Wicked Saints turns players into heroes with Rive and Unity

Wicked Saints is building a movement. Their upcoming narrative mobile game and platform, World Reborn, is about saving a fantasy world and changing the real one. 

“It’s not a game where you just click through pretty graphics,” says CEO and Creative Director Jessica Murrey. “It’s designed to make you braver. To get you off the couch and into the world.”

World Reborn unfolds like an interactive graphic novel, with stunning art and choice-driven narratives. The twist is that players must complete real-life challenges.

“We’re literally mixed reality,” explains Jessica. “Your choices shape the story, but the only way to progress is to step up in the real world.” 

Real-life quests, from anti-bullying efforts to environmental cleanups, are designed to empower Gen Z players to make an impact beyond the screen. Want to earn allies and unlock storylines? Gather a gift bag for a women’s volunteer shelter. 

This vision is rooted in Murrey’s background in peacebuilding and strategic storytelling. Before launching Wicked Saints, she trained young activists worldwide, from Nigeria to Myanmar, helping them create movements that bridged divides. With World Reborn, she’s bringing those same principles to gaming, helping Gen Z players build confidence, agency, and impact, not just escapism. 

“The US was on fire, and no one was getting along,” Jessica recalls. “We tend to use a very shame-based approach to activism by pointing fingers and shaming people into changing. But that just pushes people further into extremism. World Reborn teaches another way: to attack the problem, not the person.”

Stunning art, stagnant execution

The game has a compelling mission, a next-level aesthetic, and top-tier artists, including talent from the Spider-Verse film and Kid Cudi’s Entergalactic TV series. But there was one major problem. 

While the art looked incredible, it felt static. 

“Our UI artists would create these beautiful motion mockups in After Effects, but once they got into Unity, they never moved how they were supposed to. It was frustrating,” Jessica tells us. “We had gorgeous art, but it was dead.” 

The team was struggling with the artist-engineer handoff.

• Animations created in After Effects didn’t translate into Unity.

• Developers had to hack together solutions that still didn’t match the vision.

• Iterating was slow, expensive, and frustrating for everyone.

Handing off assets was like a constant game of broken telephone between artists and engineers.

CTO Daphne Larose-Molapo puts it even more bluntly, “It was disempowering. Our artists were pouring their souls into animations, and all they heard back was ‘Nope. Can’t do that.’ We were spending way too much time just trying to get our game to feel right.’”

A random stop at GDC

Jessica found the solution to her company’s woes at the Game Developers Conference (GDC).

“I was walking the expo floor, dodging eye contact and politely skirting all the salespeople. I was totally overwhelmed,” she recalls. “When I saw Rive’s booth, I stopped in my tracks. I watched a demo, approached the guy at the booth, and asked him to walk me through it. That’s when I realized: this is exactly what we need.”

Later that day, she dropped a message in the team Slack: “Guys, we have to try this.” 

“I’m the visionary,” Jessica laughs. “I see something exciting and come back screaming, ‘THIS IS IT!” And my team is like, ‘Okay, Jess… deep breaths.’” 

This time, like many other times, she was right. 

Turning “No” into “Hell yes”

At first, the team wasn’t convinced. Rive was relatively new, and learning a new tool mid-development sounded like a terrible idea. Then they tried it. 

And everything clicked

Why Wicked Saints went all-in on Rive

“We realized Rive could solve one of our biggest problems,” Daphne says. “It finally gave our artists direct control over animations without needing devs to recreate everything in Unity.”

Wicked Saints’ art team could now animate directly in Rive. No middlewomen. The Unity runtime streamlined everything. Animations imported smoothly into the game, eliminating tedious back-and-forth between design and development. Iteration became effortless. And animations that previously took weeks to refine now took days, freeing the team to focus on delivering a more engaging, interactive experience.

“Before Rive, our artists were constantly told, ‘No, that’s too difficult to animate.’ Now? They have full agency over the experience,” Daphne tells us.

They hired a dedicated Rive expert, Isa Ganttus, to optimize their workflow. “She’s so good that by Friday, she finished all her tasks and had nothing left to do,” Jessica laughs.

The Unity handoff that actually works

To bring World Reborn’s art to life, Wicked Saints needs an animation pipeline that works with their workflow, not against it. And the team lives in Unity, so the Rive handoff has to be smooth. 

Here’s how they do it:

Step 1: Artists animate in Rive.

No more mockups or guesswork. Just production-ready animation that moves the way they were intended.

Step 2: Export the .riv file.

Isa documents everything, artboard names, triggers, and State Machine details, so there’s zero guesswork for devs. 

Step 3: Drag. Drop. Done. 

Devs import the file into Unity using the Rive plugin. No need to rebuild from scratch. 

Step 4: Hook it up. 

Animations are controlled dynamically using triggers and state machines, so UI, skill checks, and in-game elements feel fluid and responsive.

“Before Rive, we had to write our own shaders, custom code UI interactions, and fight Unity’s animation system every step of the way,” says Daphne. “Now we just drop in the file and it works.”

Building a Skill Check system

One of the first major tests of Rive was World Reborn’s Skill Check system, a core RPG mechanic that determines whether a player succeeds or fails at an action. 

Wicked Saints wanted something more dynamic and interactive than just rolling invisible dice. Using Rive, they built a visually rich, dynamic Skill Check system that lets players see their success unfold. 

Before Rive: 

• Devs had to custom-build an animation system just for skill checks. 

• UI feedback was clunky and unresponsive. 

• The experience lacked polish. 

With Rive:

• The entire sequence was animated in Rive without custom dev work. 

• Artists handled everything from success/failure animations to UI reactions. 

• It felt intuitive, interactive, and polished right out of the box. 

“It would’ve taken us weeks to build this the old way,” Daphne says. “With Rive, we had it running in a few days.”

The future for Wicked Saints + Rive

Wicked Saints is all-in on Rive, using it for:

UI and menus: Every button, menu, and interactive element in the game uses Rive, so the smooth, responsive animations feel as premium as their art. 

Environments and feedback: Elements like flowing water, drifting clouds, and interactive overlays now react dynamically to player actions.

Skill checks and gameplay elements: Rive powers interactive challenges and visual feedback, making every decision more immersive without needing custom-built animation systems. 

“We were never able to get the level of polish we wanted before,” Daphne explains. “Now, Rive makes that possible, even with a smaller team.”

As one of the most ambitious teams using Rive in Unity, Wicked Saints works closely with Rive’s support team to optimize performance, fix bugs, and push the engine’s capabilities further. They created an internal API to simplify animation management across their game, standardizing how Rive animations are loaded and triggered. They’ve also worked hard to optimize file sizes and loading strategies to prevent performance bottlenecks since their game dynamically loads animations based on player choices.

“We don’t know how many studios are using Rive in Unity at this scale, but we’re figuring it out,” Daphne says. “And the results speak for themselves. As World Reborn moves toward launch, we can’t wait to see how it translates into engagement and player impact.”

Rive transformed their workflow

“Before Rive, our artists were constantly frustrated,” says Larose-Molapo. “They’d pour their hearts into designing something and then get told, ‘No, we can’t make that move like you want.” 

Now?

“We don’t have to say ‘no’ anymore,” she ends. “Artists own their work, and our developers can focus on making the game function, not fighting with design tools.”

Empower your artists. Streamline your dev handoff. Try Rive for free.