This was a project for my Advanced Game Studio course, where I worked with a team to pitch a game concept, then spend an entire semester developing it. The idea we chose was a VR tower-defense style game where you could teleport into the towers and play a minigame to fight the enemies yourself.
Designing for VR presents several challenges. All VR games have to be 3D and first-person, but walking as done in typical first-person games doesn't work very well, since camera movement without the corresponding sensation of actual movement will cause motion sickness. To avoid this, generally VR games either keep the player stationary in an environment the size of their actual playspace, or allow the player to teleport. The hand-tracking motion controllers in most VR systems also lend themselves well to grabbing, throwing, and other arm-swinging mechanics. Designing around these ideas, we came up with our basic idea: the player would stand in front of a virtual table, which they could reach into and grab to shrink down and teleport into the toy world. There, they would do physical minigames such as spear-throwing and swordfighting to battle enemies. While the exact details of table composition and minigame mechanics changed over time, this design was a strong core that remained solid throughout the development process.
My team consisted of myself and 3 other developers, who were all mostly programmers. I developed the swordfighting game, enemy pathing, and some miscellaneous gameplay features. Since we had no dedicated artist, we all worked some on visual design and found premade asset packs on the Unity store. Given the constraints, I feel like we did a good job sticking to a cohesive aesthetic and producing a good-looking, fun game.
