The company primarily sold entry-level productivity software,[2] as well as advanced desktop publishing applications and video games.
[4][5][6] The company was originally founded to develop software for the Timex Sinclair 1000, an inexpensive home computer introduced in the summer of 1982.
[8] As an example, two of the company's first video games, Star Battle and Dungeon of the Algebra Dragons, were developed by a 17-year-old programmer based in Chicago.
[4] One of Timeworks' first titles was Cave of the Word Wizard (1982), an educational video game that featured an early instance of speech synthesis for a home computer.
[4] Swiftax, one of the first tax filing applications for the Commodore 64, was developed by a couple of out-of-state programmers in Houston, Texas, and quickly became one of Timeworks' best-selling titles for 1983 and 1984.
[12] As well, Goldberg hired a television screenwriter to write and simplify the company's paper and online documentation for their software.
[15] Word Writer sold well in the home office segment and was generally praised by software critics,[16] especially its Atari ST version released in 1986.
[17][19] This was at a time when the Atari ST's marketshare in the United States was rather poor, especially compared to that of the IBM PC (and its compatibles).
[17] Word Writer 128, released in the same year as the ST version, was one of the few programs written exclusively for the Commodore 128, which also suffered poor adoption rates in the United States.