As part of the Udacity VR developer Nanodegree program I am currently taking, we get to make games. For me, this is really exciting because I grew up playing video games and to be able to make one of my own is a real treat.

As beginners, we often take very small steps on the way to becoming an expert; this game is a prime example of one of those small steps. There is only one hurdle to overcome in the game but technically that’s all you need…right? Although the scale is small, there were quite a few steps to finish the game which provided a great balance of creativity, experimentation, frustration, and problem-solving. The main focus for this part of the course was on design. We created a Simon-says type game in a mysterious dungeon setting.

Initial Design Scheme

This sketch shows an idea to put the dungeon into a cave and have the Simon says game be on a wall that opens once you win. I had big ambitions at the beginning of the class. Once I realized that I would need to create all the prefabs for this model I decided to settle for the design elements provided by the course.

Defining the player

Before the design process could begin we needed to understand who will be playing our game. For this, we assign a motive and background to a prototypical character of our ideal audience.

Anthony, 24 – Software Engineer

Anthony is a software engineer who loves to play indie games because of their uniqueness and simple nature. He relates to simple games because he can better understand how they are built. Anthony isn’t sure he will like VR games so he wants to try something that is easy to pick up. 

Dungeon Design Iterations

For the course, we were provided a generic prefab for the dungeon which included the door, one floor tile, and a few wall & ceiling pieces. As a way to make my project unique, I created a clerestory in the dungeon. This adds a bit of drama to the scene while the player is in-game which is important when creating an engaging VR experience.

I wanted the dungeon to feel old and dim with a magical twist so I experimented with the lighting to try to find the ideal mood. Below is an example showing the before and after of the lighting for the fire torches (fire not yet present). In the top photo, the room is much too bright because the light at the torches has too much of a spread causing all the light to bleed together. The bottom image corrects this by making the lighting more local to the torches.

User Testing

During user testing of the build, the player noticed that the spacing of the orbs along with their position relative to the player did not feel good once in VR; so, these items were also adjusted for the bottom image. This is an example of why it is always good to constantly check your model in VR while in the design process.

After further user testing, additional ambiance was added to the game via color adjustments and flame particles.

Final Build

The final build features a start and restart screen, movement mechanics, ambient & responsive sounds and a game logic that asks the player to repeat the pattern created by the orbs lighting up.

Key takeaways include:

• Test the model often in VR. Although it takes a bit of time to frequently build the app and test it on the device, this is helpful in preventing larger scale changes at the end of the project and ensures the project feels comfortable in the VR setting.
• Design with the player in mind and user test often. When designing a game we need to establish who the audience is and then cater the design and user experience to them. Furthermore, we need to take into consideration differences that we may have with the user such as motion sensitivity in VR. User tests are a means to test your design to make sure it feels good to the player.
• Design should be used as a tool to guide the player through the game. We can use elements like sound to provide feedback to the player which helps them understand how the game works. A negative tone plays in the game when the player guesses the wrong sequence which helps them understand they chose the wrong answer without having to explicitly tell them in text that is cumbersome to read in VR

Overall, this was a fun project that focused on the design side of VR development.