This page and the pages linked from it are about
my favourite video/computer games company Llamasoft
and other associated subjects.
The old Llamasoft Magicnet web site files can be found here.
(some of the links on the pages won't work now,
so don't complain to me about them please)
The current Llamasoft Archive is here

What is ?

 The best explanation is from the man himself, Jeff Minter:

I should firstly introduce myself. I am the individual referred to on this site (and others) as Yak - a pseudonym chosen a long time ago, back in the days when hi-score tables on coin-op machines only held three letters, and I settled on Yak because the yak is a scruffy hairy beast - a lot like me ;-).

I first started writing games on an old Commodore PET at the end of the 1970s, and in 1982 I founded a company called Llamasoft, developing games for the Commodore Vic-20 and 64. Llamasoft flourished for a while, mainly in Europe, and became known for its distinctive style - the games usually contained a degree of humour, references to various ungulates, and satisfying gameplay. Satisfying to some people, anyway - Llamasoft games weren't to everyone's tastes, but those who did enjoy them were loyal, and Llamasoft is fondly remembered by many.

As the videogame market evolved, self-publishing became unfeasible for a small company like Llamasoft, and I began to look at other ways of getting my stuff published. I was instrumental in helping to break the concept of shareware into the UK with my Atari ST, Amiga and PC game Llamatron. I also did some contract work for Atari; perhaps my best-known creation for them being Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar.

More recently I've spent the last five years working for a company called VM Labs, and I produced Tempest 3000 whilst employed by them. But that was a huge project... taking me over two years from start to finish. And no matter how good the end-product, being engaged on one project for such a length of time ceases to become fun after a while. The worsening economic climate at VML (and a growing dissatisfaction with how I was feeling about my work there) led me to wonder whether it might not be possible somehow to work in a way that was closer to the enjoyable spontaneity that characterised the Llamasoft years - where projects lasted a couple of months, and one could enjoy producing a lot of simple-but-amusing games that were almost as much fun to create as they were to play.

In the end, my hand was forced as VML filed for Chapter 11 and I found myself out of a job. I had already considered the PocketPC as a potential market for games that were simple and fun - the sort of games that I used to enjoy making back in the Llamasoft days. And given that the market for PPC games is almost entirely online, distribution wouldn't be a problem; Llamasoft could once again become self-publishing.

I experimented with programming the Pocket PC, and found it easy to develop for, yet quite amazingly powerful for such a little device :-). I knew that I could have a lot of fun producing games for these little machines. So here I am, and here is Llamasoft, with the first couple of games.

Our philosophy is simply to create games that are easy to learn, humorous, and which draw on my 20 years' experience as a game designer and therefore are hopefully fun to play, as well. The games will also be cheap, at five pounds for the full versions.

I don't think the price of a couple of beers is too much to ask for games that hopefully will provide a fair few hours of enjoyable amusement.

Anyway - welcome to the world of Llamasoft.  :-)
We hope you'll like what we do. And if you do, spread the word.   :-)
  \
  ( :- ) - Yak
  /

PVB says: Yak has since created the lightsynth Neon for the Xbox 360 and
is currently working on a game for the Live Arcade section of the Xbox 360,
called Space Giraffe.