The Bradwell Conspiracy

We're a sucker for first-person narrative games here at Push Square Towers so when word of The Bradwell Conspiracy got out, we were naturally intrigued. After surviving an explosion at the Bradwell Stonehenge Museum’s Solstice 2026 Gala, you're thrust into a mystery that you'll want to unravel just as much as the need to escape the rubble surrounding it. With The Bradwell Conspiracy set for release on PlayStation 4 later this year, we caught up with the team's founder, Georg Backer, and popped him a question or two.

Push Square: Please introduce yourself and The Bradwell Conspiracy. What sort of game is it?

Georg Backer: Hi, I'm Georg Backer and I'm the founder of A Brave Plan - the makers of The Bradwell Conspiracy. It's a first-person narrative adventure about two strangers who -- physically separated -- have to rely on and work with each other to escape a dangerous situation.

As the team's first project together, were you dead set on creating a first-person narrative experience? Or were you bouncing other ideas about?

A Brave Plan is structured like a Film/TV Production Company rather than a traditional games studio. This means that we're a collaboration of folk, bringing our professional expertise to the table in different areas - art, design, audio, code and so on. Whilst my original idea of a first-person narrative game about forming a relationship with an NPC is where it started, the mechanics, lore, style and everything else was developed and iterated upon by the team collectively.

Did any existing games in the genre inspire you?

We drew inspiration from lots of sources for The Bradwell Conspiracy. Obviously we're big fans of games focusing on narrative, e.g. Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, etc... but lots of us really like RPGs (e.g. I'm a big fan of Mass Effect), puzzle games (Portal) and games that really immerse you into their world. BioShock is a great example of that, it's an action game but it's the narrative design that really pulled me in.

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What are you looking to do differently with The Bradwell Conspiracy?

With the Bradwell Conspiracy we wanted to change how players interacted with NPCs and developed relationships with them. The player is intentionally given a blank slate with no gender, ethnicity or personality given to them in-game. It's up to you to decide who you are and how you want to interact with the world. For that reason we didn't want to have dialogue trees or fixed responses, we didn't want you to force to be a certain character. But at the same time we wanted to make a game about collaboration and communication, so that was an interesting challenge.

Could you explain the 3D-printing and photographical gameplay mechanics? How will they play out in action?

By sending a photo, the player can respond to Amber or tell her about interesting objects and events. Sometimes it's as simple as sending her a photo of a door to unlock it, on other occasions you might need to think carefully about what you show her and when. However, the player can also send her lots of stuff. You can get through the game having a survival experience with her, or you can photograph everything in your surroundings to learn more about her or Bradwell Electronics. Most importantly we want to make you and Amber feel like you're in this together, that you're collaborating and that you're both working on finding solutions. So depending on the situation, Amber might crack a few jokes, or lose her patience with you if you send the same picture of a throw cushion over and over.

The 3D-printing mechanic is not just a cool way to show off Bradwell's technology, it's an important part of what makes the overall gameplay satisfying. Collaborating with Amber is fun on its own but giving players the ability to manipulate the world around using a material called Substance gives us many fresh opportunities to get them thinking. Let's say you have to cross a huge destroyed gap in the floor. You can print planks to get across but you don't have enough material to go all the way. Is there anything else you could use in the space? Is there something Amber could tell you - something in the room you haven't noticed or something you could deconstruct to get more Substance? We iterate and build upon these two mechanics as the game progresses.

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How did Jonathan Ross get involved? Which character will he play?

Jonathan Ross plays The Narrator, a guiding voice for a very cool "induction" section in the game. I've worked with Jonathan in the past and when I told him about my project, I obviously had to ask if he wouldn't mind being part of it. I wanna avoid spoilers but let's just say the sections features an abundance of puns.

To wrap things up, how would you summarise The Bradwell Conspiracy in a sentence?

A game about cooperation, relationships and an immersive tale of how future technologies can be inspiring in the right hands - or terrifying in the wrong ones. And puns. Did I mention puns?

We would like to thank Georg Backer, founder of A Brave Plan, for taking the time to answer our questions and Alex Van Lepp who made this interview possible. The Bradwell Conspiracy releases on PlayStation 4 later this year.