What the New King's Quest Series needs is more fairy tale inspiration. That was something that made King's Quest, the series that it was.
Other than blatant rips from Monty Python, Princess Bride, and modern pop culture. It's weird twist on generic fantasy tropes such as bridge trolls, goblins, and unicorns (make that 'majestic unicorns'), and odd one off references to 'magic elves', 'were-bears', 'crystal dragons', 'witches', 'ice orcs', 'minotaurs', 'spriggan' and 'yetis', or 'griffin' or 'hydra' (many of which are more King's Quest name drops than fairy tale referencing).
I can't think of anything in it that seemed to take directly fairy tale inspiration especially in the puzzle design, and stories (other than pretty much Princess Bride). Let me know if I actually missed any...