CRACK IN SPACE VR
My Role
Core Mechanics | World Design
Shaders | Sound Design | Player Progression
VR SDK | Game Balancing
In Collaboration with
Time Travel
13 to 25 yrs old
Virtual Experience
Unity / Bolt / C++
10 weeks - Vertical Slice
Oculus Quest II
Jagjeet Shyamkunwar
Chaitanya Verma
Mayur Battinwar
Mayuri Meshram
Overview
-
A single-player VR experience set in a surreal cosmic theme that encourages an immersive mind bending experience with the space-time manipulation mechanics where the player has to visit and fix all the cracked dimensions to restore the balance in his universe.
Game Highlight
Why Meta Quest II?
It supports hand tracking without having additional equipments.
Currently, Oculus VR headsets are by far the most popular extended reality (XR) headsets on the market. Oculus Quest 2 has also became widely used among Steam gamers.
Initial Brainstorming
With all the constraits set initially, we decided to go with a 15 minute good visual experience.
Narrative
This is the journey of a man who is stuck inside his own head. He is trying to rebuild his consciousness fragments by fragments through revisiting his altered memories.
For him, rebuilding the world was as real as reconstructing his consciousness. He can visit these worlds that he has unknowingly created by merging his memories with imaginations.
Fixing them would eventually fix his perception of life and also restore his consciousness.
Goal
Explore new worlds and fix things through Time-space manipulation to rebuild your existing conscious World
Controls Design
The Player has to search all the cracked dimensions using time manipulation gesture.
Player has to explore new worlds and fix things as per the scenario through space manipulation.
Fixing things in other dimensions will eventually help rebuild your own world as everything is interconnected.
Hand Tracking:
-
The Hand gesture feature (No Controller) enhances the immersiveness.
Basic Navigation:
-
Keep both the fists horizontally down to move forward.
Turn:
-
Twist your fist to rotate in that direction
Dash:
-
Avoid Obstacles by sliding your palm while moving.
Time Manipulation:
-
Freeze the left-hand pose & make a rainbow gesture with the right hand.
-
Break the gestures to stop manipulating
Why these Hand Gestures?
-
In order to have a relaxing immersive experience, the hand gestures need to be comfortable.
-
And for that, we picked the hand poses which require less strain while posing.
Image from Google
Dealing with VR Sickness
-
Took few notes from the GDC session about minimizing VR sickness.
-
Replicating any familiar real life movement like walking in VR can make fall in the uncanny valley.
-
Slow movements can reduce the nausea and unease.
-
Mechanics like Teleporting or floating are recommended over normal walking & running.
-
Managing area of focus by adding frame, window or crosshair in Player’s peripheral vision reduces VR sickness.
Image from Google
RoadMap & Scope
I had to prepare a road map and the timeline of this ambitious project with respect to the 10 weeks duration that we had.
.jpg)
Core Loop
Art Style
-
For a better VR experience, more than 60 FPS is recommended.
-
Low-poly models offers high angle between polygon surfaces which enhances the toon shader look.
-
The team was more comfortable with creating Low-poly assets.
-
We avoided the texture materials and used inbuilt URP material instead for more optimization.
Inspiration
Courtesy: Love Death + Robots
Characters
The protagonist is currently in his coma state because of an unfortunate incident, and he is desperately trying to gain his consciousness.
Storyboarding
Initial storyboard helped us compose the visual scenarios which will guide us pan out the environment space.
World Building
Main world act as a relaxing ground for the player where they just have to get to the light beam platform.
.png)
Player has to navigate through a hospital and find a way out
Hospital
Level Design
Quest I - The Shattered Classroom
Quest-I takes you to the classroom world where you have to neutralize your angry teacher.
Quest II - The Depth of my Past
-
Quest II follows a traumatic childhood memory of the main character.
-
A story-based puzzle level, where the player has to search for glowing things in order to interact with them.
-
Player has to achieve the correct stages of the objects to unravel the narrative.
-
Player has to explore and find the correct sequence of the objects as well.
4. Car Accident Memory
2 . Young Ben playing video game
3. Grandmother talking on Phone
1 . Family Photos
-
Object Shuffle Mechanics is Manipulating the Stages of highlighted Objects Through time.
-
These Mechanics trigger the memories of the character and unravel the story.
Puzzle - Time Shuffle
Stages of Rebuilding
Different quests will have different challenges and goals to achieve and the completion will lead to some revitalization in your home world.
Metaphorical Connections
Teacher — Newton
While creating the classroom world, the character used the fragment of his memories where his teacher looks like Newton.
Universe — Consciousness
As everything is happening inside his head while being in coma, rebuilding the world indicates rebuilding the consciousness.
Water — Life
His parents lost their lives in the water, but while bringing the water back to the main world, many lives are restored.
Self Loop
Meeting your younger self in the end means your weak fragment of consciousness is now ready to transfer the knowledge to the other fresh fragments.
Full Gameplay
Playtest & Feedback
-
The player’s response was quite good considering all the glitches and shortcomings within the game.
-
Most of them were able to cop up with the hand gesture interactions.
Key Learnings
-
Implementation of Hand Gesture and movement
-
Dealing with motion sickness in VR
-
How to manage tasks in a group
-
Importance of Playtest
-
Guiding players through compositions in VR