So further info, I can see what is causing the issue but not why it is being caused. After a day of debugging I noticed that an Array filled with all game characters is being emptied when I go from one screen to another. Or should I say one level to another; the game instance should carry data across level loads though right?
When I play just the “game” level and don’t do any of the menu stuff the characters load and the array remains filled as expected.So something is going on between levels loading.