Phantom Deep: First Contact

Inspiration

The goal was to make something with a sense of adventure, exploration, suspense and mystery.

What it does

Phantom Deep: First Contact Arc 1 is a standalone mystery prologue to the larger Phantom Deep universe. This prelude experience introduces players to a coastal city plagued by shared nightmares and their first encounter with Aethel, an ancient sunken civilization preserved within a collective dream that is now bleeding into reality.

Players take the role of an ordinary dock worker who discovers they possess the rare ability to remain conscious within dreams while others lose themselves. This makes them a Lucid Dreamer, someone who can navigate and stabilize dream-space that would trap or consume normal sleepers.

Its to consists of three sequential scenes that form a complete narrative arc from discovery to communication(currently only Scene 1 is built). Players must successfully complete each scene to advance to the next. The game uses a three-attempt system: failing a scene three times resets the entire prelude back to Scene 1. This creates meaningful tension while allowing players to learn through repeated attempts.

How we built it

The main game Phantom Deep: Tidebound was the initial goal, but the during design questions kept popping up about how it would play out VR-wise in terms of object positioning, hand gestures and key experience aspects like how to ensure players can find the clue objects in each scene. So a prelude game was decided on as a first experience, to get a better grasp at ensuring a smoother experience for players on metaquest, to get a better understanding of the design specs and needs for the VR world, and finally to esure a complete, full, rich experience for players even with the 'side' game . Taking these into consideration, Phantom Deep: First contact was first created as a web game to get a preview of the mechanics, design and just visualize it, since web dev and android dev was most familiar, one scene intitally with all key aspects built out, then other scenes, then the VR version was made.

Challenges we ran into

Mostly

• positioning of objects for easier discoverability while also blending into the scene and not being an intrusive or discordant element.
• estimating the best distance and heights of items relative to the player and other scene details
• moving from web to VR as it was my first VR project
• Trying to tie all the mechanic points together; clue objects gathering, hand gestures, scene depths, game story and world and the end of the mystery
• ensuring players get a full experience in this version of the game while also ensuring it was intro enough for players to get the hang of the gameplay and gestures enough to play at a more involved and tactical level in the main game coming later

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a game for the Metaquest platform!

What we learned

• There a lot of resources to build for the Metaquest platform
• It doesn't have to be built from scratch but can be Web or android based then made into VR for MQ powered by the many resources available
• There's a lot to consider when creating for virtual reality especially when trying to ensure smooth and comfortable but rich experience for app/game users!!!

What's next for Phantom Deep: First Contact

• Complete the scenes
• Complete the 3 Arcs
• Update the UI design, game mechanics and game play
• Launch
• Make the first version of Phantom: Tidebound

Built With

• babylon
• webxr