2021–2026 · A solarpunk world about hacking closed systems
Date
2021 — 2026
Medium
Original solarpunk universe · collectible 3D art · serialised fiction · metaverse community · live performance · video game · real-world conservation · generative AI
Press
TechCrunch · The Defiant
Broadside is an original solarpunk universe — a story about kids who hack closed systems. Remix culture, pirate culture, decentralisation: the idea that nothing is really locked, and that none of them are as strong as all of us.
Over five years it refused to stay in one place. It began as owned characters, became a novel, a rave, a live show, a video game — and along the way it did something most fiction never does: it left the story and protected real rainforest. The audience didn't follow the world so much as inherit it, and take it where its authors never planned.
A world that hacked its way out of every format it was put in — from owned characters, to a novel, to a rave, onto real-world stages, into a game, into the rainforest, and finally into a system that builds itself.
012021 · Mint
Owned characters
It began with 8,000 Broadsiders — characters, each one owned by someone. The collection was generative, assembled from traits I modelled and rendered by hand in 3D, with a set of 1/1s built entirely by hand. Generative and handmade at once, years before that was a common way to work.
Broadsiders, 2021 — 8,000 characters. Generative traits and hand-built 1/1s.
02The Novel
The world got a story
Broadside became a novel, released in chapters — lore the community read and argued over as it unfolded. Noob to Warhead: a coming-of-age through a collapsing, decentralised world. The thing that separates a world from a collection.
Broadside: A Novel — Collector's Edition and chapter releases. Vector Meldrew & Charlie Stratford-Rex.
03The Rave · Metaverse
Somewhere to be
The world became a place. Regular events inside a metaverse bunker turned a collection into a community with a nightlife — a scene, hosted. People didn't check on the world; they went out in it.
Metaverse events, 2022–23.
04The Live Show · IRL
The rave crossed into the real world
Then it left the screen entirely. The metaverse rave became a live act — performed in the real world, in Lisbon and New York. A virtual community, real enough to fill physical rooms in two countries.
Live performances — Lisbon and New York.
05BaseJump · The Game
Then you could play it
The world became a game — Battle Mode, on the BaseJump platform, built with Torch. Owners brought their characters in as playable action figures, dressed them in wearable objects, and armed them from an arsenal of meme-native weapons across levels I built by hand. As a co-founded platform, it reached a hundred thousand players within six months.
Battle Mode — trailer and gameplay (Pepe Swamp).
Action figures and weapon loadouts.
Weapons and equip screens, built meme-native.
Levels — Deadmall, Totempole, Pepe Swamp, and more. Meme-native world-building, built by hand.
06Solarpunk
A game that protects real rainforest
Broadside was always solarpunk — optimistic, ecological, post-collapse. So the game was built with a real-world mechanic: playing Battle Mode funds the protection of actual Amazon rainforest, tracked acre by acre in Matsés Territory, Peru, with Rainforest Foundation US. Saving the world, made into the game itself.
Battle Mode × Rainforest Foundation US — real acres protected through play. Matsés Territory, Peru.
07Generative
Then the world made itself
The final stage put generative AI into production — real-time level and asset generation inside the game, before the tooling had settled. The world stopped needing me to make every object and environment in it. It began building its own.
AI level generation previews, 2025–26.
Levels and arenas generated inside the game — from meme colosseums to neon cities, each one built by the system on the fly.
Broadside — an original world by Vector Meldrew & Charlie Stratford-Rex, and the community that carried it.
Created by
Vector Meldrew & Charlie Stratford-Rex. Story & world with Matt Mason.
With help from
Partial Applewhite · MC Mr Dollaz · Eclectic Method · Neon Glitch · Bryan Longhurst — and the community that carried it.
