She is also known for creating and maintaining the King's Quest series, as well as designing the full motion video game Phantasmagoria in 1995.

Williams took a brief sabbatical, and returned to the company in a game design role, but grew increasingly frustrated with CUC's creative and business decisions.

After the release of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity in 1998, she left the game industry in 1999 and focused her retirement on traveling and writing historical fiction.

Born in Los Angeles, Roberta Heuer grew up in rural Southern California as the daughter of an agricultural inspector.

[5] After high school, she became a clerk at the Los Angeles County Welfare Department, in part thanks to her father's connections working in local government.

[6] As Ken brainstormed ideas for a technology business that could become viable outside of a major city, Roberta purchased an Apple II computer for the family,[6][8] which strained their expenses.

[10] Roberta convinced Ken to provide the technical knowledge to program the game, while she contributed her experience with fiction and storytelling.

[9] Roberta drew the pictures using her Apple II and a Versawriter, a graphics tablet that could be used to hand-trace a piece of paper and input the image into a computer.

[10] The result was Mystery House, an adventure game with black and white graphics for the Apple II computer.

[11] Released in 1980, the game was distributed by mail order, advertised in computer magazines under the name of Ken's consulting company, On-Line Systems.

[12] Roberta's ambitions grew with the design of Time Zone, a time-travelling game spanning thousands of years, which was released on twelve disks in 1982.

[11] Around this time, Jim Henson approached Ken Williams to create a game adaptation of The Dark Crystal, before the film's release.

[6] This led to the 1984 release of King's Quest,[13] conceived as a blend of common fairy tales that could be directly experienced as a game.

[17] Meanwhile, Roberta continued her role as designer of the King's Quest series,[18] which earned a reputation for its unique style of storytelling, as well as its increasingly advanced graphics and technology.

[11] The company released The Dagger of Amon Ra in 1991, a sequel to The Colonel's Bequest based on characters and concepts created by Williams.

[36][37][38] By the mid 1990s, Williams was considered the company's most popular game designer, particularly for her success with the King's Quest series.

[18] Williams branched out from her work on King's Quest by designing Phantasmagoria, a realistic horror adventure game.

[17] As a long time fan of the novels of Stephen King, she had often contemplated whether it was possible to create a terrifying video game.

[11] Roberta ultimately acquiesced, recognizing that the terms of the deal were too favorable to refuse, and that she could be sued by their shareholders if she failed to maximize their value.

[24] Roberta Williams returned to game development in early 1997 to work on King's Quest: Mask of Eternity.

[11] Roberta's frustrations with her lack of control were coupled with suspicions of CUC, after allegations of financial fraud had surfaced about the company.

[12] That year, CUC was convicted of financial fraud, having exaggerated their revenues by more than half a billion dollars (equivalent to $960 million in 2024).

[43] After the release of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, Roberta Williams described herself as taking a sabbatical from the game industry in 1999.

[45] In a rare 2006 interview, she said her greatest achievement was creating Phantasmagoria, though she expressed her love of the King's Quest series for its influence on her early career.

[49] Activision attempted to revive the Sierra brand in 2014, leading developer The Odd Gentlemen to create King's Quest: A Knight to Remember.

[53] Roberta and Ken announced plans to return to game development in June 2021, in collaboration with artist Marcus Maximus Mera.

[54][55] In an interview that same year, she expressed caution that a veteran game designer could successfully return to the industry after an extended break, saying there are merits to ending one's career at its peak.

[59] GameSpot likewise ranked her number ten on their 1999 list of "the most influential people in computer gaming of all time" for "pushing the envelope of graphic adventures" and being "especially proactive in creating games from a woman's point of view and titles that appealed to the mainstream market, all the while integrating the latest technologies in graphics and sound wherever possible".

[67] The Williams family donated a collection of design materials to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games.