Shackled Prison

Seven, a small tracked robot with a cutting torch on one arm, sparks flying from a glowing shackle on a stone wall, with Rosie in a headset and pink jacket watching from beside a lantern. — Seven takes the torch to the first shackle on the Eastern Gate while Rosie keeps watch.

Floors: 4, from the Gatehouse to the Void
Shackles: 12 to cut
Cast: 4 new characters, modelled in Blender
Sound: 67 recordings, each one checked and levelled

A break-in, for Halloween

Somewhere under the clouds, a prison hangs over nothing on chains as thick as a man. Rosie has a radio, a backpack and a plan. Seven, the robot from FIELDWORK, has a new cutting torch on his arm. Rin stays up top on the radio and doesn't like any of it.

You drive Seven down through the prison one floor at a time. Each floor is held shut by shackles: on the gate bar, on the drawbridge, on the foundry's counterweight, and on the ring at the bottom where the Astronomer hangs. Drive up to one, hold the torch on the bright seam, and ease off before the nozzle overheats. When the seam goes white, the lock drops and the chain whips free.

The Inspector watches all of it from across the shaft. He checks his chronometer, makes a note, and doesn't stop you. That should worry you more than it does.

Four floors down

Floor	What holds it shut	What gets in the way
1 · The Gatehouse	Two shackles on the Eastern Gate's bar	Nothing yet. Rosie works the lift console once the gate is up.
2 · Cell Block	Three shackles hold the drawbridge upright	The Inspector's drones and their searchlights, and the hooded statues in the cells, which only move when you aren't looking.
3 · The Foundry	Three shackles on the counterweight, outside ones first	Swinging iron weights, a platform that tips if you cut in the wrong order, and a walkway that falls away behind you.
4 · The Void	Four shackles around the Astronomer's ring	The Void breathes. When the hum rises, get a pillar between you and the centre.

The cast

Seven comes from FIELDWORK with a new arm and a new cutting animation. The other four were modelled for this game in Blender, starting from the humanoid rig of the soldiers in Replacement, then baked high-poly onto low-poly so they don't look like plastic.

Rosie, a young woman with blue hair, a headset with an antenna, and big blue eyes. — **Rosie**Radio, backpack, plan.

Seven, a small robot with a teal head and two glowing rectangular eyes. — **Seven**Now with a torch.

The Inspector, a tall figure in a black dome helmet with a brass visor and lens. — **The Inspector**Takes notes.

The Astronomer, a pale woman with long white hair and closed eyes. — **The Astronomer**Has been waiting.

How to play

A loader fetches the Gatehouse first and starts the game as soon as it lands. The floors below keep downloading while you play, in order, and each lift waits for the floor under it.

Action	Keyboard and mouse	Gamepad
Drive	WASD or arrows	Left stick
Look	Mouse (click to lock), wheel to zoom	Right stick
Cut a shackle	Hold `E`	Hold A or the right trigger
Dazzle the drones at a panel	Tap `E`	A
Hop	`Space`	B
Scan for shackles	`F`	X
Ask Rosie what to do	`Q`	Y
Pause, sound	`Esc`, `M`	Start

Touch: drag on the left half to drive and the right half to look. The torch, hop, scan and Rosie buttons sit by your right thumb.

Inside the prison

Seven and Rosie on the stone bridge to the Gatehouse at night, lanterns burning either side of the iron gate. — The bridge to the Eastern Gate.

The ring of the Cell Block, its cells lit by cage lanterns, a drone's searchlight sweeping the floor. — The Cell Block. Stay out of the light.

The Foundry, its furnace glowing orange behind iron walkways and hanging chains. — The Foundry, where the furnace has never gone out.

The bottom of the prison: a dark ring floor around a pool of cold blue light, with the Astronomer hanging above it in chains. — The Void, and the Astronomer.

Borrowed from other GameLab projects

From FIELDWORKSeven himself, rebuilt from FIELDWORK's Blender scripts, with a cutting torch on his right forearm and three new clips: brace, cut and stow.
From ReplacementThe humanoid rig and procedural clips the cast is built on, and the loader. Here the loader also knows the order files arrive in and streams the lower floors while you play.
From Starlight MenagerieSeven's driving code, by way of Island V5, and the controls: keyboard, gamepad, and the floating touch stick.

Build notes

Blender, by script. The prison is built in Blender from one layout file that also tells the game where every floor, wall, shackle and lantern is. The light from the lanterns, the furnace and the Void is baked into each floor in Cycles, so the rooms are lit before the game draws a single light.

No plastic. Each character is modelled twice: a smooth high-poly version with cloth and grain, and the low-poly one that ships. Blender bakes the detail, the colour and the shading of the first onto the second. The prison's stone, iron and wood come from six small sculpted reliefs, baked into two texture sheets and projected onto the floors from three sides.

An anime Rosie. Her face is "secretly flat": a lattice presses the front of her round head shallow, the shading is borrowed from a round guide head, and the eyes, freckles and smile are painted onto that flat front, so she reads like a drawing from the front and three-quarter views. Every build of her was checked side by side against her character sheet, and in the game the whole cast is cel shaded with an ink outline.

Sound, levelled by role. Every recording started as a WAV. A script checked each one for channels, loudness, peaks, clicks and silence, set its bass and treble for what it does in the game, levelled it to a loudness target for its role, and wrote it as AAC in an .mp4.

Read the changelog.