Mazerance, a psychological game development studio under Australia-based 5Blooded, made a stronger commitment to global creativity through an augmented creative collaboration with Nigerian brand storyteller Christopher Joseph Bassey, known congenially as Topher.
The collaboration will continue to reimagine the audience’s perception and interaction with Mazerance’s upcoming psychological puzzle world. Topher’s storytelling will help clarify emotion and authenticity within the game’s deeply immersive narrative.
Building a “Living Simulation”
Mazerance founder Elvis Obi describes the project not so much as entertainment, but “a living simulation; it studies how the player interacts with it.” The game’s foundation lies in unease and perception, dynamically altering itself based on past decisions by the player. “We’re making a world that tracks how you play it,” Obi says, which requires storytelling that evolves with the game’s adaptive reactive design.
Topher’s role is not simply to craft narratives and plots; he must also find a way to convert those adaptive mechanics into a human experience that is deeply emotional.
Storytelling from the Ground of Cultural Movement
Topher is recognized as an influencer in the cultural narrative space with his meaningful work with Ughelli Rovers FC, and the Nigeria Football Federation. His background with the local forms is an important serum for creating messages for national and continental audiences. Obi emphasizes that the collaboration is consciously picking clarity over buzz to ensure that storytelling, press and community engagement are genuine and authentic. It embodies a philosophy that emotional connectivity, not hype, is what will root players in engagement.
Global Creative DNA, African-Led
The creative team for Mazerance spans the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe all under an African-led creative vision of Elvis Obi. This statement is not made out of whim, but with intention, a breadth of style that acknowledges an internationally inspired aesthetic which has meaning from different perspectives on cultures.
The project, importantly, is positioning African talent globally as opposed to the usual tech consumer narrative told in the industry. There is no ambiguity, to be a creative economy is to be a player of the game, not simply a player of another’s game.
Platform Focus and Community Building
The mid to long-term strategy is currently focused on PC (Steam) but stadiums on consoles with community access through mailing lists, a Discord server where fans will be privy to updates and teasers and exclusive access.
An exciting addition is to launch “The Box”, a limited preview kit to lay the ground for an early connection between players and (as yet) developers – another exciting conduit to facilitate community.
What’s New: Strategic Improvements
Updates recently made outlined a narrowing of scope for the collaboration:
Editorial Strategy and Press: Topher will be focused on the production of press releases, campaign materials, and media stories to create storytelling material with clear call measures – which are not limited to players taking. action, but taking action to add to Steam wishlist for Mazerance.
Community-Focused Projects: Articles and social assets issued to be active, communal and even emotionally engaged materials, this early stake in ownership along with an emotional charge can cultivate a sense of early communal excitement around new gameplay interacting with a unique enjoyable psychological space in play.
Cultural Relevance: With the support of Topher to frame the narrative by putting layered cultural relevance into the game – to drive a grounding and human experience from capturing memories and excitement of the mechanics in radical originality, and never-do-we-forget gameplay.
Conclusion
This collaboration is more than marketing alignment, it points to demonstrating how African leadership can now shape and transmit universal creativity in gaming by reinforcing a human message in socially-based storytelling and playing off of a game experience that invites players to be a part of the exploration and iterative development of this innovation; an invitation to form an emotional connection from culture as the source to meaning in their exploration of procedural play.
To Topher, the collaboration opens up another frontier – going from narrative in a sports-branded story to storytelling in an innovative narrative for a game; a reminder of the significance of cultural vision and influence of tech.
To Mazerance, it has reaffirmed that clarity, emotionality and cultural truth can lift a game from “it is just a puzzle world” to an animated, emotional experience.