Sir Graham is controlled by the arrow keys on the keyboard (alternatively by a joystick). If he walks off a corner of the screen, he'll arrive in a new area. Walking into a rapid stream or off the edge of a cliff may very well result in instant death for Graham, so it's important to watch your (his) step. In some areas of Daventry, there can also appear dangerous creatures that will chase and try to catch you. If they do, you are almost certainly killed, so you have to walk off a corner of the screen quickly if this happens, saving your life.
Interacting with your environment in a more advanced way is done through text commands typed in on the keyboard. This communication system, known as a parser interface, works just like in old text adventures such as Colossal Caves or the earlier Sierra On-Line adventure games like Mystery House. So if you're standing in front of a door and want to get in, you just type open door or something similar and the door will hopefully swing open, allowing you to walk inside. Your text message is seen at a prompt at the bottom of the screen while you type it in. Unlike games like Mystery House though, you often have to combine the typing of your commands by standing in the right area of the screen to get something done. So, if you're not standing directly next to the previously mentioned door and type open door, the game will probably display a pop-up text message telling you that you're not standing close enough to the door rather than walk Graham to the door automatically.
An improvement from the early Sierra On-Line games is that the text parser is much less ”touchy” about the way you formulate your commands. In Mystery House, you had to type exactly open door to get a door opened, but in King's Quest: Quest for the Crown, you can often use several combinations, such as open the door, open up the door and so on. The game can ”filter away” many unnecessary words that you may type in and thereby still understanding your request. However, it can sometimes be hard to get yourself understood, and there are many things that you might want to type that the game designers never thought of when designing the game or simply considered irrelevant to make up a response to. But you should still try typing everything you can think of that seems interesting in order to find clues, do important things or simply get amused by the witty answers that you may get from the game.
By looking closely at things (e.i. by typing look flower, look inside hole etc. instead of just watching the graphics on the screen) you can often get important clues to the relevance of these things. Maybe you've found a rare flower that you should pick up and carry with you…
While you're typing messages at the prompt of the bottom of the screen, the game doesn't ”freeze time”. You can still walk around with the arrow keys, and if you're being chased by a monster you shouldn't waste time looking at the scenery but rather flee for your life.
There's also
a nifty menu system in the game, toggled on and off by pressing the ESC
key on the keyboard. Unlike with the parser interface, bringing up the
menus does freeze the game, so you can navigate the menus at any
time without hurry. In the menus you can get information about the game,
save/restore the current state of the game, quit the game, look at your
inventory (see what things you're currently carrying around in the game),
toggle the sound on and off and many other things. Most of these things
can also be done through the parser interface, but the menus are often
more convenient. There are also ”hot keys” for many of these things. For
example, pressing F2 toggles the sound on and off.