The puzzle design is also much, much better. Marco himself is a doofus which an obvious crush on Zanthia, who reluctantly rushes to his aid on more than couple of occasions. It’s clear from the get-go that The Hand is the one behind this whole mess, but everyone is completely oblivious to it, despite the copious amounts of evidence. There are also some running jokes regarding The Hand and his master, the incompetent Marco the Magician. The backgrounds are brightly colored and gorgeous, again preferring pixel art over scanned backgrounds like LucasArts and Sierra titles. The core of the earth is filled with dinosaurs, and the final area resembles something of a modern ski resort. (Zanthia herself delivers a stirring to ode to seasickness.) The entrance to the Center of the Earth is a strangely sleazy tourist trap, filled with sham guides and other such cheesiness. Her journeys take to her a rough-and-tumble pirate bar, where even the manliest men share their feelings with heartfelt poetry. Outside of Zanthia’s swamp, the world is much more fascinating. She starts off in a hippie-ish blouse and skirt, eventually graduating to tropical dresses and ski outfits when reaching different climates. Her outfit is always ruined upon reaching a new location, forcing a change of clothes with each area.
She’s cheery, if a bit exasperated by the situation, and remarkably resourceful, with a keen fashion sense too. In a Sierra game, this would have been a solve-it-quick-or-you’re-dead puzzle, but here, without hesitation, Zanthia just grabs its tongue, ties it into a knot, and leaves it to sink embarrassingly into the swamp from whence it came. Right outside her house is a giant monstrosity that pops out of the mud to devour her. And so her quest begins to retrieve her stuff, and save the land.įrom the get-go, Zanthia proves to be a more compelling character from Brandon. Zanthia, one of the more colorful characters from the first game and a skilled magician, is chosen for this undertaking, only to find her house robbed of all of her magical items. Conveniently, Marco the magician has just been joined by a human sized hand (think of a larger version of Thing from The Addams Family) who’s devised a plan to find an important artifact in the core of the planet.
But the change in development staff marked a different direction for the series, one which embraces a quirkier sense of humor, and creates a far more interesting game world.Īs King Brandon narrates in the intro, the land of Kyrandia is mysteriously disappearing into thin air, piece by piece, and all of the royal mystics are baffled. At first glance, the second Kyrandia game – The Hand of Fate – might seem identical to its predecessor, as it runs on the same engine, and looks extremely similar.