Calum Blue Short - The Pirate Queen with Lucy Liu

Calum Blue Short

"An award-winning, immersive, narrative-focused VR adventure.
Step into the boots of Cheng Shih as you explore, solve light puzzles, and uncover the legend of the 19th century Pirate Queen in this Emmy-nominated, cinematic experience."

Preface

The Pirate Queen with Lucy Liu was my first commercial project, and first foray into VR development. I joined Cooperative Innovations mid-way through the game's development, which presented my first challenge of adapting to a project, and integrating with a team that was already in full-swing.

I'd only ever worked in a development team during short game jams, which I happened to always be the lead for. Adapting to an already established code-base was something I wasn't used to. I'd helped my peers during my time at university with their own code, but the extent of already built systems that I'd need to learn and work with was far beyond anything I was used to. Furthermore, I'd now need to familiarise myself with VR development, understanding not just the technical considerations and limitations of the hardware, but also of design, and the particular expectations of experience that comes with a VR game. It's safe to say that impostor syndrome reared its head almost immediately, as I worried that I wouldn't yet be capable of making a positive impact on the project.

Fortunately for me, I had a wonderful team that rallied around me, with no expectations upon myself to do anything straight away. My first couple of weeks on the project allowed me to fully familiarise myself with it, through playing the game, and exploring what was already built in-engine. I soon found my footing, and began to establish myself within the team, leading to me taking on more responsibilities, and even leading the design of key mechanics, systems, and levels.

Overview

The Pirate Queen with Lucy Liu is a narrative-driven VR adventure game with light puzzle mechanics that drive narrative progression. Narrative is the core pillar of the experience, and ensuring its effective delivery shaped design decisions across levels, systems, and mechanics. This narrative-first approach created a unique challenge, where scripts and environments were developed first, and gameplay had to be designed and integrated around these established elements. There was room for collaboration and negotiation with the narrative and art teams to refine and redefine areas of the game, however any adjustments were made with careful consideration for the intended narrative being delivered.

Level Design

One of the more challenging, and tightly constrained aspects of development, was level design, which had to align with pre-established narrative beats and environmental designs. This created an interesting challenge in that levels needed to keep players engaged from a traversal standpoint, whilst maintaining a strong focus on narrative delivery. This meant levels couldn't become overly complex, to ensure that players could prioritise the narrative first and foremost.

Player agency added another challenge to level design. The delivery and experience of key narrative moments was essential. This led to more linear level structures, and the implementation of natural progression gating to help guide players through the intended story.

Chapter Three: A Hidden Route

This chapter takes place within the confines of the Peng Fa's cargo hold and makeshift crew quarters. This space is a linear passageway, where most of the environment and initial level layout was finalised prior to my involvement. I was tasked with redesigning the level after further narrative development created the need for a more engaging and longer lasting experience.

The environment itself poses immediate constraints. Cargo is stacked along the sides, making the space more narrow, and much of the floor is lost to storage space, with occasional "gates" where progress is blocked until the player winches obstacles out of the way. This left a narrow area for traversal. The level design was simple, where players would walk along wooden beams that would break if stood on for too long, creating a sense of urgency. Players would then periodically step off of the main path to operate a winch to clear the way forward.

Internal playtesting found that this lacked engagement, and felt overly on-rails, delivering narrative without offering any meaningful player involvement. With limited space to expand or rearrange the walkable beams, I explored ways to introduce new mechanics to both increase tension and interactivity.

I incorporated the pre-exisiting climbing mechanic to add a new dimension and verticality to the level. This allowed the space to feel larger and more dynamic without requiring any major changes to the environment. I also introduced swinging cargo obstacles to increase challenge and create tension. Combined with the collapsing beams, these mechanics required players to move decisively by balancing the risk of moving too quickly and being hit by cargo, and not moving quick enough, leading to the player falling through the collapsed floor.

These obstacles were carefully staggered to avoid overwhelming the player, and allowing for moments of respite during key narrative moments.

See the entire level in play below (16:00).

System Design

I was fortunate enough to work on a plethora of systems throughout the game. I worked across the game's level directors, which tracked progress across each individual chapter of the game. This was stage-based, setting up and binding objectives for the player to complete at the appropriate time, and executing the narrative delivery and set pieces alongside. This also kept track of the level checkpoints, maintaining correct player and object states throughout the game, working in tandem with the save system for instances of player respawning and level restarts.

Chapter Nine: A Blazing Battle

A system that I developed entirely on my own was a key component of Chapter Nine: A Blazing Battle. Here, players are thrown into naval combat where they must manage firing and reloading cannons, and putting out fires caused by incoming fire. This system was scalable, and acted similarly to our level director with centralised, stage-based set-pieces being set up. This allowed myself and other designers to easily define "rounds" of combat where specific cannons, and amounts would need to be fired to count as a successful hits, and specified amounts of incoming fire would be received, causing outbreaks of fire throughout the level that the player would need to successfully extinguish before progressing, all whilst key narrative moments are delivered to the player.

See the entire level in play below (51:17).

Slot-Based Puzzles

I developed a modular puzzle system that supported a wide range of slot‑based interactions, from simple bookshelf arrangements to multi‑stage jigsaw puzzles. The system allowed designers to easily define puzzle layouts, track player progress, and trigger narrative or gameplay events when puzzles were completed.

The system supported both standalone puzzles and multi‑layered sequences, enabling individual puzzle completions to contribute to larger set‑pieces. It integrated smoothly with the game’s existing chapter‑based progression, ensuring puzzle completion aligned with narrative moments.

See the Jigsaw puzzles in play below (1:01:01).

Narrative Design

As the game is a narrative-first experience, the systems I built and contributed to naturally expanded into narrative design. Each mechanic was created to support story-driven gameplay, and together they formed a narrative design contribution.

Chapter Ten: Restoring The Fleet

A clear example of this is Chapter Ten: Restoring The Fleet. After surviving the naval battle, the player emerges onto the Peng Fa's deck to find the aftermath of the battle — with the environment devastated, as debris, hull breaches, and fires block the way. This chapter was a culmination of all of my previous design work on the project. The environment continued a linear player progression, whilst the narrative required controlled pacing and moments where player agency needed subtle constraints until key story points were delivered.

To support this, we needed a narrative-based obstacle that the player couldn't clear themselves. As the protagonist attempts to signal victory and seek Mazu's blessing, a storm rages overhead. I proposed placing a massive debris pule on the path towards the crow's nest, something so large that the player couldn't physically clear. As the player rings a gong to attempt to signal victory, lightning strikes, momentarily blinding them and clearing the path ahead.

Although this wasn't explicitly framed as divine intervention, the moment reinforces Mazu's presence thematically, and ties together environment, systems, and narrative into a singular, impactful gameplay set-piece.

See the event unfold below (55:50).

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