[2] Wired has described Sawyer as "one of gaming's greatest enigmas" given his legendary contributions to the genre while maintaining little presence online, and rarely agreeing to give interviews.
Being unable to afford a BBC Micro, Sawyer purchased a Camputers Lynx with which he could write simple programs in machine code.
He faced issues with Megastar failing to pay him royalties on continued sales of his games, and the revenue was only enough to buy him a disk drive and printer.
[1] From 1988 to 1993, Sawyer worked on MS-DOS conversions of Amiga games and was involved in many projects, including Virus, Conqueror, Campaign, Birds of Prey, Dino Dini's Goal and Frontier: Elite II.
[1] Inspired by Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, Sawyer began to develop his own title which made use of an isometric gameworld system he had been designing as a personal project.
Sawyer had been interested in the engineering aspect of roller coasters for some years, but had only ridden a handful of them, including Wild Mouse at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Thunder Loop Express at Loudoun Castle.
He developed the game in x86 assembly language by himself, using only the services of freelance graphic designer Simon Foster and composer Allister Brimble.
[11] The game was built atop the engine used by RollerCoaster Tycoon, which by that point appeared dated, and the AI and user interface were poorly received.
[2] In an interview, Sawyer also cited a desire to take a break after working on games for 20 years, to spend more time on his personal interests.
I admire the amazing graphics and awesome size and realism of many modern games but for some reason can't summon much enthusiasm to play them.
Asked about his relative lack of a public online presence in 2013 he said that social media "takes time away from what I need to concentrate on"; he added in 2016 that he prefers "to let the games do the talking".
[20][24] He gave his favourites as Taron (Phantasialand, Germany), Zadra (Energylandia, Poland), Balder (Liseberg, Sweden), and Ravine Flyer II (Waldameer, USA).