What happens when you bring experimental theatre into a sci-fi video game?
In an insightful talk at GDC 2025, Remy Siu, founder and creative director of Sunset Visitor, revealed how the story of 1000xResist came together.
Note: this article contains minor spoilers.
Developed by Vancouver-based Sunset Visitor, 1000xResist is a genre-bending narrative adventure that explores generational trauma, diaspora, and memory through a time-shifting lens.
At the heart of the game’s creative process lies the surprising influence of devised theatre. The result is a haunting, emotionally resonant story with a narrative shaped not by a strict game design document, but by a collaborative process of improvisation and discovery.
“Our mandate as a studio is to tell diverse stories through the lens of speculative fiction, bringing the experimental performing arts to interactive media,” Siu says.
Siu, who trained as a concert music composer and later worked in experimental theatre, brought a radically different approach to writing during the development of 1000xResist. Rather than using traditional narrative pipelines, Sunset Visitor adopted the process-first ethos of devised performance, a method seldom seen, or documented, in game development.
Devised Theatre
Devised theatre is a method of making a performance without a pre-written script. Instead, performers, writers, and artists work together in the room, experimenting, improvising, and iterating until the final piece emerges organically.
“It’s a method of creation where the outcome is unknown, and the work is made in the room together in a multidisciplinary context,” Siu explains. “There’s no script or score that exists beforehand, usually only a set of concerns, ideas, or concepts. Performers in the room work together to devise the performance with resources available to them. So it prioritises iteration, not knowing, and discovery.”
To illustrate, Siu references a performance by She She Pop, a German theatre collective known for their boundary-pushing, autobiographical works. In the excerpt, performers layer fragmented narration, projection, and physical movement to create a complex emotional landscape, something difficult to capture in a traditional script.
“You can really tell that this is made in some way that’s very difficult to make in any other way,” Siu notes.
This spirit of discovery, of letting the work take shape through rehearsal and repetition, was at the core ofSunset Visitor’s own collaborative approach.
Translating Theatre to Games
Early in development, Sunset Visitor tried to mimic a TV-style writer’s room. They constructed a “game bible” to map out storylines, themes, and characters. But they quickly realised it didn’t fit the way they worked, or to be truthful, the way they wanted to work.
“We tried to cosplay TV writers for a bit,” Siu recalls. “And then we generally kind of threw it all away. While a TV show bible is often held and referred to throughout TV production, we found the moment we put pen to paper things would often change quite a lot. More interesting things would be discovered and we wanted to follow those things. So we very much put aside the bible and embraced the unknown and emergent.”
Instead of rigid outlines, the team leaned into scenarios and emotional beats. Chapters were developed one at a time, with ideas pitched broadly before being fleshed out through “hot drafts.”
These were fast, exploratory writing sprints that prioritised instinct over polish. As a result, writing was often driven by what was physically in front of the team, such as completed spaces, mechanics, and character art. As Siu puts it, “reacting to what is happening in the room over any kind of conceived plans.”
Creative Rewards and Strain
This process led to some of 1000xResist’s most memorable moments. A key early twist, Watcher’s betrayal of Fixer, emerged from a confluence of performance style and concept art that challenged initial ideas.
“We discovered that it would be more fun and exciting if Watcher betrays Fixer in Chapter One,” Siu says. “That was totally never part of the plan.”
But with the rewards came some creative strain. The lack of strict outlines made it harder to manage scope and pacing. Communicating changes beyond the core creative circle was tricky. And by the final chapters, the sheer number of unresolved themes became overwhelming.
“There’s a lot of pain and suffering on the writers’ part,” Siu admits. “This was no more clear than in the ending stretch of the game. We had thrown up so many thematic ideas, and it was really hard to catch them all. “
Still, the writing remained alive. Each chapter was reactive, honest, and filled with creative risk.
A Future Model?
While Sunset Visitor’s approach isn’t a fit for every project, it offers an intriguing alternative to the rigid, traditional models often imposed on game writing. In fact, Siu says narrative development inspired by devised theatre isn’t so different from game development itself.
“If anything that I’ve said today about devised performance or processes sounds familiar to you, it’s because it sounds a lot like game development, right?” he says. “So I actually do think they have a lot in common. They both really focus heavily on iteration.”
“As tools continue to evolve in games to allow for faster iteration, and the difference between artistic intent and result continues to get smaller, and the teams get smaller,” concludes Siu. “It’s possible that from a creative process point of view, devised performance, dance, and interactive media all have a really interesting future of coexisting.”
For 1000xResist, the controlled chaos of writing wasn’t about perfectly executing a vision, it was about discovering the game together, chapter by chapter, moment by moment.
Read more reports from the 2025 Game Developers Conference.
