In 1991, with little fanfare, Sinclair User reported that Greg Follis and Ted Heathcote both confirmed that Gargoyle ceased game development. As they had always intended, Roy and Greg were producing business software for different companies. Fortunately, it wouldn't be long before Greg and Roy were back developing a new graphic adventure game.

Five years after Gargoyle's last game, Greg Follis and Roy Carter were called up by Psygnosis. The publisher wanted the partners to collaborate as they always had on a PC remake of Tir Na Nog. This was a rather odd move by the publisher; development teams had bloated up to dozens of staff members. The story of the small team churning out games for big publishers died along with the 8-bit computing era. Regardless, development for Tir Na Nog began sometime in 1993.

The team was no longer officially named Gargoyle, yet their structure remained the same. As before, the bulk of programming was completed by Roy while Greg created all the art, which looks remarkable this time around. The style was created by painting over photo scans, a technique that really brings the fantastically surreal world of Tir Na Nog to life. Greg had 200 locations finished by the time development ceased. As before, Cú Chulainn took up a huge amount of the screen and allegedly had a well-animated gait. Animation was done by recording videos of subjects and sketching out the individual frames, a more time consuming process than creating digitized characters akin to Pit-Fighter or Mortal Kimbat. In addition to the Sidhe, the game also would have featured a larger rogues gallery similar to Heavy on the Magick, with dragons, wights, and giants.

Giving up the original keyboard setup, players would largely use mouse controls similar to the popular point-and-click adventures of the time. Rather than strict horizontal scrolling, Cú Chulainn would sometimes move horizontal, vertical, or freely about terrain like any LucasArts or Sierra SCI game. Follis and Carter also intended to eschew the original's pointless combat, instead focusing even m ore on Gargoyle's fiendish puzzles.

An article in the March 1995 issue of PC Gamer and a short video demo featured in Interactive Entertainment, a '90s CD-ROM magazine, stand as the only document regarding the game's development. Retro Gamer contributor Graeme Mason graciously provided scans from the PC Gamer article, which you can view here. According to PC Gamer, the intended release date was April/May of 1995, but the entire project was cancelled shortly afterwards with no explanation. After two years of development, the game was totally scrapped.

After the cancellation of Tir Na Nog for PC, it's unclear where Roy Carter and Greg Follis went. The duo managed to work as independent software developers for quite a long time, but it's probable they simply went back into IT. It is confirmed that Greg Follis did, although he was working on a deal to port Gargoyle's back catalogue to tablet devices a few years back.

Gargoyle's success can be viewed as either an inspiring success story or a tale of disappointment. Two men grow tired of their corporate jobs and go into business for themselves, developing games and making a living off their passion. They keep going for years, only to eventually wind up back where they started. With the rise of indie gaming over the past decade with no ends in sight, there probably will be more and more stories just like this one: two guys get on a bandwagon, make money, lose it, and wind up back in reality.

Still, most of these stories won't mean much without a significant output of quality games, something that Gargoyle definitely had. Their graphic adventures are absolutely stunning and remain enjoyable even today, creating a singular aesthetic that make Roy and Greg seem like auteurs of the Spectrum scene. If anything, the real shame is that they moved away from the style that brought them success.

It's probable that the company shifted from graphic adventures to action games solely because of development time constraints. If Roy and Greg could churn out a shmup or platformer in two months while a Tir Na Nog takes close to eight, there's a definite economic incentive to churn out another Sweevo's World or Scooby Doo. Maybe Gargoyle sold out then or maybe they sold out just by leaving the gaming scene in general. Either way, the profits prevailed, but for a short time, Follis and Carter were living a programmer's dream and brought their fans along for the ride.

Thanks to Luny for many insights into both the Spectrum scene and the technical achievements made by Gargoyle, game journalist Graeme Mason for providing the PC Gamer article scan, and illustrator Crystal Mielcarek for recreating Gargoyle's logo for this article.