The Legend of Kyrandia is a point-and-click adventure. Instead of commands or icons, all actions are made by clicking the left mousebutton on items, and will enable Brandon to examine, comment, take, and in some cases use an object. This minimalistic interface also results to a limited interactivity; also, it's not clear which items are interactible, and if you click on an item which is not recognized by the program, Brandon will just simply walk where you clicked.
The main difficulty factor of the game is you limited inventory, which holds only up to 10 items. You encounter items which might be used later, mainly gems and flowers. However their purpose, and which of them are useful, is not clear from the beginning, and are no hints for them; it will be discovered only through trial and error, and chance. To make matters worse, there are several red herrings.
If you waste some important items (such as ingredients of a potion) they usually will be "regenerated" so you can/should travel back and collect them, and then travel all the way back to where you were, to use them. The main example of this, is the notorious puzzle where you must make Zanthia's potions with items encountered since the beginning of the game.
There are also a few unique items, and some points "of no return" which means that it can be easy to reach a dead end.
List of useless items[edit]
- Flute (after using it once and entering the Serpent's Grotto)
- Emerald (in emerald cave)
- Scroll (after using it once and freezing the lava river)
- Flask with water (useless) or poison (kills Brandon)
- Empty flask once you used its potion
- Ankh hairpin (in Zanthia's bedroom)
- Dead Fish (in Brynn's bedroom)
- Hourglass (in grandfather's bedroom)