Cypher 007
A licensed Bond game, a year into development, needed a clear new direction.
- Role
- Design Director
- Studio
- Apple Arcade · MGM · Pixelbite
- Platform
- iOS (Apple Arcade)
The problem
When I joined Cypher 007 it was already a year into development, and it wasn’t quite hitting the mark with stakeholders. The team knew a major shift was needed: a streamlined vision and a new direction. My job was to dive into the existing game, figure out what worked, and decide what had to be cut.
What I did
As Design Director I defined the vision and strategic direction for live and in-development products, including Cypher 007, and kept it aligned with what the stakeholders and the IP holder expected.
Drawing on what I’d learned on Afro Samurai and Splatterhouse, I built a spreadsheet that mapped every level in detail. It wasn’t a feature list: it covered mechanics, interactables, enemies, scene descriptions and unlockables, so the whole team could see the game’s flow and the purpose of each beat.
The result
That spreadsheet became the tool for communicating the revised vision to senior staff and MGM, and it showed how we’d make a James Bond game that lived up to expectations. It was the roadmap that took us through two additional chapters and gave our third-party developer, Pixelbite, clear direction. The game was realigned and brought much closer to what everyone had envisioned.
