Lionhead Studios Limited was a British video game developer founded in July 1997 by Peter Molyneux, Mark Webley, Tim Rance, and Steve Jackson. The company is best known for the Black & White and Fable series. Lionhead started as a breakaway from developer Bullfrog Productions, which was also founded by Molyneux. Lionhead's first game was Black & White, a god game with elements of artificial life and strategy games. Black & White was published by Electronic Arts in 2001. Lionhead Studios is named after Webley's hamster, which died not long after the naming of the studio, as a result of which the studio was very briefly renamed to Redeye Studios.
Jeff Minter is an English video game designer and programmer who often goes by the name Yak. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and has created dozens of games during his career, which began in 1981 with games for the ZX80. Minter's games are shoot 'em ups which contain titular or in-game references demonstrating his fondness of ruminants. Many of his programs also feature something of a psychedelic element, as in some of the earliest "light synthesizer" programs including Trip-a-Tron.
Peter Douglas Molyneux is an English video game designer and programmer. He created the god games Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and Black & White, as well as Theme Park, the Fable series, Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube?, and Godus. He currently works at 22cans.
Black & White is a god video game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows in 2001 and by Feral Interactive in 2002 for Mac OS. Black & White combines elements of artificial life and strategy. The player acts as a god whose goal is to defeat Nemesis, another god who wants to take over the world. A primary theme is the concept of good and evil, with the atmosphere being affected by the player's moral choices. The core gameplay mechanic of Black & White is the interaction between the player and an avatar creature, who carries out the player's instructions and whose personality and behaviour change in reaction to how they are treated. Multiplayer is supported over a local network or online.
Bullfrog Productions Limited was a British video game developer based in Guildford, England. Founded in 1987 by Peter Molyneux and Les Edgar, the company gained recognition in 1989 for their third release, Populous, and is also well known for titles such as Theme Park, Theme Hospital, Magic Carpet, Syndicate and Dungeon Keeper. Bullfrog's name was derived from an ornament in the offices of Edgar's and Molyneux's other enterprise, Taurus Impact Systems, Bullfrog's precursor where Molyneux and Edgar were developing business software. Bullfrog Productions was founded as a separate entity after Commodore mistook Taurus for a similarly named company.
Dungeon Keeper is a strategy video game developed by Bullfrog Productions and released by Electronic Arts in June 1997 for MS-DOS and Windows 95. In Dungeon Keeper, the player builds and manages a dungeon, protecting it from invading 'hero' characters intent on stealing accumulated treasures, killing monsters and ultimately the player's demise. The ultimate goal is to conquer the world by destroying the heroic forces and rival dungeon keepers in each realm. A character known as the Avatar appears as the final hero. Dungeon Keeper uses Creative Technology's SoundFont technology to enhance its atmosphere. Multiplayer with up to four players is supported using a modem, or over a local network.
Fable is an action role-playing video game, the first in the Fable series. It was developed for the Xbox, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X platforms by Big Blue Box Studios, a satellite developer of Lionhead Studios, and was published by Microsoft Studios. The game shipped for the Xbox in September 2004. An extended version of the game, Fable: The Lost Chapters, was released for the Xbox and Windows in September 2005. A port of the game for Mac OS X, created by Robosoft Technologies and published by Feral Interactive, was released in March 2008 after a delay of more than two years due to licensing issues.
Defender 2000 is a 1996 scrolling shooter video game developed by Llamasoft and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar. Part of Atari's 2000 series of arcade game revivals, it is an update of Eugene Jarvis' Defender. The premise takes place in a future where the Alpha Promixian empire attack mining settlements on distant resource planets. Gameplay is divided into three modes, with the player acting as part of the System Defense Team commanding the Threshold ship to defeat waves of invading aliens while protecting humans.
Space Giraffe is a fixed shooter video game by Jeff Minter and Ivan Zorzin of Llamasoft. The game was released on 22 August 2007 for Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Arcade. The main graphics engine is based on the Neon Xbox 360 light synthesizer visualisation software built into the console. Llamasoft released a version for Windows on 15 December 2008. It was made available on Steam on 19 March 2009.
Russell Shaw is a BAFTA nominated British composer and sound designer. He is known for his work in many video games, particularly those designed by Peter Molyneux.
Project Milo was a project in development by Lionhead Studios for the Xbox 360 video game console. Formerly a secretive project under the early codename "Dimitri", Project Milo was unveiled at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in a demonstration for Kinect, as a "controller-free" entertainment initiative for the Xbox 360 based on depth-sensing and pattern recognition technologies. The project was a tech demo to showcase the capabilities of Kinect and was not released, despite conflicting reports that the project was an actual game.
Fable is a series of action role-playing video games for Xbox, Microsoft Windows, macOS, Xbox 360 and Xbox One platforms. The series was developed by Lionhead Studios until the studio was closed in 2016, and is published by Xbox Game Studios.
B.C. was an action-adventure video game in development by Intrepid Computer Entertainment, a satellite of Lionhead Studios, which was to be published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox. It was cancelled in 2004 for unknown reasons but Peter Molyneux revealed in an interview with IGN that the cancellation could have been due to the fact that Fable was further along in development than B.C. was. B.C. was going to take place during a prehistoric time period on a single continent which contained five levels. The player controls a tribe who has to evolve and migrate to become the best species in the game. Tribe members can be of different classes and each can level up different ways to evolve. The main enemies in the game are an ape-like creature called the "simians"; however, the world is also inhabited with many types of dinosaurs as well as other creatures, including the dodo. In 2015, game preservation group PtoPOnline revealed gameplay footage of B.C. from throughout the game's development.
22cans Ltd is a British video game developer based in Guildford. It was founded in February 2012 by Peter Molyneux, previously of Bullfrog Productions and Lionhead Studios.
Creation was a cancelled real-time strategy video game developed by Bullfrog Productions as a spin-off of their Syndicate series of real-time tactics games. Set on an alien water world, a player-controlled submarine is tasked with looking after marine life and defending it from the Syndicate, who run planet Earth.
Gary Carr is an English video game developer. His career began at Palace Software, where he worked on titles such as Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior and Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax. In 1989, he joined Bullfrog Productions and worked as lead artist on Powermonger and Populous II. He also worked on Theme Park, but, after a disagreement with Peter Molyneux, he left the company to work for The Bitmap Brothers, where he worked on The Chaos Engine 2. He returned to Bullfrog in 1995 hoping to work on Dungeon Keeper, but worked on Theme Hospital instead. He left Bullfrog again in 1998 to join Mucky Foot Productions.
Tempest 4000 is a shoot 'em up video game developed by Llamasoft and published by Atari, SA. It is a modern reimagining of the classic arcade game Tempest, which was released in 1981. In Tempest 4000, players control a spaceship and navigate through a series of increasingly challenging levels while fighting off waves of enemies. Tempest 4000 was released for Atari VCS, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch.
Polybius is a 2017 shoot 'em up video game developed and published by Llamasoft. It was released in May 2017 for the PlayStation 4, with PlayStation VR support available. A version for Windows was released in December 2018. The game takes its name and inspiration from the fictitious 1981 arcade game Polybius. It is also inspired by games like TxK and aims to induce the psychological state of flow. It was positively received by critics.
Mark Webley is a British video game developer, known for working with developers such as Peter Molyneux and Gary Carr for Bullfrog Productions and later Lionhead Studios on projects including Theme Hospital and Black & White. In 2012, he took over as head of Lionhead after Molyneux left, and in 2016, he founded a studio called Two Point Studios with Carr, which has signed a publishing deal with Sega.
