When 31-year old Melbourne man Michael Wentworth-Bell released a short teaser video in early 2017, demonstrating his prototype for a VR stealth action game called Espire 1 that he’d put together in his spare time, he never imagined that it would one day get picked up by a major publisher and become one of the most anticipated VR titles of the year.

“I considered the chances of success at 0.004 per cent,” Wentworth-Bell says, “I had a full time job in another industry and had no game development experience.”

Micheal Wentworth-Bell, with members of the Digital Lode development team.

The three minute video took some cues from Bell’s favourite video games such as Metal Gear Solid, and showed how they might work in VR. Wentworth-Bell admits some of it was smoke and mirrors, as he hadn’t figured out how to develop all the features shown in the video. Despite this, the video received so many upvotes on Reddit it ultimately caught the attention of John Gibson, president of US-based game publisher Tripwire Interactive.

But it wouldn’t be until a full year later in early 2018 that a publishing deal actually materialised. When Gibson asked for a game design document, Wentworth-Bell spent all weekend scrambling to put it together.