text-based Horror Game IN VR

View when you first drop into our virtual world
Computer monitors guide the path of the game and cultivate the retro atmosphere
Shelf with easter eggs in the opening scene
Another room within the maze
Beginning of the maze
Users are given a brief description of the current room in the style of classic games like Zork
Twin Peaks Black Lodge room--accessible from the opening scene
Advertisement room--accessible from opening scene and twin peaks room couch
Dedicated to Lisa Frank, a True Inspiration.

Inspiration

many peoople ask Is vidoe games is art. "text-based horror game IN VR" marries the demonstrably compatible genres of horror and virtual reality -- both of which neatly package the user's sense perceptions -- with an ostensibly incompatible genre, text-based adventure, which relies on the user's imagination to build the world.

What it does

Our virtual world is navigated in a first-person context and consists of a game and several other areas to explore. The game is guided by computers stationed in each room that lead further into the maze. Spooky characters and objects populate the maze and 3D text informs the user of their current state. When the user reaches the end of the game, they fall into a magical room that congratulates them on their successful pass through the maze. The additional rooms in our virtual world can be accessed by colliding with objects in the opening scene or in the rooms themselves. They allow for a fun exploration period before the game begins, if the user chooses to do so.

How we built it

We built our virtual world using Unity, which we learned to use in a tech talk at the beginning of the hackathon weekend. Our world is made up of downloaded and self-made Unity assets, and c# scripts to control navigation and actions. Testing was made possible by Major League Hacking, which loaned us an Oculus Rift for the hackathon event.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge we ran into was using collisions between the first-person player and objects to trigger navigation between rooms. Another challenge we had was working with the hardware. The Oculus did not work with any mac computers, and none of our PCs met their processing/GPU requirements for high-quality VR. Despite this, we were able to deploy our VR game to the Oculus with a quality that met our standards. Also, basically none of us knew what we were doing.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our team name: Bumblebeeginnings
Creating a virtual world
Making our virtual world spooky
Top-of-the-line sound effects throughout our virtual world
Cascading falling confetti images in the win room
The number of easter eggs incorporated in our virtual world
How much fun we had with this project
Actually making a functional game against all odds
Indomitable morale

What we learned

We learned how design and build a game in Unity and how to create 3D assets in Blender. Megan had used Unity previously for a couple of non-VR games; Betsy had programmed but never used Unity; this was Cal's first hack. Needless to say, our team learned a lot.

What's next for text-based horror game IN VR

When we began our dev cycle, the game was mostly easter eggs, the majority of which did not make the final cut. We would like to add these -- a room with a cat chasing a laser pointer, a VR fidget spinner, a jump scare scene, and an iPod interface c. 2005 to match the iPod-like controller for the Oculus -- using Unity's Raycast API to select each scene from the literal easter eggs we have shelved in our home screen.

Acknowledgements

Robby Marshall, for teaching us Unity and being a real good pal all year round
David Lynch, for Twin Peaks
mom & dad, for puttin 2 together
Lisa Frank, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels
The Vengaboys and M. Paul (of the Paulstretch fame). And Audacity.
They Might Be Giants and the very same M. Paul, for OST track "floooooooooooood"
Shreya Shanker, for getting Cal MBMBaM and TAZ tickets this weekend. Thanks SO much.
Ethan Schmerling, for stopping by for a hot minute
MLH, for the Oculus
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Oculus VR and Facebook, for the Oculus
VandyHacks, for setting up this event
Unity and Blender, for being useful
Barack Hussein Obama
Our fellow teams in room 001, for making Uber for Uber and a super cool Alexa-controlled VR game
Vanderbilt University, for providing a dry erase marker that we used to chart our morale
Ourselves, for maintaining a positive attitude despite our jocular belief that we were doomed from the start, and for proving ourselves totally wrong!
Jean jackets, for being cool again