly complete the game without solving 50% of the puzzles which are optional (but which you'd want to solve), then if you read the walkthru to find out what you missed, you will mostly go "now how the hell was I supposed to know that!"
Posted by mark on 2007-08-12 at 23:44 (IP logged):
in many ways reminiscent of the best of the king's quest series. very professionally done game.
Posted by Quinny on 2007-08-10 at 12:12 (IP logged):
This is an amazing and innovative game. Aside from the awesome graphics and great music this game has a gripping story. Definitely a must play.
Just some things I didn't like about this game:
- You need to die or otherwise end the game to solve puzzles.
- Some puzzles not being hinted at needing to be solved.
- Not hotspot descriptions, meaning you had to click on almost everything on screen to see what's there.
The amount of things to do in this game and the different ways to accomplish tasks are staggering. I think this game will stand the test of time as one of the best AGS games ever.
Posted by paolo on 2007-08-06 at 14:17 (IP logged):
The voting system needs some sort of A* grade - "superb" simply isn't high enough when it comes to commenting on the graphics and animations in this game. They are simply stunning.
However, my experience of playing the game was similar to that of another reviewer - I spent a lot of time wandering around wondering what I was supposed to be doing, and far too much time scouring the Hints & Tips forum, alas. I completed the game with a low score and saw there was lots I hadn't done, but it wasn't clear to me what how I could have done it.
But maybe that was just me. An enormous amount of effort from a large team of people has gone into this huge "King's Quest"-like game and what they have achieved is truly impressive. Play it, then play it again to see what you have missed and whether you can improve on your score.
Posted by Anonymous on 2007-08-05 at 01:57 (IP logged):
This game is good. If you like Kings Quest games, you'll enjoy this one.
Posted by Zaerth on 2007-07-29 at 23:13 (IP logged):
One of the better adventure games I've played in a while. There were many different sidequests, endings, and other choices making it very interesting and fun. The story was great, being very well developed and felt familiar without being cliche. Overall, I recommend it to anyone, especially someone who's looking for a solid, Sierra-esque adventure.
Posted by Darren the Duck on 2007-07-26 at 19:48 (IP logged):
Others will no doubt disagree, but I found this game excruciatingly dull and there were far too many random events and way too much hopeless wandering around to my liking.
I admire the graphics, soundtrack and astonishing number of game responses, but the whole game leaves me cold.
Posted by Balin on 2007-07-23 at 22:47 (IP logged):
Great game, and a lot of fun to play! Thanks! :)
Posted by Alliance on 2007-07-16 at 20:34 (IP logged):
Great work, though I need to finish it...
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