
Project Mix is an upcoming VR (virtual reality) anime-style punk bartending game from Plectrum Software. Project Mix recently placed at the Kiwi Game Starter 2024 and attended WePlay Expo. We spoke to studio founder Yuewei Zhang about Project Mix and the intricacies of VR development.
Thanks for being here today. You recently had the Kiwi Game Starter and WePlay Expo, so it’s been a busy time!
Yeah, those weeks were very busy. It’s been the culmination of what I’ve been working on in 2024, mainly ramping up our social media presence to get more numbers, which improves our chances for funding. We applied for funding like the CODE National Grant and Kiwi Game Starter and saw great results. We got the Kiwi Game Starter grant in second prize, and we attended WePlay Expo.
It feels like we can finally see the fruits of our labour. It’s been a long period where we’ve been head down, hard at work. Now things are starting to happen.
How long has Project Mix been in development?
I’ve been developing it since my second year of uni, which was about three years ago. Since the end of 2024, it’ll be three years in development.
Can you tell us about yourself and Plectrum Software? You’ve developed titles like Pizza Master and various VR projects?
I’ve always loved games. I started making games in the Roblox engine, which taught me game design, how to run a community, programming, and graphics. In high school, we were quite lucky, and my computer teachers bought an HTC Vive in 2016, and no one knew what to do with it. I started playing around with it and thought I’d try to make some games. Then basically I just fell in love with VR.
Nobody was making VR games back then, so I thought I’d try and build a business around it. That’s been my dream, and it still is. It’s been my journey figuring out how to make it possible and viable.

Before commercial video games, did you make projects for businesses or game-adjacent projects?
I spent a lot of time at the Empathic Computing Lab, which is based in Auckland and also Adelaide. I found that a lot of the skills I used for game development turned out to be really useful for research and building these programmes or VR experiences that can be used to help people collect data and understand things better.
How come you decided to move from VR assistance to the video game space? Was it a natural progression?
I have always been making video games; it’s my passion. But in university, at least in New Zealand, the VR industry is quite small. In university, if you want access to VR tech, you have to be a master’s or PhD student. So, I offered my skills to research teams and got to work on the latest hardware, like the HoloLens and Quest.
That’s what ended up paying the bills for me, doing research contracts while also trying to fund the game development. The Kiwi Game Starter was the first good step for that.
What is Project Mix?
Project Mix is a VR anime-style punk bartending game. You play in the fantasy of living as somebody in this anime-style cyberpunk world. In this world, you’re not exactly a hero or somebody you might see in other cyberpunk games. You’re just a humble bartender.
During your job, you find out about the lives of other people, what you might call “main characters”. As you play, you understand more about the protagonist, his past, and how you fit within this world.
You have a mix of narrative focus and visual novel elements layered on top of interactive, hands-on gameplay. What made you go in this direction for Project Mix?
I’ve always wanted to make narrative games; I just never got the chance to. Having a game set in a bar, I think that’s a ripe environment for telling stories and getting to know characters. I felt like that style is missing in VR games; a lot of them focus on actions and game-play mechanics. I wanted to have more of an emphasis on characters, relationship building, and narrative.
So the narrative part was natural, as that’s something I’ve always wanted to do. The bartending part, I thought that may appeal more to young adults. A lot of existing games in VR appeal more to the general audience and kids, whereas I wanted to make something that a young adult in their 20s or 30s could enjoy.

In Project Mix, you serve drinks to customers; you mentioned that certain drinks may change their decisions. Can you serve something bad that may influence their mood? Is that something we can expect?
“Laughs” So this may end up being an antithesis to existing VR games. You aren’t going to be punished by how fast you might serve a drink or how accurate it is. If you end up serving something different, you can get a different dialogue option or a different dialogue path. You can really mess everything up; it’s totally up to the player on what they want to do. It’s a very chill game.
What were your inspirations developing Project Mix?
I definitely wear my inspirations on my sleeve; there are three main games, and based on comments on social media, people can see it immediately, which I’m proud of.
The first game is Persona. In terms of the art style, 3D art, the hand-drawn textures, and the characters are all very inspired by Persona. The cyberpunk partying and the anime vibes are inspired by VA-11 HALL-A. The last game is the noir, smoky 90s vibe inspired by the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. Those are my three main inspirations.
The surprising thing is that usually someone that likes one of those games usually likes the other two. Project Mix would fit in that same circle of video games. It may seem weird that I’m mixing three seemingly completely different titles, but they actually work together quite well. It’s all very noir, smoky, narrative-heavy, and more adult-focused stories.
What made you choose the Cyberpunk setting?
So when it comes to Cyberpunk, I am inspired by a certain kind of cyberpunk. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 is “What if America was cyberpunk?”. Deus Ex is “What if Europe was cyberpunk?”.
My inspiration is what if Hong Kong or Tokyo was cyberpunk, an Asian-inspired cyberpunk. To be honest, I’m just a big romantic when it comes to the big city vibes. I love the city lights, the feeling of the metropolitan.
That’s why I was very happy to recently go to Shanghai and Tokyo in person. Cyberpunk is the ultimate extreme romanticism of the big city. It’s a dystopia, but if you like the big city and the lights and all that, Cyberpunk is the thing. The main thing I really like about Cyberpunk is the extreme rich and poor divide. I think it leads to some very interesting stories and almost mirrors our world to some degree.

So travelling to China for WePlay Expo and Japan after, these cities lent themselves to your game design inspiration?
Yeah, being there really helped a lot. My parents are from Guangzhou, so I grew up with a lot of classic Hong Kong-style movies and a lot of classic anime from the nineties. Even though New Zealand is not exactly known for its tall skyscrapers and city lights, that big city vibe was in my DNA from a young age. Being able to visit Tokyo in the flesh was important because that Cyberpunk metropolis fantasy is one of the most important aspects of my game.
How did WePlay Expo go for you and showcasing Project Mix?
Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect when it came to WePlay Expo. It’s one of the events that isn’t discussed as much in New Zealand, and also it was CODE’s first time going to WePlay Expo. The previous events I had been to were NZGDC, which was quite a bit smaller.
So when we got to WePlay Expo, it was just absolutely nuts; I’ve never been to an expo so big. There is a reputation that Chinese gamers tend to play mobile games, but at the event, all I saw were people who had a strong love for video games in general. There were a lot of people interested in the game; there was always a line full of people. It was a great event. It helped me understand the audience in China; a lot of them had played Persona and were big fans, which drew them to my game. It just validates that there will be an invested Chinese audience, and I should definitely focus on releasing my video game there as well.
In terms of development, how many people are working on Project Mix?
We are a team of three, mainly with others helping here and there. I have a lot of hats: director, game designer, programmer, that sort of thing. We also have Claudio, who works on the 3D art and animation. We also have Rita, a 2D artist who makes all the character designs and the key arts you see. We also have Rosina, who helps with the character design as well. It’s basically a team of 3.5ish, with three being full-time.
Do you wear the social media hat as well?
Yes, I wear that hat too; I love that part of things.
Recently you had a video of a smoking cat that did very massive numbers. Over a million impressions on X alone; did you expect it to blow up like that, with a gameplay interaction hanging out with a cat?
So I’d like to think that I’m somewhat familiar with pop culture; I had a feeling people would like the video, but no, I had no idea it would blow up with millions of views across social media!

Videos like that will bring a lot of new eyes to Project Mix. Have you noticed this already with your audience for Project Mix?
Yes, I spend a bit of time checking Steam stats, and we’ve currently got almost 13,000 wishlists. About half of that is from the US, but the other half is in Asia. I am really happy with the international audience. I’m not targeting a specific country, but I am definitely targeting audiences that are into anime. Originally anime was always confined to Japan in some way, but now it’s become more of a worldwide phenomenon.
Can you explain the development process for a VR game compared to a traditional video game? For other like-minded developers, what are the main things you notice when dealing with VR development?
It is definitely a huge change, especially for narrative games. When you’re making VR, everything is in first person, and you have to design everything for that. Because it’s first person, it doesn’t mean you can just skip on the cinematography; it still has to have a cinematic feel. That’s when it gets very hard since you can’t exactly move the camera when you want, because that will literally make people vomit from motion sickness.
Instead you have to do a lot of work on the environment and lighting to direct players focus, helping the player craft the cinematic experience themselves. That’s one of our focuses for the environment; we want it to feel like the environment is leading the player to a cinematic experience.
Then there is the interaction side, which is extremely tricky. One thing, for example, the Cyberpunk bartender game, VA-11 HALL-A, people were very happy with the bartender mechanics, even though all it was was just dragging and dropping different ingredients into a cup. Then when it comes to VR, it’s in an awkward space because it’s so realistic yet also so different. Some people may complain that the game isn’t close enough to real life feeling, but if you make it too close, it starts to become cumbersome and frustrating to play. We have to find that sweet spot in the middle.
So for VR games, but I think this can also apply to all video games in general, you just need to have so much feedback, so much playtesting. VR is also very fresh and new, so there are no set dos and don’ts when it comes to the genre, like there might be for a first-person shooter or a third-person adventure game. Also, since it’s such a new area, developing video games for VR has its own set of unique risks.
Can you tell us your thoughts on the New Zealand video game industry? How was it when you first started in the space compared to how it has progressed now?
Our industry has definitely gotten a lot better. When I started, still in high school, there were only a few development studios at the time. It was very hard to get funding or any type of support, and that halted a lot of people’s game development journeys. Nowadays we have CODE, we have funding help from Kiwi Game Starter and the NZ Film Commission fund. There is a lot more to help you and propel a video game development career.

You mentioned that when it comes to developing VR, motion sickness can be quite an important factor. Can you explain that process and figuring that out?
So this is a very highly debated topic. For a lot of people, especially people new to VR, they find it hard to play when there is some sort of in-game locomotion. Obviously, if you’re in an open-world game or a big map, you can’t possibly rent an entire warehouse to play it. Because of that, you’ve got to rely on stick locomotion, where you move the joystick and then you move forward in the virtual space, but in real life, you’re still in place. So this is a big problem for a lot of people, and it’s hard for game developers to decide on the best design process.
For example, if you don’t have stick locomotion or if you only have teleportation, then it really limits the games you can develop. So most VR devs come to a choice: you can either make a seated-type video game where your character is always in the same place or a game that has full-on locomotion. A game called “Guerrilla Tag”, a game popular with kids, where you literally swing your arms around and jump off trees, that sort of thing. Games like that, for older people who are not used to VR, are games that they simply can’t play due to motion sickness.
Kids seem to be just a lot less prone to motion sickness, and they can adapt quicker. But for older adults, full-on locomotion sometimes just isn’t suitable. This results in a lot of funding going towards VR games aimed at younger teens and that market.
I also think it’s because VR is so new and we are still getting used to it. I remember reading about Mario, and when it first came out, people were getting motion sickness from platforming because it was so smooth, and now nobody talks about that anymore. So that makes me think it’s a generation adaptation issue, and VR is that next area we’re adapting to. These days, however, there are some people that will get motion sick from a first-person game, so it’s a combination of generational differences and virtual reality being a new technology we are still figuring out.
What VR platforms is Project Mix releasing on?
We definitely want to support all the major VR platforms. Meta & Steam VR are the priority headsets. There are also headsets like Pico, which are popular in the Asian territories that we want to support. We also want to definitely support PSVR2. When it comes to Pico and PSVR2, we still need to get our hands on developer kits, so funding will help towards that. Long term, we do want to release on all these platforms.
What is the next step for Project Mix?
We want to convey the full vision of Project Mix. We want to have a great OST, voice acting, and great animations; we just need funding to achieve that, and that’s our next focus. For VR games, it’s notoriously hard to get publisher help. Another focus is social media and building up the numbers and getting the game out there.
How can people best keep up with Project Mix and Plectrum Software?
Definitely follow us on our social channels: BlueSky, Instagram, and X. If you want to have more in-depth updates, discussions, and access to playtests, then our Discord is best for that. We’re looking to build a community and build support for Project Mix.
Be sure to check out other GamesNight interviews with New Zealand video games such as Teeto, Burger Bois and Corporeal.