IT may be a science fiction experience about a voyage to Mars.

But at the heart of Mark Gregory’s game is a very human story that anyone could relate to. The Birchwood developer is part of the games industry’s growing indie scene where he leads a team of 10 from around the world on his latest project, Tether.

The adventure game, due out on PC, Mac and Linux next year, is set in a dark future where the destruction of the Moon is causing natural disasters to sweep Earth. You play as Lesleigh Hayes, a biological researcher, who bids to save mankind by creating a new home on Mars.

But really the game is about the relationship between mother and child as Lesleigh’s thoughts turn to her kids as she endures the isolation of deep space.

Mark said: “We’ve tailored our story around what our lives were like growing up with parents that spent a lot of time away from home with work and the strains that put on the other parent who stayed with the kids.

“Throughout the game you’re building Lesleigh’s backstory about how many kids she’s got and her relationship with them before she went off into space.

“Science fiction gives you a lot of creative freedom. You can do a lot of strange stuff and invent technology within the game world to tell the story how you want to without as many restrictions. I think it is the sort of experience which would do really well with virtual reality so we’re looking into that as well.”

Inspired by Soma and the BAFTA-winning The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Mark said he hopes to push the boundaries of storytelling with Tether.

The 31-year-old added: “Most games are quite linear. You go here, you shoot this, you move there or you jump all over that. Tether is not that type of game.

“It is similar to ‘walking simulator’ games where you walk through pretty environments and the story is told to you through the environment and through the music. But we’ve put our own twist on that and made it a bit more gameplay-based using puzzles.

“Games have this stigma around violence whereas we’ve got no combat in our game. We’re trying to be more mature and reach out to a more mature audience who want to play something which has some depth and meaning to it.”

Mark fell in love with games after he played Super Mario Bros on the Nintendo Entertainment System his parents bought him for Christmas when he was five. But it was story-driven games that inspired him to open his own micro studio, Freesphere Entertainment.

“I found them more engaging than anything I’d ever played before,” said Mark.

“There was a role-playing game called Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, where you could choose your path, then I found games like Half-Life and Thief.”

Mark, who lives with his girlfriend Emma Littlefair in Pennant Close, now works in IT as a mobile engineer for the NHS and has previously made adventure games Solarix and De-Void in his spare time. His core team working on Tether include former Priestley College student Nathan Winfield and Adam Facey from Sale.

But the Mark’s international group of developers includes people from Brazil, United States and Dubai who he keeps in touch with via video calls, online message boards and shared servers.

He said: “My ambition is to do this full time and grow Freesphere into a digital studio where everyone works from home. It’s a model that works all over the world.”

DAVID MORGAN