25 years after closing its doors, one British studio is making games again

British firm Hewson Consultants is making a show of relaunching its game business this week with some new hires and a new game, Mechinus, in early production.

This is mostly notable because of Hewson's legacy, which began in the 1980s and spanned a number of notable games (Cybernoid, Netherworld, Cybernoid II: The Revenge) for the ZX Spectrum and other home computer systems.

Game industry history buffs will recall that Hewson closed in '91, and was reborn in 2013 as part of a crowdfunding campaign for founder Andrew Hewson's book "Hints & Tips for Videogame Pioneers."

The company is now restarting its game production efforts after receiving a grant from the UK Games Fund, and has hired Rob Hewson (Andrew Hewson's son and occasional Gamasutra blogger) and John Ogden, each of whom have worked in the British game industry for some time at studios like Blade Interactive and TT Fusion. 

Development details of Mechinus itself are currently scant, though the UK Games Fund's public accounting of funded projects describes it as a "clockwork puzzle-platform game" in a "steampunk" environment.