XZV Studio

Press Release: The Sentinels Joins Fortnite Creative Island

“The Sentinels: Siege of Qu-1”, an online multi-player shooter game featuring the characters and world-build from the animated series “The Sentinels: Uprising Gaiden”, will debut in Fortnite Creative Island on 15 April, 2025.

In collaborative effort by a group of Malaysian studios, led by XZV Studio — owner and creator of The Sentinels franchise — the goal of releasing a game became a possibility when Epic Games announced Unreal Engine for Fortnite (UEFN) in 2023. “We challenged ourselves and our animation team back in 2021 when our storyline and animated series ‘The Sentinels: Uprising Gaiden’ was awarded the Epic Games Mega Grant,” said Vivian Syc, lead writer and co-creator of the franchise.

“We wanted to know how our methodologies of traditional film making and production can be accelerated with Unreal Engine. Naturally, we’re not animators but storytellers; however, we’ve managed to build a bridge between us and our partners to grow in tandem, which brings us to UEFN,” explained Vivian.

From Series to Game

Vmagery Studio was the core studio to work the animated series, having a thorough understanding of the characters and environments in which the multi-media franchise wish to achieve. As with any acceleration effort made by large entities and government initiatives, MDEC announced its Immersive IP Experiences (IP360) Grant in 2024, paving way for a higher probably to produce a game from the studios’ current working animated assets.

“The prospect is aligned with XZV Studio’s vision of creating an IP (‘intellectual property’) in the world of fantasy that could support cross-platform commercialization,” said Timo, award-winning film, VFX director and co-founder, XZV Studio. “It also provided our studios an opportunity to test the limits of our programming language on the engine, upskilling the team involved on the migration and development of the game on UEFN”

Plan, Pitch, and Figure it Out

Within a project pipeline delivery of nine months, concise planning and management of roles became a vital heartbeat to achieving a successful pitch. The game had to be, most importantly, executable within the timeframe and fun. Understanding that gameplay determines gamers’ experience, Story Mode was decided upon. When MDEC (Malaysia Digital Economy) opened its submission, Vmagery Studio submitted the project and later secured the grant to develop on UEFN.

From planning to a successful pitch, the challenge now came to having to ‘figure it out’. Assisted by former Epic Games’ senior business developer, Dean Reinhard, the game play was refined with a more enhanced storyline to provide players an experience of being with the characters of the animated series.

“We opted for companion play to remove the friction of telling long story through long cinematic,” said Vivian, “which would require additional rigging, motion-capture, and modeling, taking up precious time our studios did not have. To bypass this, we readapted our assets from the pilot episode of ‘The Sentinels: Uprising Gaiden’, preserving the characters’ persona as best as possible through the animation’s unique 2D cell shading approach.”

Migration, Stitching and Enhancing

Vmagery Studio spent the first half of the milestone migrating and stitching the environment from Central (Qu-1) together while simultaneously enhancing the 3D models of the characters.

With the launch of the game, the villain of the animated series, Na’Ar’ is introduced, making defeating him the main objective of the game. With a limited bandwidth and server space, the animation team had to decide either to strip the world environment to a minimal, reducing possible unique world graphics. Francis Kung, 3D Director, Vmagery Studio, shared that “for studios like ours, the difficulty is ensuring we get every element that are to come together. We went through a lot of debugging, so hours of playing the game we co-created. The hardest part is actually matching marketing.”

Boarding Super Red Music, who provided SFX and music rearrangement suitable for a gameplay, and Renai Mattu, voice over talent, completed an original experience found on “The Sentinels: Siege of Qu-1”, only available on Fortnite Creative Island, starting 16 April 2025.

Launch & Game Play

In “Siege of Qu-1”, players will be able to battle through Frames, mech suit hostile shells controlled by Na’Ar of the Black Cloaks, assisting the characters of “The Sentinels: Uprising Gaiden” and unlocking their Unique Elemental Powers along the way.

The six-part story mode gameplay will feature both open world and side-scroller mode, cutting through the monotony of single mode player experience. Players will have the opportunity to:

Unlock “The Sentinels: Uprising Gaiden” Main Characters
– Amir Osman (Inferno)
– Taicho Sin-Yu (Dendro)
– Captain Lee Shun (Wind)
– Tanaka Hiro (Earth)
– Wong Di Yi (Electro)
– Hoang Nam (Hydro)