Case Study - Rebel Core: Awakens

The Problem - Making something new, from something old

Oftentimes development can be a slow and unglamourous process, with there being little new to show day to day, but that doesn’t mean promotion can stop. That was the challenge I was faced with when Atom Switch Inc. asked for my help with getting some momentum going for their sci-fi side-scrolling action platformer, Rebel Core Awakens.

While the game had been in development for sometime, things were outwardly quiet on the project, because the developer was working on unsexy behind the scenes stuff. However, as they were in the process of looking for a publisher, they needed some fresh marketing material out there to show that the game was alive, and to help optimize its existing presence.

As such I parsed through all of their existing assets and really took the time to understand the game from all angles, to try to come up with some lightweight but enticing new promotional content using what they’d already built. While I came up with a whole slew of ideas for the developer to later adapt themselves, three major efforts were done by myself to help bring the world and characters of Rebel Core: Awakens to life.

tHE FIX: pART oNE - sTEAM Clean

The first and most important thing I did was go over the Rebel Core: Awakens Steam page with a fine tooth comb and look for any improvements that could be made, and there were several places where I was able to help them polish things up:

  • All of the text on the page was lightly edited, tightening things up where necessary and providing a smoother and more evocative flow to the language. I also restructured the page’s “About This Game” section to prioritize the elements of the game that players could experience first-hand via the open playtest, shifting focus away from the features that hadn’t been implemented yet.

  • The initial screenshots didn’t show the full range of action in the game and many contained outdated UI elements that didn’t reflect the current state of development. Accordingly I went and captured a full fresh set of screens from the most recent build, ensuring I captured a variety of actions and environments to better showcase everything Rebel Core: Awakens has to offer.

  • The capsule and header art for the game didn’t do much to say what the game actually was, instead focusing on a drawn close-up of the player character’s face. I advised them to change it to something that better reflected the overall tone and content of the game, and helped to ideate the current capsule art, which shows the post-apocalyptic nature of the game’s setting and as well a wider sense of adventure.

  • There were a number of video assets attached to the page, all of which served a different purposes and none of which gave a clean and quick impression of both the gameplay and the narrative. Using some of those existing assets as well as new gameplay footage I captured from the playtest, I cut together a new trailer that clearly showed both gameplay and story and did so in a tight thirty seconds.

tHE FIX: pART Two - Lore of War

After fixing up the Steam page, I then picked out a couple of the larger asset concepts to work on that I had come up with after going through the development materials for the game, with the goal of creating enough social content for Atom Switch to be able to post about Rebel Core: Awakens on a weekly basis for several months.

The first asset series I chose to work on was a set of ‘Lore Images’ using concept art surrounding the game’s backstory (specifically a series of newspapers, magazines, and billboards) and couching those in larger scenes that showcased a moment in time from the lore of the game’s world. This then evolved into actually using these images to tell the full backstory of the game, pairing each image with a journal entry written from the perspective of one person witnessing the creation, implementation, and eventual revolt of the machines that have taken over the world in Rebel Core: Awakens. I was very lucky that the team at Atom Switch was so amenable to the concept, and they allowed me to go so far as to create a character in that world and tell their story.

For all these Lore Images, I concepted the initial versions of the scenes (cut together from existing concept materials as mentioned) and then the team at Atom Switch ran a quick art pass over them, embellishing and better blending the assets together. I then wrote an accompanying journal entry for each image which we posted alongside these scenes and presented in the same style as text entries in the game. These then went out week by week on X, BlueSky, and Instagram before being collated together into a larger Steam post at the end.

  • Phase 1: Paved With Good Intentions

  • Phase 2: Welcome To The New Real.

  • Phase 3: A disappointing reality.

  • Phase 4: 2 Minutes Past Midnight

  • Phase 5: The Impossible Burden of Trust

tHE FIX: pART Three - Who’s the Boss

The second larger concept I worked on was a series of shorts that showcased the game’s bosses and the levels they lorded over.

With Rebel Core: Awakens being much inspired by Megaman X, bosses played a very large role in not only the game’s structure but also in delivering its narrative and overall colour. As such I knew putting a spotlight on them was keenly important to really sell the game to a larger audience, but at the current stage of development, there wasn’t much material I had to work with on that front. Most of the levels hadn’t been modeled yet and neither had the bosses, and there was only limited concept art of them for me to work with. However their personalities and general outlines had all been locked in and even used in some earlier marketing material the developer had put out (specifically a series of trading cards handed out at physical events), and as such I decided to that take that trading card concept and flesh it out further, bringing those cards to life in a way that brought those bosses’ personalities to the fore.

This saw me using the existing silhouettes of the bosses alongside concept art of the levels to create a dynamic scene which was then punctuated by having the confirmed quotes for each boss (which were listed on those trading cards) read aloud. Of course voice acting hadn’t been done yet for the game (and can be quite expensive) but thankfully as part of the design doc, the desired voices for each boss had been outlined, so I took it upon myself to personally provide as much of the VO as I could. For those characters for which I was unable to do the voices —specifically the female bosses and one which fully machine— an outside voice artist and text to speech were used respectively.

All of the video editing for this project was done by myself with Atom Switch providing some refined assets to aid in the process, and they were done in both horizontal and vertical formats in order to be published on as many platforms as possible. While they’ve yet to be released, they are expected to go out across X, BlueSky, TikTok, Instagram, & YouTube at some point, and a collated version of them was also created in order to be later used for a Steam post (which I’ve been given permission to include early below).

The Result - The system Stirs

While there’s still further ideas I put together for the team to be created, and those shorts still to be published, I can say pretty firmly that my efforts have made a positive impact and helped create some momentum for Rebel Core: Awakens, with the work overall being really appreciated by the developer. Don’t take my word for it though, this testimonial from the CEO & Creative Director of Atom Switch, Dan Sandberg , says it all:

"Working with Matt has been an absolute treat. He seamlessly embedded into the project as if he was a founding member of the team. His thorough, detail oriented approach and focused review of the existing content allowed him to write copy, create voice-over work, capture footage, and edit it all together in a way that felt as natural and project-accurate as if I had been able to do it myself.

Being able to combine that deep project understanding with a fresh pair of eyes and an external viewpoint helped to make content that was not only on-brand, but also brought a fresh and clearer view of what to explain more to players, and what to pull back on.

The results from his work were as quantifiable as they were qualitative. As a direct result of his content and input, wishlists and playtest signups increased by a full 10%, with no other campaigns or paid boosting happening at that time.

I would be thrilled to work with Matt again and greatly look forward to another chance to make use of his wide set of skills.”

-Dan Sandberg
CEO | Creative Director, Atom Switch, Inc.

With nothing more than a refresh to the Steam page and a few images going out on social media, a 10% increase in the core KPIs we were looking to improve is a result I’m quite happy with. With any luck, as those ‘Bosses & Biomes’ shorts go out and should the team develop any of the other ideas for content that I provided, Atom Switch will see a continued return with their wishlists and playtesters steadily climbing as they further build out the world of Rebel Core: Awakens.