I highly recommend getting this collection while it is still available on STEAM. While it is designed to work up to Windows 8, I really have no problems running most of them on Windows 10 or 11, due to the fact that they are running through an emulator which is pretty boiler plate in terms of it being able to play on almost anything.
As for the collection; it has literally everything. Even the enhanced SCI version of King's Quest 1 that is hard to find. These games come from an era where you were designed to sit comfortable, drink your coffee, eat your bagel/pastry, and think about the puzzles you were confronted with.
You will encounter deaths. You will encounter puzzles that stump you. You will encounter intentional softlocks, that you have absolutely no idea are softlocks and will induce rage or self-pitying laughter as you come to realize it. These were not considered "bad design" back then, because patience was a virtue, and word of mouth helped build mystery around the game.
Conversely, in spite of those things, you will also encounter genuinely funny jokes, whimsical adventure, surprising moments of "combat", alternative ways to solve puzzles or even to advance through the story, memorable locations and characters, and a design ethos and personality to these games that are wholly unlike that of LucasArts. Where LucasArts was safe and coddling, at times feeling a little mischievous, King's Quest is the older brother of LucasArts games, both figuratively and literally. It is not afraid to kill you in comedic or even brutal methods, abruptly and without pause. It is not afraid test your patience with absurdity, or even taunt or tantalize you into making mistakes. This is a series of games where you can defeat a yeti by throwing a pie in its face, while also getting ambushed by a dwarf who stole an item you didn't realize you needed an hour and a half later, unable to continue.
And it's hard not to love it for all its warts and all. It's like an insanely hot woman who is your life's dream to meet, finding out she's interested in you, but then realizing she farts in bed, and they smell like rancid cabbage, but you find out you don't really mind, and in fact after a while, you come to get used to it, even miss it when you're not with her.
If you do not want to stress with worrying about the potential softlocks, there are wikis dedicated to listing all of them outright so you can deftly avoid them and go unimpeded. They are more common in some titles than others, while in King's Quest 7, the whole game is fairly streamlined with no deaths OR dead ends. This series is more than just fun though; they are historical. Mystery House was the first graphical adventure game, but King's Quest 1 is the one that solidified the concept of what they were. This is the series where Monkey Island started...It's where Snatcher started...Hell, it's where Phoenix Wright started. Even if you don't like the gameplay, it should be interesting to anyone who considers themselves a gamer, or interested in gaming as a whole, to check out purely from a curiosity perspective. The historical significance of these games is huge, and while one could argue against not overlooking the faults of their gameplay, they cannot overlook the impact of their influence.
