Gavin Delima

ConfinedVR2

Things I did for this project:

Designed the level.
Designed the game's mechanics.
Designed the scenarios that occur in the game.
Programmed everything in the game using Unreal Engine's Blueprint system.

I designed and programmed a way to prevent players from teleporting through walls. There were cases when the player stands next to a wall in VR in which they can stick their hands through the wall and teleport through.

The system I've designed prevents them from doing that.

I designed the level to have specific beats; they are as follows:

1. Showcase what the player should expect but in a "safe" environment, while also building tension. During this time, the player has no way to fight back against the zombies. After seeing their first zombie run off into the darkness, they'll have to be on their toes to watch out for where that zombie went off to.

2. Give the player a way to fight back.

I introduce the only way for the player to fight back, which is a massive wrench.

This makes the player feel powerful, and to further emphasize this, there would be another zombie running at them in the next room, but this time, they're more than ready.

3. Take some of that power away.

The player is introduced to the flashlight, but also the darkness, which envelops the remaining areas of the game.

The player has had some comfort with the fact that they could see clearly in the past areas, but the upcoming areas are completely dark, and with the use of the flashlight, it limits their vision to the light cone that the flashlight emits.

4. Build tension all the way to the end.

When the player is going through the dark areas of the level, I designed those areas to play random sounds such as breathing. footsteps, and doors slamming to make it feel like they're not alone in the room they're in. I know that during this part of the game, the player's sense of hearing is heightened due to the fact that their vision is so limited.

This tension is held til the very last moment of the game, in which the player almost reaches the exit door, but is met with their demise.

Description
The player must escape a zombie infested asylum, using what little weapons and tools they can find.

Confined VR 2 is the sequel to the award winning Confined VR. Confined VR 2 is a virtual reality game exclusively made for the HTC Vive using Unreal Engine 4.

GENRE: Horror / Simulation
HTC VIVE EXCLUSIVE EXPERIENCE

Level Breakdown

The players starts off in a dark empty room all by himself. For the player to progress, they must know the 2 basic mechanics in the game : Teleportation, and Interacting with the environment.

When the player does leave the room, they end up in a hallway. One side is blocked by a pile of gurneys, and the other has a flashing light, attracting their attention.

The next room is another room that's very dark. One thing I noticed during early playtests was that barely any of the players actually looked up at the ceiling; so I wanted to take advantage of this fact, and placed hanging corpses, with one of them low enough that when the player sweeps the flashlight around, it will lead him to see all of the other hanging corpses.

The players starts off in a dark empty room all by himself. For the player to progress, they must know the 2 basic mechanics in the game : Teleportation, and Interacting with the environment.

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Postmortem

ConfinedVR 2 was made with casual and non-gamers in mind. This game was also made in collaboration with Portal Zone VR, a company that serves venues and events with a VR arcade featuring our own games.

One of the other limitations we had to work with was for the average customer to be able to play through our game in less than 10 mins.

With this in mind, I set out to design a level that was easy enough to navigate through, but still built enough tension for the player to not know what's coming next and also left them with a satisfying experience.

During our early playtests, we discovered that the first iteration of our level was getting players lost; and while the intention was to instill the feeling of getting lost into the players, our level design often left them feeling frustrated.

Other problems include players missing key items, and players often missing key events.

Another problem we had was that the game was playing below 45 fps (with a GTX 1060) and our target was to reach well above 90 fps.

Once I inherited level design duties, I set out to first fix the issues I mentioned above, and also to create a "mini-narrative" with help from the creative lead, Egor Pashkin.

One of the philosophies that I had while making my level was to always build tension first, and then pay off with a reveal or a jump scare.

It is my belief that horror does not work without building tension and to achieve this, I utilized sound, ambient music, shadows / darkness, and items.

I wanted to focus on the fact that as humans, we primarily rely on our vision, and without it, we feel severely handicapped; so instead, I wanted to design the experience in which the player had to rely on his/her other senses to keep them on their toes.

We had a flashlight item within the game, and I designed the level so that they only get the flashlight halfway through the game, after which the areas after that are very dark.

// Design

ConfinedVR2