Physical Prototype to VR Sailing game
Group project: 1 Artist 1 Designer - May 2023 until June 2023In this group project with 2 others we made a game inspired by our trip to Berlin. We took the emotion of disorientation experienced in Berlin and build a game around it. My role was to focus on the mechanics. After concepting for 2 weeks we decided to make a narrative vr game.
Game trailer (in Dutch) for the final product:
Physical Prototyping
For the project I did almost all prototyping. Which was extra important for the project since we didn’t have experience in developing in VR nor Unreal Engine. So our idea needed to be solid before going full into development. I decided on the lowest cost prototype. A physical ptorotype or actually a hybrid of digital and physical.The goal for the mechanics is to make the player move on the ship so we can change things on the ship when they aren’t looking while also feeling as a realistic ship navigation.
For our first prototype we had a Navigation, Map and Life station.
In the middle of the stations is a pillar this is to motivate the player to move from place to place and again can help with changing parts on the ship when the player isn’t looking.
The navigation station was a laptop with a Unity project which showed the ships coordinates and how many points you found and you could move the ship.
The map was a piece of paper with coordinates and points to navigate to.
The life system was another way to make the player move and give the player more pressure. At this station was a phone with a program that counts down a timer when one or more of the lights are red. When life is 0 the game ends.
It was made using a block code app designed for kids called Castle.
After this main concept we tried multiple different iterations. With a different movement system and fuel instead of a life system which was to distracting in the first prototype.
For the final product we kept the concept of fuel but went back to the old movement system.