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Majestic Studios, developer of Limbo of the Lost started out as Tri-Logik Studios in London in the early 1990s. The name Tri-Logik is a pun on the phrase "Try logic." In the Amiga version of Limbo of the Lost, Captain Briggs would knock on the screen and offer (somewhat useless and condescending) advice to the player if they took no action for half a minute or so. "Stuck? Try logic." is one of those gems. Tri-Logik Studios also shares the same initials as the developers - Tim, Laurence and Steve.

The studio initially aimed to bring back the graphical text adventure genre on the Atari ST, but found difficulty attracting publishers. Tri-Logik Studios shelved their in-development game Limbo of the Lost but, then in 2003, Tri-Logik Studios reformed as Majestic Studios. In March 2008 they released their first and, thus far, only game: Limbo of the Lost for the PC.

The team[]

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From left: Tim Croucher, Steve Bovis and Laurence Francis

Although most press refers to the team as being only 3 friends, and the credits of the game itself list only 3 people, in an interview with Just Adventure, Steve Bovis mentioned other team members. He is quoted below:


Tim Croucher (UK) - Researcher and assistant vocalist, game designer/playtester. I met Tim right at the beginning of the project, we were both adventure game fans and decided to make an adventure game of our own – Limbo of the Lost was born.
Laurence Francis (UK) – Puzzles, Lead vocalist and assistant game designer/Musician. Laurence joined the team when we were starting the Amiga version and has been a strong member ever since. Laurence is the voice of the main character – Benjamin Spooner Briggs as well as other characters in LIMBO.
Marko "Gravehill" Hautamäki (Finland) – Level-Atmosphere Musician. I got to know Marko from a forum I was on and he was looking to work on a game project. I heard some of his work and was suitably impressed. To date he has done more than 13 musical pieces for the game. Marko is the newest team member.
Lisa Highsted (UK) – Contracts and Support Lisa sorts out contract negotiations / publishers, she joined the team on the PC version of the game. She also play-tests and reviews content on a regular basis.
Heather Banks (UK) – Playtester & Support Heather helps out on playtesting the game, general development feedback and development support. She too joined the team on the PC version
Steve Bovis (UK) - Creative/Project Director My job is to put the game together and create all the visuals, coding, sounds, models, marketing and basically make the game flow and work. As well as manage and try to motivate the team. A job that is hard enough at the best of times!


Steve Bovis, or SBOVIS is not to be confused with S. bovis

The Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia page for Dungeon Master 3D shows sbovis@autoflow.co.uk as a former email address of Steve Bovis. autoflow.co.uk now redirects here, suggesting that Mr. Bovis is, or at least was as recently as October 2005, a used car salesman.

A review of the pub Laurence Francis used to run suggests that he is an "accomplished guitarist", and that Heather Banks is Canadian (assuming this Heather is his wife, which it probably is as do you really think this team actually employed real playtesters?)

Laurence has a site to promote himself as a voice actor, where he has thoughtfully left his telephone contact details!, publicly available to *anyone* who just creates an account and chooses to "hire him".

Developer reaction[]

On June 19th, 2008, a person claiming to be Marko "Gravehill" Hautamäki (the music composer for LotL) started posting on Games Radar about his involvement with the project. Following that, a person claiming to be Steve Bovis started to post as well, but the following day he admitted to being a fake. He later got the thread locked by posting personal details about Steve's son Craig.

The composer posted a press release to a separate thread on GamesRadar on June 20th, 2008. On the original thread, he wrote: "I have been in contact with the real Steve Bovis and AFAIK, their announcement is on its way."

Finally, in their statement to the press, on June 23rd, 2008, the developers stated that the plagiarized art had come from a contractor that they outsourced to. This, however, seems unlikely since Steve Bovis stated earlier that he had created all the backgrounds himself.

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