Crapshoot: Kingdom O’ Magic, a Tolkien parody with less jokes than Tolkien

From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about rolling the dice to bring random obscure games back into the light. This week, the comedy game equivalent of putting 5318008 on a calculator. Then looking up and realising you’re on the Titanic. And it’s on fire.

Many years ago, a game that decided to combine adventure and RPG into one package. It was exciting. It was dramatic. It was funny. It spawned four sequels, and still lives on in players hearts as a true classic. Sadly, it was called Quest for Glory and this is not that game.

Kingdom O’ Magic is similar, except that instead of all that good stuff, imagine a giant comedy catapult being loaded with as much poo as the writers could find, then fired as hard as possible into the nearest wall. It’s the kind of game that’s guaranteed to get a few laughs, if only because of probability. Welcome to a world where life is cheap, but not as cheap as the jokes.

Kingdom O’ Magic is a game I’ve meant to look at for a while, but always stuck on the backburner—not because it doesn’t boast your weekly recommended dosage of odd and obscure, but because it’s really hard to write about comedy games. Typing out a bad joke gives no more flavour than repeating a good one out of context, and it’s a fundamental law of the universe that the only thing less funny than a bad joke is a hilarious quip mocking it. Your only chance is to have a joke so good… so amazing… that the creators hear it, commit suicide to escape the shame, and leave you all their money so the world can build a solid gold statue commemorating your unprecedented comedy genius.