Sierra made ‘Phantasmagoria’ after being turned down by Stephen King

Sierra Entertainment apparently made iconic point-and-click adventure game Phantasmagoria after being turned down by Stephen King.

In a new interview, founders Roberta & Ken Williams revealed that their Sierra Entertainment studio wanted to do a horror game, so approached author Stephen King “many, many times” to collaborate on the project.

“He didn’t know who we were or what we were,” said Roberta, explaining why King turned down their offer. “So I just went ahead and made my own horror game Phantasmagoria, which actually went well,” she added.

Phantasmagoria was released in 1995 and sold 300,000 units in its first week. It went on to become the ninth best-selling video game of the year, with over 1million copies sold.

Sierra Entertainment garnered a distinct reputation in the ‘80s and ‘90s with its unique flavour of point-and-click adventure games. Ken and Roberta Williams’ company were responsible for IPs such as King’s Quest, Gabriel Knight, Leisure Suit Larry, and several Half-Life spin-offs.

Although the company officially dissolved in 2008, Activision briefly revived them to re-release some of their classic games. In 2014, Sierra Entertainment received the Industry Icon award during The Game Awards.

Roberta and Ken are currently working on their first game in 20 years, because they got “bored” during lockdown. They’re working on a a 3D remake of influential text adventure Colossal Cave Adventure which was originally released in 1976 and inspired Roberta’s first game Mystery House.

In other news, Tango Gameworks founder Shinji Mikami has said that he wants the studio to move away from the horror genre in the future.

“I hope to eventually change the image that Tango Gameworks currently has,” Mikami said. “At the moment, we are still seen as a studio that specialises only in survival horror,” following the recent launch of Ghostwire: Tokyo.

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