Engine
Unreal Engine
Platform
Oculus Rift
Project type
Solo
Status
Finished (prototypes)
Unavailable
Overview
During my time at Enversed Studios we worked on an in-house Escape room / VR adventure game that features many different puzzles and VR interactions we’ve prototyped during earlier phases.
The full game project never came to fruition but the prototypes still served as interesting research into their individual topics.
Below is a brief summary of some prototypes that I personally found most interesting. A total of ~20 prototypes were created by the development team which would take too much time to document here.
The interactions and mechanics in these prototypes were designed and implemented by me.
Circuit node puzzle
About
One of the first puzzles VR players encounter and thus kept fairly simple;
Switches can be rotated to alter energy flow within a circuit. Various iterations exist:
- Energy must simply flow from start to finish.
- Energy must flow from start to multiple (2-3) required nodes.
- All nodes must receive power.
The twist is that the handle for rotating the switches is on the opposite side of the board. One VR player must analyze the circuit and instruct another VR player which switches to rotate.
Features
Interactible switches in VR that feel comfortable to grab and rotate.
Full “generation” system where a developer can draw the circuit design on paper and convert it to a string used in the game engine.
Per node in the grid a number is used to denote in which directions (up to four) energy can flow, and that number is based on interpreting the numpad layout similar to arrow keys. So e.g. the number 486 means a node projects energy to the left, up and right.
A developer designs the circuit, converts it to a string, pastes that into the game engine and the circuit is generated.
Vault burglary
About
Players have infiltrated a well-guarded weapons vault. In order to continue they’ll have to open the exit while avoiding detection by enemy sentinels.
To make matters worse, the exit can only be opened by finding keys hidden in the environment and holding them in front of the door scanner; a slow, tedious process that leaves players exposed.
Features
Fully replicated enemy AI using Unreal’s behavior tree system with various detection states.
Dynamic environment and music engine that responds to enemy states (alarm while any player is being chased, chase music if that player is you).
VR revolver
About
Looking into interesting weapon interactions for VR one typically finds only bows and pump-action shotguns, which seems odd to me.
Various interesting weapons like a whip and remote controlled drone were prototyped, but the simplest one was a standard single-action revolver.
Other than simply pressing the motion controller trigger button to fire the gun, the joystick is also used to cock the hammer back after every shot and the revolver must be manually reloaded after 6 shots.
Features
Fire the revolver by pressing the trigger button on the motion controller (near index finger).
Cock the hammer back after every shot by flicking the joystick on the motion controller down (near thumb).
Reload the revolver by either:
- Using the other motion controller’s trigger to grab the barrel, open the revolver, inserting bullets and then grabbing the barrel again to close it.
- Pressing the grip button on the motion controller (near middle finger) to open the revolver, inserting bullets and then flicking the motion controller to have the barrel’s momentum close the revolver again like a true gunslinger.