[Concept Art by ML Studio’ co-founder Alberto Prieto]

About the game

Shattered Cognition was the first game I developed as part of a studio.

It was an immersive sim which pitch could be something like “Deus Ex meets Dishonored feat. David Cronenberg’ eXistenz”.

The story was catchy, tho:

In an alternate XIX century, an alien invasion is imminent. One of them, thinks that he is human after a memory simulation failure, and a cult of mechanical techno-freaks take advantage of his suggestive state in order to unveil the secrets of his species’ technology.

Meanwhile, the human resistence is developing their cutting-edge electrical technology to fight the invasion -and also the dominant human powers that had been alienated by invaders.

The player is the alien trying to figure out what happened and deciding if he helps the mechanical cult, the pro-human resistence or, if he embrace his true nature and finish his initial task -truncated by the memory experiment.

The project was a herculean task for a grup of newcomers, and after three and a half years -working mostly in our spare time- we decided to cancel and close the studio.

After, for some time -until mid 2016, I think- I tried to adapt the game to a boardgame as a practice on my own.

[Above some of the mockups I did with game’ concepts]

What I did in the game

• I was the producer and project manager. It was my fist project working with other peeps -15 at the studio’ apogee- so I had to put the producer hat.
• I was the main designer, in charge of game and narrative design. Working in SC was my first time designing game progression and economy systems.
• I was the creative director and writer. I wrote three scripts for the game from start to finish focusing in a cinematic appealing rather than game design. Ouch.

What I have learned from working on this project

• How to analyze games to understand their design choices.