Master Reboot / Soul Axiom

Context

Master Reboot is a first-person puzzle adventure set in a cyber hub full of memories and the digital remains of the dead, exploring the repercussions of creating a digital afterlife. Soul Axiom is its spiritual sequel.

Both built at Wales Interactive with a team of around 10. Largely the same team across both projects.

Master Reboot

Designed puzzles and environments, and rapidly built them in Unreal Engine. Was also the team’s go-to for Unreal, having specialised in its many features and systems.

A perspective puzzle

One I’m particularly fond of. Mechanic similar to The Witness: three columns each have rotatable elements, and the player has to align their first-person view to the right angle to “complete” the puzzle. Effectively a 3D jigsaw where the alignment depends on where you stand and how you rotate the parts.

Soul Axiom

Did much of the original conception and design work for Soul Axiom: core mechanics, game flow, level design, and white-boxing. Liaised with artists and programmers to combine all aspects of the level construction into a playable whole.

Core abilities

The mechanics centred on different kinds of environmental interaction:

• Move items. Physically reposition objects in the world.
• Phase. Fade items in and out of existence.
• Rewind time. Wind objects backwards.

Switching engines

Soul Axiom moved off Unreal to Unity for cost reasons. The biggest hit was tooling. I’d specialised in Kismet and Matinee, and Unity’s equivalents at the time were considerably less developed and harder to work with. Adapted, but the workflow was slower for a stretch.

White-boxing

Used immediate grey-box layouts in Unity and rapid-tested as we went, rather than running long sketch passes first.