there's something about motorslice that stays with you. not loudly. it doesn't announce itself. it just... settles somewhere behind your sternum and sits there, warm and a little aching, like the memory of a place you've never actually been.
the game was made by regular studio. which is, in its entirety, two people. lucas bonatti and his brother luiz bonatti. that's it. two people who decided to build a megastructure.
creative bloq published an interview with lucas this year, and reading it felt like finding a folded note slipped under a door. he talked about wanting to create something with "a striking atmosphere" — not gritty, not dark in the usual way, but "colourful yet desolate." those two words together. colourful yet desolate. i've been turning them over in my hands ever since.
lucas cited fumito ueda as a major inspiration — the designer behind games that make you feel the weight of empty space, the loneliness of scale. you can feel that in motorslice. the way the world doesn't crowd you. the way it lets silence do the heavy lifting. mirror's edge is in there too, that timeless red-and-white clarity, the idea that art direction can guide you without ever breaking the dream.
and then there's tsutomu nihei's manga blame! — though lucas was careful to say it wasn't a direct reference. "i was not objectively trying to replicate blame," he said, "but when you're trying to make a megastructure work, this is inevitable to some degree." there's something honest and almost tender about that admission. that some influences find you whether you invite them or not.
the whole game world is one continuous, interconnected space. no loading seams. no separate zones stitched together. lucas said they decided this early, and that it "affected everything about the game. from how the game feels and plays, to how textures were made to all feel part of one big thing." i think about what that means for two people. every texture in conversation with every other texture. a whole world holding its own internal logic.
they used unreal engine 5's lumen system for the lighting. but they weren't chasing realism. lucas was clear about that — they wanted "graphic fidelity that makes sense on the main core elements," something that evokes "ps2-ps3 era vibes" alongside brutalism and that singular, unforgettable atmosphere. the yellow of heavy machinery as a navigational motif. shapes and vistas doing the quiet work of telling you where to go without ever saying a word.
brutalism was a practical choice too, and i love that lucas didn't hide that. "because of the minimalist nature of this movement, it gave us a way to create beautiful vistas with very little, and as a tiny team, this is crucial." the machines — the construction equipment you're killing throughout the game — were chosen partly for the same reason. "we couldn't afford to have complex models, and machines are easy to be done for us." necessity and vision, braided together so tightly you can't tell them apart.
creative bloq called motorslice one of the year's sleeper success stories. one of the best indie games of 2026. the author said the game "left such an impression" that they went looking for lucas to ask him how it was made. i understand that impulse completely.
sometimes something small and handmade finds you in the noise of everything, and you just need to know — who made this. who sat with this. who believed in this enough to finish it.
luiz and lucas bonatti did. two brothers, one enormous world, and something that feels like it was built from a place of genuine, quiet love.
[Original Source](https://www.creativebloq.com/3d/video-game-design/how-fumito-ueda-mirrors-edge-and-blame-influenced-motorslices-surreal-industrial-world)
sophie l.