Is Laura Bow ready for another adventure?

Rumors swirl about the possibility of classic adventure game IPs being made available by Microsoft. Is Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex going to be the first? We went to the source to find out.

LAURA BOW IS BACK!
IN AN ALL NEW ADVENTURE.

Or is she?   

We’ve all been waiting with bated breath for any news about the game licenses that were recently acquired from Activision by Microsoft. As fans of the classic Sierra On-Line adventure games, we want to know the fates of Laura Bow, Gabriel Knight, King Graham, Roger Wilco and the others. On August 1st we got some real buzz in the form of a newsletter released by Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex developer NineZyme Entertainment.

From that we learned there was a meeting between NineZyme, Microsoft, and Sierra On-Line founders and original rights owners to the Laura Bow series, Ken and Roberta Williams. Whoa! That got our attention. But meetings happen all the time and rarely go anywhere. Would this be any different? Excitingly, perhaps YES in this case, as there were some quotes that made the adventure game community explode:

They (Microsoft) essentially offered us exactly what we wanted, before we even had a chance to tell them what we wanted.

...

Apparently, they had already started making some rough plans for all of their newly acquired IPs (from the Activision purchase).

...

And, if everything goes well enough, there could very well be some other Sierra On-Line back-catalog games getting a refresher too!

The full newsletter transcript can be found below.

Cue the meme: Take my money, right? 

Well, not so fast. In my years covering sports, I’ve learned to take a moment and reach out to the actual sources for additional context and clarity, because sometimes original reports can be colored with a little too much enthusiasm. So that’s what I did in this case. In order to get the full story, I contacted NineZyne and asked for clarification. 

Turns out, it was right to be methodical because the team told me that they are concerned that releasing the newsletter update will actually hurt the negotiations “because it quickly got taken out of context by the community.” 

I’m not sure what was taken out of context, but I threw a couple more questions at them as a follow-up:

AGH: Last we heard was that production of The Mechanical Codex is on hold. Is that still the case?

NineZyme: Laura Bow is still mostly on hold, for the time being, until something more concrete is decided on the licensing. At the moment, we are focused on a different game, Tile Tales: Pirates. The reason for the pause is, we have our hopes set on making an official Laura Bow game, and we want to try everything that we can before abandoning that idea.

AGH: If NineZyme cannot secure the IP, will we see the game under a different name?

NineZyne: If it really doesn't work out, then we plan to rebrand the game and release it as something else. The more we build now, the more we have to redo-rework-rebrand; hence the pause. Also, we could use some additional funding for the project, and we're thinking that Tile Tales could assist with that.

AGH: So what is the official statement in the first week of August, 2024?

NineZyme: All we can really say is... we are talking with Microsoft about the possibilities, and so far it's going well. We're hopeful!

So, nothing is guaranteed, but at the very least it appears this meeting represented a step forward, with Microsoft showing a willingness to entertain reviving classic Sierra franchises. We here at the Hotspot will continue to keep our ears very close to the ground for further developments. We’ve heard some very promising things even beyond NineZyme’s encouraging Laura Bow update, but until contracts are signed, it’s best to keep a cool head.

But that’s us. Part of the fun of being a fan is speculating and being wildly optimistic, so feel free to sound off! What do you think? Do we get a Laura Bow 3? What about other Sierra classic adventure games? 

Have a look at some gameplay for Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex on our YouTube Trailers channel if you need a little more to get you feeling hyped:

If this interests you, perhaps you will also enjoy our earlier interview with Jane Jensen, in which she too discusses the possibility of acquiring the rights to Gabriel Knight from Microsoft.

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