There are scant details about the new King’s Quest game on the now-live Sierra.com website, but one thing that is there is the beautiful image seen above, which is labeled as a screenshot. The logo for the game can also be seen:

And this very short summary of the game also appears there:

King Graham — revered as the greatest adventurer to ever live — shares his life’s adventures with his curious granddaughter, Gwendolyn. It is through these tales that Gwendolyn discovers the true greatness of her grandfather.

Not much to go on, although PC Gamer has reported that the game will not be a traditional “point-and-click” adventure. It will still be an adventure game, however:

Newly announced at Gamescom last week, King’s Quest will release under the Sierra mantle, which Activision last week resuscitated for its digital, indie-leaning titles. While some no doubt hoped for a revamped point-and-click adventure in the vein of older King’s Quest titles, that is not what we’re going to get.

“There’s not much I can say about King’s Quest,” [Activision’s MacLean Marshall] told Game Informer. “All I can say is that I’ve seen it, and it’s not a point-and-click game. But it looks awesome.”

It would also appear that Activision has settled on a role for the newly-resurrected Sierra, which is to serve as the company’s “indie” label:

Marshall went on to describe some of the projects which may potentially come to fruition under the rebooted Sierra name. “It could be HD remakes of original Sierra content. It could be contemporary reimaginings of the old Sierra IPs. It could be stuff that’s new, kick-arse, awesome IP that has nothing to do with the old Sierra brand, but will be a Sierra thing when it launches.”

On the topic of why Activision exhumed the Sierra name at all, Marshall cites the rise of independent development and the need for the publisher to have an outlet for digital-only titles. “It’s been dormant and there wasn’t a place for it, and we didn’t know what we were going to do with it,” he said.

“Then, over the however many years, everyone’s been watching this indie movement. There was that angle, where we had this really nostalgic brand that most gamers to varying degrees by age know. We wanted to find a way to expand our digital portfolio.”

The label also seems to be targeting digital distribution as its primary — and maybe only — retail channel:

“At Activision we’re well known for big franchises, big AAA retail franchises,” [Bob Loya, director of external development at Sierra] said. “That’s not going to change, but we do have a really core group of gamers within the company that wanted to do different things. And there wasn’t ever really a path within Activision to do that.

“With the expansion of digital platforms and the popularity and year over year growth in digital sales, we were able to put together a compelling business argument that we can do digital products, be financially successful and at the same time work with some really talented up and coming indie developers to work on some of our IP and to build some new IP.”

As for those indie developers working with Sierra, so far the company has announced Geometry Wars 3 from Lucid Games — a studio made up of Geometry Wars veterans from original series developer Bizarre Creations — and a new King’s Quest from The Odd Gentlemen, developers of Xbox Live Arcade puzzle platformer The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. Loya noted that Sierra began its talks with indie developers three years ago, hoping to drum up interest in bringing them under the Sierra label.

“Sierra is a nostalgic brand and we want to work towards making what Sierra used to be into a modern day high quality digital brand,” Loya said. “We’re really looking to do unique stuff. High quality games, edgy games, cool mechanics, things that we might not normally be able to do on bigger titles. But at the end of the day, it’s just really trying to make games for gamers.”