Up until then, the Austin brothers had worked on their own. They had coded and designed each of their adventure releases. However, for their next game they turned to a game designed by a fan of theirs, Sue Gazzard. After a bit of tinkering with the initial premise, 'Lords of Time' was released and went down quite well. As with most of their games, there were numerous references to the number 9 throughout. For example, there were nine time zones to explore.

The packaging was updated in 1983 once sales proved them to be a success. Gone were the plastic bags and in were cardboard boxes with cut out front windows showing the cover of the instruction booklet inside. Distinctive L9 logos covered the window borders. Their distributor, Microdeal, had such a large order for Christmas 1983 that the Austins had to recruit as many of their friends and family as they could to meet the demand which ran into thousands. 1984 was to see another change to the packaging, with black plastic wallets replacing the boxes, each one adorned with a cover illustration and surrounded by the now famous black and white L9 logos.

They had always planned to return to the Snowball universe and add the second of what they would call the 'Silicon Dreams trilogy'. Part two was called 'Return to Eden' and was (in my own opinion) a very tough game to complete. It also marked a turning point for their games. On selected machines, Level 9 took the decision to add graphics to each and everyone of the locations. Other companies had a few locations with graphics, but the Austins decided to go further. Unfortunately, the graphics weren't particularly inspiring. They consisted of component parts, (rocks, trees etc) that were added to build up a picture. On the spectrum, the usual colour problems occured so the graphics looked very blotchy. They didn't go down too well with the some fans, but at that time it was thought good commercial sense. Although they weren't brilliant by any stretch of the imagination, I felt that they added a needed splash of colour to the display and they had a murky quality all of their own.

'Return to Eden' was released in October 1984 and had a number of almost subliminal political statements embedded into the game design, along with some very tricky problems that had me stumped for months! As with most of their games, there were subtle references to previous games and certain inputs that could be tried too. Try the old 'plover', or 'xyzzy' phrases from 'Colossal' in any of their older games to see what I mean! The title also followed a bit of a biblical theme which was to be followed up in the third and final instalment.

There was also an interesting change in the packaging artwork for 'Eden'. The original design had a robot fighting a carnivorous looking giant plant with a cityscape lurking behind. Possibly due to the similarity between the robot and a certain popular comic book of the time, they changed the artwork to a Godfrey Dowson painting of a different (humanoid looking) robot staring from the jungle towards a gleaming city in the distance. They might also have changed it because the original drawing wasn't particularly good! This lead to Level 9 repackaging all of their earlier releases in the newer plastic wallets and adding cover illustrations by Godfrey Dowson.

Increasing sales during 1984 meant a company re-organisation and the recruitment of new staff. Disk versions began appearing for the first time on the C64 and BBC and they began writing games for the latest additions to the home micro boom, the Amstrad CPC and Memotech machines. Pete Austin became so swamped with on average 100 clue requests a day that he had no time left to design the games, so they decided to change the clue requests from individual problems to a fully comprehensive clue sheet covering everything.

Having tested the water with their first 'illustrated' game, Level 9 went into overdrive with a collection of four more graphic text adventures in two years. The price range varied according to whether they felt the game was as large or difficult as their previous adventures. [more]