SOLVED - Someone in twitch chat - DRAGONSPHERE!!!!
Hi, I'm looking for a 1995-era adventure fantasy RPG for a particular title that seems lost to time!
Mostly sure I got it on an old PC Gamer demo disc but after intensive googling AND checking the list of that magazine's archives I still can't name it. The art style is similar to King's Quest, Quest for Glory and mostly like The Legend of Kyrandia but none of those quite fit except it is a 3rd person top down fixed camera type of scrolling adventure.
The plot if I remember is that you're a Prince possibly searching for the Queen. In the first Castle area was a maid scrubbing the floor, and a well you could go inside. To the east was where the evil villain lived past a lake filled with a kraken (throw the bubble shield on it), a door of vines asking trivia with 3 different voices, and a wolf fight.
To the north was a forest maze and at the end a tiny fairy asking riddles but couldn't get past. Possibly because it was a demo, maybe because I was bad.
To the west was a desert where you were supposed to try and forge an alliance with the nomads in their yurts. One of the riddles their chief asks you is if this woman is like the sun or the moon - you're supposed to choose the latter because "the sun is dangerous and burns men to death," vs "yes she is like a soft guiding like to get a man through the night."
I could really never tell why i couldn't progress further and so it is etched into my memory. A little help from any retro gamers, please? I fear this title may have just disappeared from history despite my clear recollections.