Crafting Lightning: How Motion Twin Built Windblown with Photon Quantum

Photon is proud to share the story of Motion Twin, the acclaimed worker cooperative behind the hit roguelike Dead Cells, and their latest ambitious project: Windblown. This is a story not just of creative vision, but of how powerful technology – specifically Photon Quantum’s deterministic engine – was essential in bringing their lightning-fast multiplayer roguelite to life.

About Motion Twin: A Cooperative Approach

Motion Twin operates as a small indie studio of seven people, structured as a worker cooperative where each team member has an equal voice. This collaborative model deeply influences their development process, fostering a passion-driven environment where everyone is actively involved and encouraged to choose their contributions and share ideas freely. This structure enables them to prototype quickly, gather diverse feedback early, and continuously iterate. A key strength is that all their designers are also programmers. This allows them to take full ownership of features from idea to implementation, leading to rapid prototyping, sometimes in less than a day. This fast iteration is essential for a game like Windblown, where feel and responsiveness are paramount, and getting something playable early for testing is critical.

The Vision and the Challenge: Fast Action, Full Co-op

The inspiration for Windblown came from a familiar question: “what do we want to play right now?”. The answer was a high-speed, action-packed game (like DMC, Bayonetta, Platinum’s games) that could be fully enjoyed with friends (e.g., Monster Hunter). Their goal was to merge the community-driven spirit of earlier games with intense, refined action, but realizing this vision was challenging because there was no established blueprint for combining extremely fast-paced combat with full co-op multiplayer. This lack of reference points meant they had to invent many solutions themselves. Adding to the complexity was the need to ensure core systems worked equally well in both solo and co-op play without compromising the experience in either mode – a major design and technical hurdle.

Seeking the Right Technology

When seeking networking technology for Windblown’s multiplayer, Motion Twin had critical priorities. They needed low latency, cross-play support, ease of debugging, global scalability, and solid integration with Unity. Keeping up with the game’s fast action while providing smooth experiences globally was essential.

Why Photon Quantum Stood Out

Ultimately, Motion Twin chose Photon Quantum. Quantum offered the low-latency performance they needed, robust Unity support, and a proven global infrastructure. A key aspect that stood out was its predictive system, which aided in identifying and resolving issues faster. Quantum is the only 100% deterministic multiplayer game engine on the market. This fundamentally simplifies multiplayer development, making it similar to developing a local multiplayer title: no netcode is needed, as everything is networked and in sync by default. It uses an Input Only approach for low bandwidth, and its ECS architecture provides extreme performance. Deterministic games also inherently resist cheating. Quantum’s simulations are cross-platform and don’t depend on Unity, allowing them to run anywhere. It offers zero lag e-sport grade experiences locally, predicting and rolling back remote inputs.

Quantum’s architecture, with a garbage collection free ECS, provided necessary performance across platforms. The simulation rate is tick-based and can be adjusted. Clients predict inputs and continuously roll back and re-simulate with server-confirmed inputs. Unity is used purely for the view layer (level design, rendering, UI), while the deterministic simulation provides accurate data for zero lag gameplay. The engine supports a single codebase for all game modes (single-player, local, online). It includes built-in libraries for Physics, Pathfinding, and a Bot/AI SDK. Input and time sync are handled via the Photon Cloud.

Motion Twin found that once they overcame the initial learning curve with Quantum (typically a few weeks if new to ECS), its well-structured codebase and project architecture allowed for efficient development. Quantum delivered on all their core requirements from the start: low latency, seamless cross-play, ease of debugging, global scalability, and smooth integration with Unity. Beyond the technical advantages, Motion Twin highlighted the exceptional support from the Quantum team.

Quantum’s Impact: Debugging and Global Play

Two key moments highlighted the value of choosing Photon Quantum:

1. Dealing with extremely complex, context-specific bugs that involved precise timing and character states. Motion Twin states that without Quantum’s replay system, capturing and diagnosing such issues would have been nearly impossible. They found the replay system to be the most effective debugging tool encountered in over 20 years at Motion Twin, dramatically improving their ability to diagnose and resolve issues quickly. (This is directly supported by Quantum’s built-in Replays & Spectating feature).
2. Observing players connect and play seamlessly across vast distances, such as between the US West Coast and Europe. The fact that players could connect without perceivable lag was a clear testament to Quantum’s low-latency and robust global infrastructure, validating their choice (enabled by Quantum’s Input Only approach and the global Photon Cloud infrastructure).

Managing Performance and Visuals

To manage memory and CPU performance in Windblown’s large, fast environments, they used a combination of strategies. This includes batched and multithreaded generation, heavily optimized with Unity’s Burst compiler, for dynamic content. They also employ culling systems in both Unity and within Photon Quantum’s logic layer to process/render only relevant data. Motion Twin found that Quantum itself was quite performant, allowing them to focus way more on systemic optimization rather than having to go micro often. The decision to limit certain VFX for remote players was a design-driven choice primarily for readability and gameplay clarity in the fast-paced co-op environment, reducing visual noise and allowing players to track their own character.

Community Collaboration

Motion Twin has also been working closely with the community, running private alphas and public betas to gather feedback and fine-tune the Early Access experience. This ongoing dialogue helps them iterate with confidence and build something that really resonates with players. They emphasize the value of starting community building early. Staying close to the community is invaluable, talking with players, listening to their stories, and joining them in-game to gain insights that data alone cannot provide.

Early Access Launch and Reception

Windblown launched into Early Access on Steam with a “Very Positive” review rating (90% positive out of 7,323 reviews all time, 85% recent). Motion Twin is grateful for the response and committed to improving the game. Their advice to other developers launching multiplayer titles is to start building your community early.

Motion Twin shares their overall experience using Quantum:

“Photon Quantum gave us the performance and reliability we needed to bring Windblown’s fast-paced multiplayer to life. Its powerful tools also made our iterative process with the community more seamless and effective than anything we’ve experienced before.”

Conclusion: Powering Fast Multiplayer

In summary, Motion Twin’s journey with Windblown showcases how their unique cooperative structure facilitates rapid iteration, how facing the challenge of truly fast multiplayer pushed them to seek specific technical solutions, and how a powerful tool like Photon Quantum, with its deterministic engine, low-latency performance, robust global infrastructure, and powerful debugging features (particularly the replay system), coupled with close community feedback, was instrumental in bringing their ambitious vision to life and achieving positive reception in Early Access. Photon is proud to have supported Motion Twin with the technology to make Windblown’s lightning-fast multiplayer a reality.

Ready to build your own successful multiplayer game? With Fusion and Quantum by Photon, it’s never been easier to integrate cutting-edge multiplayer features into your project. We offer the industry’s most advanced tools, comprehensive support, and everything you need to get started – from downloadable samples to detailed documentation.

Take the first step today – download Fusion or download Quantum and start building. If you’re looking for in-depth assistance, join our Gaming Circle, where you can connect directly with our developers and get expert guidance throughout your journey.

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