Insomniac Sprouts a New Magic Leap Experience

Hi everyone,

We love collaborating with passionate partners on potentially breakthrough game technologies. It’s one of our favorite aspects of game development.

When we first heard about Magic Leap several years ago, we thought, “This could absolutely change our world.” A short time later, a few of us from Insomniac visited Magic Leap’s headquarters and were really impressed with what we saw in the early prototypes. What we witnessed was an approach that will change how people interact with reality. And even more relevant to us as game developers, we recognized an opportunity to design experiences that simply couldn’t haven’t existed before.

So we jumped in! We’re excited to share a taste of what we’ve been working on, which we revealed today at the L.E.A.P. conference here in Los Angeles, hosted by our friends at Magic Leap.

The Magic Leap team has actively involved us throughout the hardware development phase, which has allowed us to create an experience that takes full advantage of its capabilities. Here to tell you a bit more about Seedling is the game’s creative director and longtime Insomniac, Nathaniel Bell!

–Ted Price

First off, it’s an honor to represent the Seedling team and talk about our joyful experience. I’ve been with Insomniac for nearly 13 years, helping lead the art team for several games in the Resistance and Ratchet & Clank series, and most recently, two of our Oculus VR games. Between our friends at Oculus and Magic Leap, I believe the promise of mixed reality keeps getting bigger and better.

On to Seedling! As a Seedling Scout you nurture, grow and customize an alien lifeform – one that exists on your kitchen table. Or your desk at work. Or on the table next to your bed…As you grow your Seedling, it evolves into unexpected forms and rewards diligent caretakers with surprises.

Seedling is more of an experience than a traditional game and it represents us thinking differently about design. It’s Insomniac asking, “How can we use mixed reality to bring a bit of sparkle, a bit of wonder into the world around us.”

LEAP conference attendees were able to play a Seedling demo today, and their response to it was gratifying. Several folks were mystified and intrigued by our mini biome, taking great pleasure in helping the alien life flourish. We also led a breakout discussion about how we created Seedling using our own proprietary tech, hosted by Insomniac’s Joel Bartley. We’ll post that talk online soon.

Seedling isn’t the only experience we’re working on with Magic Leap though.

The ripple effect of the Schmelling Incident, the catalyst event Seedling is based on, has caused multiple cosmic dilemmas. You’ll be hearing more in the coming weeks and months about something else Insomniac has in store for mixed reality. And we’re excited to show it all to you.

Thanks for embarking upon yet another special journey with all of us at Insomniac. We can’t wait to hear what you think of Seedling. Please share your comments below, or you can always find us on our Twitch live streams, Discord, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and Instagram. Watch these spaces for more information on when and where Seedling will sprout next.

–Nathaniel Bell