Mr. Packard's Mansion

Instructions for playing as a ghost
Bathrooms hold many wondrous things...
Like places to hide for a ghost
Traps are spread throughout the mansion, make use of them
Intruders have it a bit different
The mansion holds many secrets

Inspiration

I really wanted to create a party game that allowed VR players to play along with mobile (and desktop) users while still showing the power and individuality of VR. The intent was on making a game where VR players will be drawn to explore for a longer amount of time while allowing for mobile players to quickly jump in and out of action. Mr. Packard brings back the classic arcade experience of escaping ghosts while adding a new level of interactivity, sociality, and fun.

What it does

VR Players: Spawn as your avatar and explore a haunted mansion that's filled with puzzles, traps, thrills, and treasure. Your main quest may be to escape the mansion, but that doesn't mean you can't get rich on the way out!

Randomized quest lines with quest items spawned and managed per player
Relic collection (with future cosmetic purchase usage)
Use Ghost Traps (d20) to temporarily trap ghosts
Getting caught by a ghost will send you to Ghost Prison for a short period of time

Mobile/Desktop Players: Spawn as a ghost whose mission is to protect their master's mansion. Fend off these meddlesome intruders using traps, hidden rooms, hiding spots, powerups, and your brain.

Play from a unique, top-down perspective
Hide in paintings and mirrors, under beds, or perhaps even in toilets, jump out at the most opportune moment
Use Ghost-Only traps to slow down the intruders
Run over a VR player to send them to Ghost Prison. Let none escape!

General Features:

Per player and device UI, grabbables, etc.
Persistent stats for players run over, relics collected, times escaped, and player quest progress
Timed powerups that can: change player scale, speed, or even increase stealth by turning off your Ghost's light
(Secret) doors that can be activated by grabbing, with items, or with levers

Controls:

Touch powerups to activate them
Use the secondary button to place traps when holding them

How it was built

While I'm mostly new to TypeScript, the built-in llama AI was extremely helpful in getting up to scratch quickly. I'd say I got the hang of it enough since I have some scripts pushing the maximum size. Sound effects were generated in the desktop editor, as were some textures. I tried to use a limited amount of premade models, edited in Blender. I would describe the experience as, limitation breeds creativity. Overall, the tools were quite a bit more intuitive than I expected.

Challenges run into

Apart from mild to moderate issues with the editor itself, there was definitely a bit of work to setup some standardized templates - such as items that can only be grabbed by VR players, or by ghost players. Some, or a lot, of this could have come from my own inexperience with TypeScript though. I had a generally good time learning and finding new solutions to problems.

I found myself at 99% capacity for both certain scripts and in-game geometry by the end of it, but I also didn't have any time to do proper optimization of some of my stuff.

Accomplishments to be proud of

Creating a game with very different play experiences between devices, doing this much in the time constraints, interesting gameplay dynamics, fun exploration, and a lot more. I'm fairly proud of the backend of it all too, it's fairly systematically setup with dynamic managers for the prison, players, powerups, quests, etc. And I even built a suite of debugging tools in the process.

What was learned

Way too much to list here. Something new is learned every time I open the editor, but I had a good time learning how to create different systems that interact in unique ways via scripting. I definitely feel a lot more confident in making even more unique experience in the future.

What's next for Mr. Packard and the Ghosts

1. Ghost questlines. The infrastructure is mostly setup to allow ghosts to have their own objectives to complete while also stopping the intruders, but I didn't have time to get it in.

2. Polish. There's just so many things that could use a sound effect, or a visual effect, or some other sort of polish like a UI display telling you when you grab a powerup, for example.

3. Add AI controlled ghosts.

4. Allow mobile/desktop players to play not as a ghost. While VR players are somewhat forced to play as intruders due to the perspective, there's only a few tweaks needed to allow mobile players to also be intruders.

5. Puzzles and mini-games to complete around the mansion. This includes environmental traps that can be activated periodically.

6. Proper player balancing between devices.

Honestly, I have hundreds of ways to expand on this protoype, but these are the standouts.