MoominValley VR

Inspiration

Inspiration

I grew up with the Moomin stories, so building a calm, cozy VR adventure around Moominvalley has been a longtime dream. After years of running VR arcades I wanted to use that experience to create something slower, warmer, and family-friendly – a game parents can enjoy together with their kids, not just another shooter. Moominvalley VR is my attempt to mix that childhood nostalgia with modern VR storytelling.

What it does

MoominValley VR is a story-driven adventure where you follow Moomintroll, Snufkin and friends through the valley, solving small environmental puzzles and platforming challenges to help rebuild the Grand Midsummer Show. You explore stylized diorama-like levels from a top/side view, but key moments smoothly “drop” you into immersive VR camera angles so you feel physically present inside the world while still keeping the charm of a storybook game.

How we built it

The project is built in Unreal Engine 5 with a custom camera system that blends a top-view / third-person mode with VR-friendly viewpoints. I’m using Blueprint scripting, motion-matching locomotion, and AI-assisted tools to speed up environment building and animations. The first chapter focuses on finding the Magician’s Hat in the caves, using modular level design so the same content works both as a guided VR experience and as an “endless” replayable path for future updates.

Challenges we ran into

The hardest part has been making a traditional top-view game feel comfortable and readable in VR. Blending cinematic cameras, sphere traces, and recenter logic without causing motion sickness took many iterations. Optimizing stylized environments to run on Meta’s minimum hardware requirements while still keeping soft lighting, water and foliage has also been a big challenge for a tiny team.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

We now have a fully working hybrid camera system where the active camera can follow the player, switch when entering trigger volumes, and keep tracking smoothly in VR. The first level – the journey toward the Magician’s mountain caves – is playable from start to finish, with basic interactions, climbing, and story beats. For a project built mostly by one developer, it’s a big milestone.

What we learned

I learned a lot about VR comfort, camera design, and how different VR is from “flat” third-person games, even when using the same engine. I also learned how powerful AI tools can be in a small team for prototyping art, dialogue, and level ideas fast – as long as you still keep a strong vision and manual polish on top.

What’s next for MoominValley VR

Next steps are: adding more valley locations and side characters, polishing interactions for hand tracking / controllers, and preparing a stable demo build for Meta platforms. Longer term, the goal is a full MoominVR adventure that can live both at home (Quest) and in LBE attractions like theme parks and museums.

Built With

• als/agls
• blender
• blueprints
• c++
• mixamo
• motion-matching
• openxr
• unreal-engine