The Return of Sierra On-line?! Ken and Roberta Williams are Making a new Game!

[Falselogic]

No, this isn't about the Microsoft acquisition of Activision/Blizzard! Ken and Roberta Williams founders of Sierra On-line and creators of the King's Quest series have returned to making games after a more than 20 year hiatus.

This short clip has the general overview of the news, including that the game will be announced and revealed at this year's GDC. If you are interested in more their new company, Cygnus Entertainment, has a website and Ken is blogging about the development. I know PC adventure games were never that popular here but I thought there might be a few people who were interested.

I am cautiously optimistic to see what they are coming up with. It's never going to be KQ4, but then what is?

 

[lincolnic]

As someone who grew up playing a ton of Sierra On-line and LucasArts adventure games, I'm pretty excited about this! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Tato]

I'm cautiously interested. I recently finished Ken's book and another outside one written about Sierra, I definitely have a huge nostalgic weakpoint for their type of adventure games. Yes, I can recognize all the flaws in them and the myriad of ways they aren't as clever or forgiving as Lucasarts, but I still love the damn things.

Don't know what it says about me, but I wasn't interested in any of the attempts to bring King Quest back in the past decade or two. A Sierra game where I can't fuck myself over by not picking up a tiny item on the third screen isn't of interest to me.

 

[zonetrope]

I thought the first episode of the 2015 King's Quest was a pretty decent self-contained adventure in the vein of I, II and the first chunk of V. The episodes grew progressively worse from there, to the point where I never bothered with the final one.

 

[Falselogic]

I'm cautiously interested. I recently finished Ken's book and another outside one written about Sierra, I definitely have a huge nostalgic weakpoint for their type of adventure games. Yes, I can recognize all the flaws in them and the myriad of ways they aren't as clever or forgiving as Lucasarts, but I still love the damn things.

Don't know what it says about me, but I wasn't interested in any of the attempts to bring King Quest back in the past decade or two. A Sierra game where I can't fuck myself over by not picking up a tiny item on the third screen isn't of interest to me.

I'm reading Shawn Mill's The Sierra Adventure. And I have Ken's book on the to-do list.

I thought the first episode of the 2015 King's Quest was a pretty decent self-contained adventure in the vein of I, II and the first chunk of V. The episodes grew progressively worse from there, to the point where I never bothered with the final one.

I also enjoyed the first two or three episodes but it rapidly deteriorated. I don't recall every completing them either.

 

[MetManMas]

However it goes, it's gonna be interesting to see what Roberta and Ken do with their first project in like two decades. That's a long time to be out of the game-making game, especially with the ever growing graphical advances and time and monetary costs of game development.

 

[Kirin]

I feel like the kind of people who are excited about a new Ken and Roberta game have a pretty small overlap with the kind of people who are disappointed if their games aren't in 4kHD at 60fps, so that helps at least a bit with current gamings' cost issues at least.

 

[StriderDL]

Quest for Glory VI, please!

 

[Falselogic]

Quest for Glory VI, please!

It's not quite the same thing but you can find new games made by Lori and Cori Cole on Steam. It's called Hero-U and it seems to be the same sort of thing as QfG but this is the actual school that the adventurer from those graduated from (though not the correspondence course.)

 

[StriderDL]

So you're saying I need a computer...

 

[Falselogic]

Well for that one, yeah. It is only available on Steam, GOG, and Itch.io. I don't know about the new one that Ken and Roberta are making...

 

[gorha]

I loved Quest for Glory and Space Quest, though I never played King's Quest. It's hard to get too excited about this yet, when there's so little information about the game itself, but it's certainly worth keeping an eye on.

It's not quite the same thing but you can find new games made by Lori and Cori Cole on Steam. It's called Hero-U and it seems to be the same sort of thing as QfG but this is the actual school that the adventurer from those graduated from (though not the correspondence course.)

This reminds me that I backed the crowdfunding campaign for Hero-U and then didn't play it. Whoops! Should probably get on that.

 

[StriderDL]

Apparently it's on Switch as of last year. And it's on sale for $8. HMMMM.

 

[Büge]

It's not quite the same thing but you can find new games made by Lori and Cori Cole on Steam. It's called Hero-U and it seems to be the same sort of thing as QfG but this is the actual school that the adventurer from those graduated from (though not the correspondence course.)

I tried to play that and got paralyzed by the number of choices to make.

 

[Falselogic]

I tried to play that and got paralyzed by the number of choices to make.

I haven't played through Hero-U yet. I assume it is like the QfG games and the intent is to make the game replayable? I have it in my backlog I should pull it out and see.

 

[StriderDL]

I haven't started yet either, but I saw a screenshot of the character sheet page and all the attributes gave me nice QfG brain feel.

 

[Exposition Owl]

brain feel

I haven’t heard this term before, but I instantly love it.

 

[StriderDL]

Hero-U: It's a little clunky, but the puns, my gods, the PUNS! And yes it directly calls out to all the previous QfGs.

 

[Ludendorkk]

Ken Williams is a boob who sold Sierra to a dime-store Bernie Madoff and then made a shockpikachuface.jpg when the company was gutted (and still thinks the dude who swindled him is a nice guy -- after all, could someone who's rich be bad?)

Taking a look at his blog:

I am looking for a junior level Unity software engineer.


First the bad news:

• It’s a contract position with poor hourly pay, and no benefits. I haven’t raised any money for the project and don’t plan to. I have no budget for the project and am trying to avoid writing checks.

Well, good luck!

 

[John]

Ken Williams is a boob who sold Sierra to a dime-store Bernie Madoff and then made a shockpikachuface.jpg when the company was gutted (and still thinks the dude who swindled him is a nice guy -- after all, could someone who's rich be bad?)

Taking a look at his blog:



Well, good luck!

I was cautiously optimistic about their endeavors, but that blog entry/job posting lost all my interest. It's one thing to be a bit cheeky in a post, it's another to want to mostly pay your employee in exposure. And then when possibly the same engineer quits a few months later, writing another blog entry referencing how hard it is to find engineers from America, because the language barrier is just too much for him. I work with a ton of non-native English speakers, and sure, sometimes it's hard to parse over online meeting spaces, but you can just politely ask them to repeat the statement.

He was also the one who brought in Daryl Gates of the LA riots fame for Police Quest 4. I'll still vouch for Roberta's contributions to games, but Ken can disappear.

 

[Falselogic]

And it's a reimagining of Colossal Cave Adventure.

Okay...?

 

[Falselogic]

Metal Jesus has some additional info:

 

[Falselogic]

Not about Colossal Cave remake but I thought this video on upscaling AGI game graphics interesting.