King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella

King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella is an adventure game developed by Sierra On-Line and published originally for PCs and home computers in 1988 as the fourth entry in the King's Quest series. The game follows Rosella, princess of Daventry, as she journeys through the pseudo-medieval fairy tale-inspired fantasy realm of Tamir, on a quest to find a magic fruit that can heal her father King Graham. It is presented as an interconnected set of locations, or flip-screens, with a pseudo-3D art style. The player interacts with locations and items using text commands, and must avoid numerous hazards and obstacles in their quest.

King's Quest IV was developed by Sierra using two game engines: an expanded version of the engine that was originally developed for King's Quest I (1984), the Adventure Game Interpreter, and a new engine that was capable of better animation and sound but could not run on older computers, the Sierra Creative Interpreter. It was designed by Sierra co-founder Roberta Williams as a blend of common fairy tales and fantasy tropes, and she believed that having a woman protagonist would attract female players without having an impact on the male playerbase. She added a strict in-game time limit to give players a sense of urgency in completing the quest. To showcase the sound capabilities of the new engine, Sierra hired composer William Goldstein to write 40 minutes of music for the game.