Yacooba’s Norberto Cruz on Realizing a 30-Year-Old Story Through a Five-Game Saga

• Ezekiel – Noa and The Automaton Urbis is an ambitious project based on a story developed over 30 years.
• The team blends expertise from opera, theatre, and traditional game development.
• Player choices shape the world in real-time, with a morality system that avoids simple "good vs evil" binaries.
• The studio is leveraging Portugal's supportive game dev scene and the eGames Lab consortium.

Every video game’s development begins with a story, but few are born from one that has been thirty years in the making. This is the origin of Ezekiel – Noa and The Automaton Urbis, a vast multi-universe game from Yacooba Labs and fourt.io, which features a dynamic AI that works with the player. 

Ezekiel’s creator, Norberto Gonçalves da Cruz, has nurtured the game’s story and narrative direction for decades and is now bringing it to life. His unique team blends expertise from various backgrounds and shares the goal of delivering a product that looks and sounds beautiful.

The game will challenge players by adapting the world to their morals, values and behaviours, deliberately moving beyond the traditional good vs. evil. Ezekiel is powered by Portugal's vibrant development scene, leveraging support from the eGames Lab consortium to bring Norberto’s vision to a global audience.

PocketGamer.biz spoke with Norberto Cruz about the project's creative and technological drive. Below, he discusses the extensive design process of Ezekiel’s multiverse, the game’s responsive narrative AI, and his experience entering Portugal's collaborative games ecosystem.

PocketGamer.biz: Can you tell me about Ezekiel and what you're currently working on?

Norberto Cruz: This is a five-game project that blends many stories across 100 years, using multiverses to show the narrative in a nonconventional way. We want the player to be entertained and have fun with Ezekiel, but we also want them to experience a cinematic environment and narrative entanglements that will make them think about the experience days after playing the game.

I’ve always loved games with big narratives, such as Syberia and God of War, and we want Ezekiel’s story to make the player question their values, morals, and behaviours. There are no right or wrong choices, but the game’s environment will respond to players’ choices, maybe even transporting them to another universe, creating a lot of replayability and different experiences between players.

The player will gradually gain insights into the story, slowly unravelling the mystery of Ezekiel himself and following an antihero on a quest to find his daughter in a divided world. The characters and their interactions can be emotional and tense depending on the players' choices. The most important thing for us is not how Ezekiel ends or the result of a player’s experience. Our goal is for the player to learn from themselves in Ezekiel while still having fun playing the game.

We want Ezekiel to have a great narrative and interactivity while being a fun game to play. If we nail these three things, we will have players who will be invested in the game and its story until the end. The demo is currently in development, and we aim for it to be available in February 2026. We’d also love to see what other artists and creators could do with this game! I would love to see an Ezekiel mobile game, for example.

Have you come across any emerging technologies that you think could support other game developers in PC, console, and mobile?

Of course! The two most notorious ones: Unity and Unreal Engine.

However, there are so many tools out there. It’s important to learn what will be the best tool to create your game. In our case, we chose this technology because of the vast plugins available to help develop Ezekiel and because it simplifies the process for us. Making the player feel the sensations and emotions of the place they’re in can be very technical, but we’ve learned that it can also be done simply.

I don’t see technology and platforms as a competition; I see it more as a growing market. I believe this will continue to grow and evolve, and I have no idea what games could be in 10 years, but I’m excited to see! It’s important to keep your mind open while sticking to your plan and not compromising on what you want to do or the tools you want to use to create your game and convey your messaging.

Have you learned any specific skills or knowledge while creating Ezekiel?

Something I’ve learned that’s really important is how to lead a team properly. You need to be able to speak their language and understand (even if it’s superficially) what you’re talking about.

I needed to learn how AI works and what Web3 is. I had to understand Unity and Unreal Engine and how they can aid our game’s development. I might not be an expert on these things, but I need to know what my team is doing and what is going on.

My team quickly realised that we need to learn from each other, what knowledge we need to work effectively, and how difficult game development can be. I’m still doing this, and I will do it for the whole development process, because it’s important to make this a learning experience. You’re dealing with human beings before you're dealing with programmers or composers, and they need to feel how the game is developing and have the chance to be present with it.

Ezekiel is powered by eGames Labs and Yacooba. What would you say their impact has been on your game’s development?

eGames Labs and Yacooba are doing a terrific job. They are like mentors to us – the glue that combines everything. I'm really grateful because none of this would be possible without them. Yacooba thought that Ezekiel was so huge and interesting, and they’ve been helping us integrate AI systems within the game. They’re working hard to design an AI system that works well for us. They have also given us great opportunities to expand our network.

I’m also really grateful for eGames Labs. Because of eGames Labs, we recently exhibited at Gamescom in Germany and the Tokyo Game Show. If you had told me four or five months ago that I would be going to Tokyo’s Game Show or Gamescom, I would have told you that you were crazy! The consortium has helped us on stage and behind the scenes, and I feel so lucky to be working with both eGames Labs and Yacooba.

What did you get out of those events? Has it been quite an eye-opening experience for you?

I thought they were amazing! The first thing that shocked me (in a good way) was the amount of creativity there. It was so exciting to see so many people. It wasn’t like a competition, but rather an expanding community. It was overwhelming at first, but I was so excited to share the goal and vision of Ezekiel with people. 

Games are the most contemporary form of art today, and what I saw in Tokyo and Germany was amazing. People were also genuinely excited about Ezekiel, and it gave me a fantastic energy that helped motivate me. I loved the process of the events; gaining feedback from players was invaluable, and it feels like things are building very organically now.

What is it like to be a game developer in Portugal? How do you think it compares to being a game developer anywhere else in the world?

I'm just starting out in this world, but I love it very much. I thought people would judge me, “A musician coming here to make a new game? He’s never made a game!” But in Portugal, I’ve received quite the opposite. The community welcomes me very much. Some people here have been in the business for a long time and produce some amazing work. Even if you see a game you’re not personally interested in or haven’t played, you can still see the quality of the work. I think this is important: to recognise when something is really good, even if it’s not your style.

Portuguese developers have some fantastic games that I cannot wait to play. I genuinely believe that their projects could go global. The people I meet are really hard workers, and they deserve a lot of praise for their work. However, they also have humility, which I think is really important to know the work that needs to be done, their teams, and their people. This community has been a very positive surprise.

Do you have any advice for other game developers in Portugal who could be looking for support?

It won’t always be an easy journey. You have to climb the mountain. You have to shake the tree if you want to hold the fruit, and that’s how things are now. We need to be in on the process – it’s taken me 30 years to create Ezekiel’s story, but I’m pleased with where it is right now. Perspectives may change as time goes on, but you take each step one day at a time.

Even if you don’t trust the process, you have to go through it. Something doesn’t come from nothing, so be truthful to what you want step-by-step, because that way you will deliver a game that you were really aiming for in the first place. Be consistent with yourself and keep your integrity if you want to deliver something that the player will believe is beautiful.

Also, see what you need to take those small steps and be truthful about them. Find out what you require and search for the resources you’ll need. Don't make any adjustments for the quality that you want. Search for what you need for the game; in the end, what will happen will happen. But it usually goes okay if you do this; I truly believe that.