Sierra’s classic adventure game franchise King’s Quest will return as an episodic series next month, developer The Odd Gentlemen announced today.
King’s Quest: A Knight to Remember is the first entry in a planned five-episode series for the PlayStation 4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC platforms. A compilation that includes a playable epilogue is now available for pre-order.
Publisher Activision revealed last year that the King’s Quest series would return alongside the revival of the long-dormant Sierra brand, naming The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom developer The Odd Gentlemen as the studio in charge of the franchise reboot.
King’s Quest: A Knight to Remember follows the early adventures of King’s Quest V protagonist King Graham. Now in his twilight years, Graham presents gameplay scenarios as stories told to his granddaughter, and players will make decisions and solve puzzles throughout.
The first King’s Quest game premiered in 1983 for the IBM PCjr, and later made its way to Apple II, DOS, and Amiga platforms. Widely cited as the genesis of the graphical adventure game genre, King’s Quest expanded on the concepts introduced in early interactive fiction games with animated on-screen characters controlled via a text-based interface. Its popularity laid the groundwork for the graphical adventure game genre’s explosion of popularity in the late ’80s and ’90s with classics like Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Gabriel Knight.
A number of sequels followed throughout the ’80s and ’90s. King’s Quest V was especially successful, selling over 500,000 copies across its diskette and CD-ROM releases. The original series ended with 1998’s King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity, and developer Sierra shuttered in 1999 as the adventure game genre declined in popularity.
King’s Quest: A Knight to Remember will premiere digitally via the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, and Steam on July 28.
