STUDIO PROFILE Twilight

Twilight was formed when a group of programmers and graphic artists split from Harrogatebased developer and publisher Enigma Variations. They went on to produce games for many UK publishers and affect a change in British Law thanks to a chicken

-  RICHARD HEWISON

“Enigma Variations was only ever going to be producing endless budget licensed games written to a very tight schedule, with no apparent aspirations beyond that,” says programmer Andy Swann. Although that situation would change at Enigma shortly after they left, the core group of developers working there were feeling more disgruntled as the months went by. The general unhappy situation came to a head in early 1990, and Andy Swann, Jason McGann, Peter Tattersall, and Stuart Cook left and formed a new development team, reuniting with former Enigma programmer Mark Mason. “It was a time when employment was fairly easy, but I had moved to England from Aberdeen and it was still a big risk,” says Stuart, also a programmer. “We used our industry contacts when thankfully there was a lot of work going around and not too many ready-made development teams about.”

Twilight was officially born on 1 May 1990, and Andy recalls how they came up with the name for their new company. “We sat about trying to think of something. There was a lull in the conversation and Pete started humming the Twilight Zone theme tune!” With the name agreed, Peter created the first logo, inspired by the art of Roger Dean. “It was barely legible, but Pete liked it because he could pack it into not many pixels on the Commodore 64,” says Andy.