Nat Clayton, level designer

A short story worthy of Bradbury and Asimov; with a sharp script, beautifully bleak visuals, and a soundtrack that ties it all together. Play this game. Then hug someone you love.

Dave Hurst, Can Androids Pray Review – WhyNow Gaming

Can Androids Pray is a short sci-fi tragedy written by Xalavier Nelson Jr (Hypnospace Outlaw, An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs) with an original soundtrack by Priscilla Snow, following two doomed mech pilots as they approach their imminent deaths. My role for the game was, effectively, everything that wasn’t the narrative script or soundtrack. Art assets, world design, visual scripting, camera choreography, UI, lighting—everything that happened in the Unity project was my responsibility.

Early tests used a model I had created for a previous project, ILLAL, and I took a lot of the shaders and visual lessons I’d learned from that to create a concise world for the game to take place in. With time limited on my part, I worked to make maximum use of minimal resources—finding a striking look without having to create too many art assets and using careful camera work to hide how small the game world actually was. As CAP is effectively a single conversation, I sought to strike Nelson’s emotional beats through careful camera work, strong silhouetting and using both the time of day and Snow’s escalating score to raise the stakes as the final hour approaches.

The first version of CAP used Ink to tell the story, though I eventually settled with Fungus’ visual scripting as it allowed me an easy way to track the story state and trigger simple scene elements.

Can Androids Pray was a modest financial success and strongly received by the few critics who did play it. Nelson would go on to port the game to Xbox and Nintendo Switch, eventually working with the porting studio Apriori to develop a sequel, Can Androids Survive.