Escape room! Major focus on making interactions intuitive to naïve guests, giving them a high degree of agency (while also limiting their range of actions!), and ensuring they perform exactly what we predict they would.
Deer Stranger,
An Intuitive VR Experience for Naive Users
Your car crashes outside snowy Virginia, and the only place you can go to for help is the mysterious cabin in the woods. The radio warnings of the ongoing snow storms and the nearby "bear attacks" seem... not quite right as you rift through the dead stranger's conspiracy board and cryptid-hunting trophies.
ROLE
Producer, VR Programmer
TIMELINE
2 weeks
Game Mechanic
Platform
Created on Unity for Oculus Quest 3.
This project has a focus on introducing new entertainment technology to guests who may not be familar with it, and required us to build a VR world where a naïve user feels they have a high degree of agency, while also limiting their range of actions, so that they would perform the tasks we have predicted they would.
We worked on a horror-themed escape room for this world.
Worked on production and VR programming for all the world's interactions. Also implemented inverse kinematics animations to make the monster always face the VR camera, and turn its head according to the user's position.
Locking the Door - Hinge Joint Behaviour and Locking Mechanism
Interacting with the World
Picking up a letter with grab interaction, a key with distance grab, and pressing a button to turn the radio's audio on/off.
Unlocking the Cupboard
Arranging the Photos
Unlocking the Safe
The Finalé!
...if that didn't spoil the story for you and you're still here, watch this for the whole experience!
(I assure you, we made a lot of very cinematic decisions better appreciated when viewed fully)
Team
Libby Egan, Skye Gao, Eliana Huang, Derek Wong
Challenges
Making a world that is intuitive for even a naive guest, and accurately predicting a guest's actions in it.
