The story of Lionheart can be traced back to the demoscene of the late Eighties, when talented coders formed communities around the creation of vibrant technical demos and colourful cracked intro screens for home computers. Game designer Erik Simon was a member of one such group based in Germany known as The Exceptions. After joining forces with other respected demoscene figures to form Thalion Software, the collective worked towards a shared ambition to create the most technically groundbreaking games to grace the Amiga. Lionheart was among the final releases from the studio and lived up to its vision by making the absolute most of the hardware available.
Sharp, vibrant artwork and smooth animation are pride of place when you play , and these aspects of the game were the handiwork of Dutch pixel artist Henk Nieborg. For both Henk and the programmer Erwin Kloibhofer, the game marked their first big break in the videogame industry. “Erwin and I met in the Netherlands. We soon planned to make a game together because we simply clicked as human beings, and we wanted to join our talents and dream about being real game developers someday,” Henk tells us. “We made a game together in our spare time called that was inspired by many of my favourite horror movies and arcade is that we developed it many miles apart, me in the Netherlands and Erwin in Austria, by sending our latest bits for the game on 3.5-inch floppy disks by snail mail.” The pair took to the Cologne Amiga Gaming Convention in October 1990 where they met Erik Simon from Thalion. “He offered not only to publish our current game, but also in-house jobs at Thalion headquarters to work on a new project. We couldn’t resist this opportunity and we both relocated to Germany,” continues Henk.
