The game is based upon the fantasy novels Nine Princes in Amber and The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny.

The player prince Corwin is the son of King Oberon, who rules the kingdom of Amber.

[5] In 2006, a study about the history of interactive fiction maintained, that on the one hand, Nine Princes in Amber "is not a bad game – in fact, it is one of Telarium’s best, and working out the conversational 'puzzles' can actually be oddly satisfying at times", but on the other hand, the authors "seemed to be aiming so much higher."

[6] In 1987, Antic stated that the game had "uneven plot pacing and content ranging from the exciting to the banal".

The magazine criticized the port from 8-bit computers not fully using the Atari ST's more powerful graphics and sound, and "substandard" text parser.