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'I've always had an interest in technological things,' he says. The idea of an established, respected creative from another medium working on a video game was rare at the time, and I ask Gibbons what it feels like being one of the first examples of that. I think it did a good job of setting the scene.' 'In the game Foster is this blocky collection of pixels, but in the comic we had some detailed drawings of him, and you could carry that image in your head. 'I produced that completely by myself and it gave players a good look at the characters,' says Gibbons. It wasn't essential to enjoying it, but filled in some of Foster's backstory. Gibbons also wrote and illustrated a short comic, which was bundled in with the game. Even the trip up to Hull felt like a bit of an adventure, once in a while.' I learned a lot of these now arcane and primitive skills, but I enjoyed collaborating with these guys a lot.

'You only had 32 colours and a handful of pixels to work with. 'I've always found that you become creative when you've got restrictions,' he says.

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'Charles and I would sit up there eating these lovely bacon baps we'd bought downstairs, and talk about the story and go over the designs.' It's on these visits where Steve Oades would show Gibbons how to turn his characters into in-game sprites, and he found this new way of creating art both challenging and inspiring. Hull was famous for having its own independent telephone system, and this office was hooked up to that. Revolution was above it, in an old-fashioned, wood-paneled office suite.

It was obviously a popular place to meet up.

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It was a slot machine arcade that sold food, that I remember being full of lots of mothers and babies. This involved getting to the station up at my end in London, getting to King's Cross, getting on the train to Doncaster, then getting one of these really rickety little shuttle trains to Hull. 'I used to visit the studio in Hull about once a month over the course of a year. They'd suggest changes and I'd make the edits, then I'd bundle up the art, which I did on typing paper, and send it to Les for colouring. So I'd sketch characters and backgrounds and fax them up to Charles. 'The most impressive communications technology we had was a fax machine. 'The idea of remote working was a lot different back then,' says Gibbons. The only game I've ever played with any kind of skill is Tetris, which gives you an idea of my shallow immersion in them.' He's a qualified doctor, but he does a gaming podcast called Big Red Barrel. 'He'd keep me up to date with what was going on in games, and to this day he's still involved in them. 'Around the time of Beneath a Steel Sky he would have been at a prime gaming age,' he says. The games industry was unknown territory for Gibbons when he started working with Revolution, but he had some experience with the medium through his son. I was working with people whose company I enjoyed, and whose creativity I was excited by, and I was being well paid for it.' 'It was far in excess of what I was going to ask for,' he says. Gibbons spoke with Virgin to work out a deal, but before he even got the chance to tell them how much he wanted to be a part of the project, they made him a much bigger offer. Having met Charles and subsequently his team, I thought, yeah, we could have some fun here.' If you can work with friends, and you get each others' creative juices flowing, that's the best of all possible worlds. 'I was looking for something interesting to do after the success of Watchmen, and I've always loved the idea of collaboration.