On Saturday, YouTuber “Space Quest Historian” shared that Ken and Roberta Williams—founders of Sierra Entertainment—would be making a new game. This news first came to him in dubious circumstances: via twitter DM, from the third developer involved in the project, Marcus Mera. He seemed skeptical, but Ken Williams then confirmed the story himself in response to the video, according to ScreenRant.
While the game isn’t ready to be officially announced—in part because it still only has “scratch graphics”—a “pre emptive faq” was shared on Facebook, allegedly by a friend of Williams on his behalf.
For those hoping for a revived Sierra, Williams “has no idea” if this is the beginning of a new company. He says he’s “happily retired”, and more excited about creating a game than building a company, according to the FAQ.
Sierra Entertainment was originally founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems (then Sierra On-Line), and is most recognised for the King’s Quest and Gabriel Knight series. Sierra is also famous as the publisher of Half-Life, the game which gave rise to Valve as we know it today. The brand still exists under Activision to republish some of their older games after a series of acquisitions and mergers, but the Williams’ had both left the company by 1997.
Despite what some say, point-and-click adventure games are far from dead, with both new entries to the tradition like Backbone and Lacuna coming out this year, and genre favourites like Wadjet Eye publishing for over ten years. Even so, it can only be exciting for fans of the most traditional of adventure games to potentially see their original designers come back into the field.
The goal is for a November release (“but that probably isn’t realistic”) for Mac and Windows.
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