From student thesis to indie debut: how Last Praetorian Interactive made Project Vesperi with one Xsens suit

Building a cinematic experience with a small indie team

A six-person college team brought a branching sci-fi adventure on Venus to life with Xsens motion capture, Manus gloves, and Unreal Engine 5, capturing 83 pages of performance in six days.

Behind the scenes: an actor Dareionte’ Kinder up in the Xsens system during a Project Vesperi capture session

Project Vesperi is a cinematic, branching-narrative sci-fi game set in 2083, where Earth's resources have run dry and the Unified Nations of Earth have turned to the solar system in search of life. Players step into the boots of Dr. Evelyn Roth, an astrobiologist sent to a research outpost on Venus called Geyser Canyon Station to investigate a possible sign of life. When an intruder threatens the only habitable station on the planet, every choice the player makes reshapes the fate of the crew, and of humanity itself.

What began as a thesis project for Chapman University students grew into the debut release of indie studio Last Praetorian Interactive. The game launched on Steam and the Epic Games Store with movie-length scope, lifelike character performances, and more than ten endings, all built by a small student team using accessible tools and a lot of determination.

"We always played choose-your-own-adventure games where your choices matter. We really wanted to make our own branching narrative, and in this case, one about a sign of life on Venus. That was the inspiration at the onset, and it evolved from there."
Brandon Hill, Director and Creative Lead, Last Praetorian Interactive

Cinematic ambition on a student budget

Brandon Hill and Trevor Gore came from a film background, not a games one. They wanted Project Vesperi to feel less like a typical video-game cutscene and more like cinema, with real actors delivering real performances. That ambition collided with the reality of student life: a tiny team, no dedicated capture stage, a borrowed equipment window, and almost no prior motion capture experience between them.

Hill first proved out the tone of the game by building a concept teaser in Unreal Engine using animations he found online, simply to show people what the project could become. The teaser did its job, the professors got behind it, and one animation professor pointed the pair toward a motion capture suit that was sitting unused for the summer. There was no class on how to operate it, no in-house games pipeline for it, and no second suit to pair actors together. The team had a single suit, a cast of five or six actors, and an 83-page script to capture.

"Nobody on the team had any experience with motion capture. We came in a little blind and eager to learn the whole process."
Trevor Gore, Writer and Production Lead, Last Praetorian Interactive

Actors Sophia Khan and Julia Cornell run a scene in a folded-open research pod, with the capture station and taped floor marks in view. The portable Xsens system meant no permanent stage was needed.

One portable Xsens suit, a whole production

The team used the suit from the film school's equipment room and held onto it for the entire summer. Hill taught himself the system from the Xsens documentation and tutorial videos, then ran his own tests at home and across different locations to dial in strap placement and connection quality. By the time the capstone class started in the fall, the plan was to walk in on day one with all the mocap already done, so there would be no question about whether the game could be made.

Because the Xsens system is inertial and portable, the team did not need a permanent stage. They shot inside the Fowler School of Engineering's bookable research pods, folding back a partition wall to open up a long corridor with enough runway for the script's running and action beats. The portability also let them keep all the sound in one place: lavalier mics went on the suits, a boom operator worked the room like a film set, and most of the dialogue players hear in the game was recorded live on the day of the shoot rather than replaced later.

"We wanted voiceover-booth quality sound in an interior space. Most of the dialogue you hear in the game was recorded with the mocap on the day, as opposed to going back and replacing it later. We really wanted to get it all in one go."
Brandon Hill, Director and Creative Lead, Last Praetorian Interactive

With only one actor in the suit at a time, the team rehearsed each scene like a stage play, marking positions with tape on the floor, then captured the same scene several times, once per character, and synced the performances together in the same space. In six days, the studio captured roughly 83 pages of script using that single suit. Each take was processed in the Xsens software and imported into Unreal Engine 5, where the team checked for foot slide before committing it.

The team worked the room like a film set, adjusting an actor's facial-capture rig between takes.

The part that mattered most for a two-person animation team was cleanup, or rather, the lack of it. Going through 83 pages of motion across multiple characters by hand was not feasible at the team's size, and other mocap solutions they had looked at demanded heavy manual correction on nearly every take. The Xsens HD reprocessor removed that bottleneck entirely.

"That was the incredible part. The Xsens HD reprocessor was a game changer. Any of the jitters or pops or things we would normally have to go back and clean up were suddenly fixed. I set it up and ran it on our school laptop, came back, and all the mocap was polished. I thought, this is incredible.."
Brandon Hill, Director and Creative Lead, Last Praetorian Interactive

With jitter and foot-pop handled automatically, the remaining animation work came down to creative choices and specific prop interactions rather than technical firefighting. For a later pickup shoot, the team upgraded the pipeline further, adding Manus gloves for finger capture and an iPhone with Epic's MetaHuman Animator for higher-fidelity facial performance, focusing on the key moments that needed it most. For Gore, the low-cleanup workflow was decisive in choosing Xsens in the first place.

"Production-workflow-wise, additional cleanup would have been next to impossible to factor in. Keeping that low-stress was a big deal, and it was one of the big reasons we went with Xsens."
Trevor Gore, Writer and Production Lead, Last Praetorian Interactive

Fitting the Manus gloves for a follow-up pickup shoot, which added finger capture to the pipeline.

A shippable, cinematic indie game

Project Vesperi grew from a capstone assignment into a full indie release under Last Praetorian Interactive, developed in the team's free time around full-time jobs and graduate studies. The finished game delivers movie-length, replayable storytelling with more than ten endings, lifelike performances, and tense action sequences, all built by a small student-turned-indie team using largely free and accessible tools.

Motion capture was central to that outcome. The Xsens system gave a tiny, first-time team the portability to capture anywhere, the audio flexibility to record performances live, and an automated cleanup workflow that removed the single biggest bottleneck for a two-person animation crew. The result is a game that punches well above its budget, and a team that came out the other side with real production experience and a debut title on Steam and Epic.

"This grew into a full indie project that people were really excited about. At this point it has been a passion project for everyone involved."
Brandon Hill, Director and Creative Lead, Last Praetorian Interactive

Project Vesperi at a glance

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