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The stories of the game and radio drama intertwine, developing the backstory of the Legacy universe. I'll talk about the ins and outs of producing parallel stories in another post; for now I want to look at the influences behind the game.

I grew up on PC adventure games like and - my own personal favourite - . I loved these games for their stories, their puzzles and frequently their humour - something sadly lacking from a lot of modern titles, most of which are terribly serious.

A lot of videogames from this era were more interactive fiction than anything else. With text and maybe the occasional hopelessly abstracted graphic (that blue pixel is you, those green pixels are a multi-limbed death-dealing mutant from beyond the grave) adventure games like nevertheless managed to make worlds come alive in my head in a way that only books can rival.

As the computing power behind videogames increased they became prettier and prettier. Photo-realistic graphics and advanced animation mean that modern big budget videogame titles boast visuals that wouldn't look out of place in a feature film. The reliance on such high fidelity visuals has established certain types of gameplay as the norm. Games often rely on players being able to decode complex visual cues at speed and react accordingly: duck that punch; jump that ledge; hit that target; etc.

With Legacy the team and I wanted to build something that harked back to that era where games were less about your reaction speeds and more about your brain power. We wanted a game built around solving puzzles and discovering stories - to give players a world they wanted to find out about and guide their progress by challenging them to work out the problems facing them.

I loved the intricacy of the puzzles in the early games and the process of figuring out the solution. The reward was that great Eureka moment where it all came together and the next chapter of the experience opened up. There were no forums or messageboards back when videogaming got started so it was up to your own brainpower and maybe sharing hints with your mates.

Building the puzzles for Legacy and then planning for all the different ways a player might approach them was one of the most time-consuming aspects of making the game. It took a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between the radio production team, the game designers and the writers to get it right. Having two storylines that ran parallel also provided interesting continuity challenges.

Often scripts for both the game and the radio drama would have to be amended and plotlines rethought to accommodate what either one needed at a given point. We constantly found ourselves having to consider what the knock on effect for the radio drama would be of a new puzzle in the game. Similarly when the radio play needed to cut away to characters that appear in the game we needed to make sure they were in the right place at the right time.

Legacy was a collaborative effort with external writers, a ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ radio producer and a game designer from DESQ, all involved from start to finish in every aspect of its production. Creating a compelling story that was consistent across different platforms was both challenging and rewarding in equal measure. Over the coming weeks I'll be posting more about the experiences I had working on Legacy and what I think the project might mean for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ as a storytelling organisation.

UPDATED - Radio Scotland programme details.

Listen to the first episode of the Legacy radio drama on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Scotland now and play the first episode of the game. The drama concludes at 1130 on Friday 24 September.