Upon joining Flix Interactive, I was assigned to the Sea of Thieves Adventures team, where I contributed to delivering monthly, time-limited content as part of the game’s live service lifecycle. With my expertise in Level and Narrative Design, the Adventures were a natural fit for my skill set. Over nine months, I successfully shipped three major features, gaining valuable experience in live-service content’s unique cadence and design challenges. Working on such an iconic IP was both a professional milestone and an opportunity to deepen my understanding of maintaining player engagement through regular content drops.
THE SHROUDED DEEP
The first adventure I worked on was The Shrouded Deep. This adventure tasked players with summoning and defeating the legendary Megalodon, the Shrouded Ghost, by working together to collect ancient effigies and perform a powerful ritual. We were tasked with emphasizing cooperative gameplay, by requiring crews to form alliances, coordinate their efforts, and explore the world for clues. We focused on creating dramatic encounters, an eerie atmosphere, and a climactic battle. The adventure blended exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat, culminating in a cinematic ritual sequence that showcased the grandeur of this rare and elusive Megalodon.
I created the blueprints for the effigies, which spawned upon defeating a Megalodon and were integral to the core objective – returning them to the summoning table to progress the adventure. These effigies were designed as non-crew-specific items, allowing any player on the server to participate, encouraging cooperative and emergent gameplay.
Additionally, I took responsibility for setting up dialogue trees to guide player interactions and narrative flow. I worked on implementing new cannon types used for summoning Megalodons, integrating their functionality into the gameplay systems. Using level blueprints, I created banner triggers to visually signify major events, enhancing player feedback during key moments. I also managed the creation of player rewards, ensuring their integration into backend systems, and collaborated across teams to ensure the technical and design aspects aligned seamlessly with the adventure’s vision.
WHO KILLED DEMARCO
The second feature I contributed to was Who Killed DeMarco, the first-ever mystery introduced to the game. This feature was designed to engage players in a community-driven investigation, blending traditional storytelling with emergent gameplay. Players unravelled the narrative by piecing together clues scattered throughout the game world, deciphering cryptic messages, and collaborating across the community via social media channels to solve the murder of DeMarco Singh, a prominent & beloved character.
As a persistent feature, the final puzzle and cinematic ending of Who Killed DeMarco remain accessible in the game, allowing new players to experience the conclusion of this story firsthand. It stands as a testament to Rare’s innovative approach to evolving its in-game narrative within a live-service framework.
ENVIRONMENTAL STORYTELLING
As part of Who Killed DeMarco, we deliberately placed music boxes throughout the world as environmental storytelling elements. Each was carefully positioned near water to maintain narrative consistency, reinforcing the involvement of the sirens in DeMarco’s murder. To enhance the mystery, I collaborated with the engineering team to develop a new type of lantern that revealed hidden actors in the world only when its light shone upon them. This mechanic added a layer of intrigue and player discovery that fit perfectly with the mystery’s tone.
The feature also leveraged new in-game technology, allowing us to dynamically spawn actors in the world, which was a significant step forward for Sea of Thieves. This capability provided greater flexibility in designing narrative-driven encounters and environmental storytelling, offering players more immersive gameplay experiences.
THE HOWLING WOLF
I worked on this feature for approximately four months, and a key highlight of my contribution was designing the sequence involving the sinking of DeMarco’s ship, The Howling Wolf. This moment posed a significant challenge due to issues with world relativity – players could die from reaching depths that exceeded safe limits in the game. To address this, I liaised closely with the Engineering team to find a solution. Together, we determined that The Howling Wolf should be sunk at the same depth as the Black Pearl in A Pirate’s Life: Tale 2, ensuring the game could safely support player exploration at that level.
Building on this foundation, I designed the sequence to guide players toward the shipwreck using brightly coloured wreckage pieces as visual breadcrumbs, leading them naturally through the underwater environment. To further enhance accessibility and ensure survival, I incorporated barrels releasing air bubbles, allowing players to replenish oxygen as they dove deeper. This collaborative and systematic approach ensured that the underwater exploration felt engaging, intuitive, and safe for players, delivering a visually striking and memorable moment in the adventure.
FINALE
One of the key challenges I faced while working on Who Killed DeMarco was ensuring the pacing and integration of the Siren Queen’s dialogue during the finale. This moment was pivotal, as it revealed to players that the Siren Queen was not dead and had placed the Sea of Thieves universe under a thrall via the music boxes I had placed – a major twist in the game’s overarching narrative. The dialogue delivery needed to flow seamlessly between gameplay and exposition, maintaining tension while providing enough context for players to grasp the magnitude of the reveal.
To achieve this, I meticulously designed and positioned dialogue triggers to align with player actions and movements, ensuring they activated naturally within the gameplay flow. This process required numerous iterations, each tested and refined based on feedback from leads and narrative designers. Frequent feedback sessions were essential to perfecting the timing, tone, and narrative impact of the dialogue, ensuring it resonated with players emotionally and clarified the stakes.
Balancing gameplay and exposition was a priority. The dialogue needed to enhance the climactic experience without interrupting player agency. I collaborated closely with the audio team to synchronize the Siren Queen’s voice delivery with the scene’s atmosphere and worked with lighting artists to visually amplify the tension. These elements combined to deliver a finale that was cohesive, emotionally impactful, and narratively satisfying, cementing the Siren Queen’s role as a formidable antagonist and providing a fitting & emotional climax.
MENTORING
While working on Who Killed DeMarco, I took on the additional responsibility of onboarding a new team member to the Adventures team. Despite having only been on the project for three months myself, I ensured they were quickly brought up to speed with the tools, processes, and design philosophy of Sea of Thieves. This involved sharing insights from my recent experiences, walking them through Unreal Engine workflows, and collaborating on tasks to help them integrate seamlessly into the team. Balancing my own responsibilities while providing mentorship was a rewarding challenge that underscored my adaptability and commitment to fostering a collaborative work environment.
THE RETURN OF THE DAMNED
The final feature I worked on during my time on Sea of Thieves was the highly acclaimed adventure, The Return of the Damned. This adventure tasked players with choosing sides in a climactic conflict between two key factions: the mysterious Servants of the Flame and the noble Guardians of Fortune. Players actively influenced the fate of the Sea of Thieves universe by gathering resources, completing objectives, and ultimately deciding which faction would claim the Soulflame Captain’s allegiance. The community’s participation directly shaped the game world, with the winning side permanently altering the landscape of the lore and world.
Players praised this adventure for its immersive narrative stakes and the opportunity to influence the story on a grand scale. It wasn’t just about completing tasks; it was about participating in a communal event with far-reaching consequences, making every player’s contribution feel meaningful. The blend of competitive and cooperative elements heightened engagement, as factions vied for dominance.
For me, working on The Return of the Damned was particularly fulfilling because it gave the world genuine stakes and empowered players to determine its fate. Designing a feature that blended narrative depth with player agency felt like a culmination of everything I’d learned on the project. It was exciting to see how the community rallied behind their chosen sides, and I was proud to have contributed to such a defining moment for the game.
THE SOUL FLAME CAPTAIN
As part of designing the Soulflame Captain encounters in The Return of the Damned, I was responsible for setting up the combat scenarios at the sea forts. This included placing spawners, explosive barrels, balancing ammo and health drops, and designing the strategic placement of the Soulflame Captain to apply additional pressure on crews during the encounters. These scenarios were carefully crafted to maintain a fair yet challenging experience, requiring significant iteration and balancing. Players could approach these encounters solo or as part of a crew, and tuning the difficulty for varied group sizes presented a unique challenge. Ultimately, we decided to balance the encounters for a crew of two, ensuring skilled solo players could still manage the fights while providing an appropriately scaled challenge for larger groups.
The Soulflame Captain was intentionally placed at the sea forts to put added pressure on crews, making the fights even more intense and rewarding. The design of the encounters, combined with the risk of facing the Soulflame Captain, encouraged teams to cooperate closely and think tactically, adding a layer of tension and unpredictability to the adventure.
Mark Gregory 