VR game
The Wizards Crucible
Course: IAT 445 Immersive Environments
A wizarding world where the player learns and uses magical spells to solve wizard’s tests to escape.
The player approaches an open book on a table and is sucked into a magical world. The player wakes up in an old castle where there are a wand and a spellbook in front of them. The player’s mission is to escape this magical world and get back to their own planet. The player will learn and cast spells to solve puzzles in subsequent challenge rooms. After a challenge room is completed, another challenge will unlock where the player will progress further into the depths of the castle to try to find a way out of this world.
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Role: User-Research, 3D molder, Animator, Art Directon, Graphic Design, Camera & Video editing
Tool: Unity + Maya + Illustrator + Photoshop + After Effect + Premiere
Duration: 3 months
A wizarding world where the player learns and uses magical spells to solve wizard’s tests to escape.
The player approaches an open book on a table and is sucked into a magical world. The player wakes up in an old castle where there are a wand and a spellbook in front of them. The player’s mission is to escape this magical world and get back to their own planet. The player will learn and cast spells to solve puzzles in subsequent challenge rooms. After a challenge room is completed, another challenge will unlock where the player will progress further into the depths of the castle to try to find a way out of this world.
Download The Wizards Crucible
Our Creation
Our assignment for this 4th-year course was to create a Virtual Reality Game that encouraged users to physically move and use upper body motions they otherwise wouldn't use. So for this, my team and I began brainstorming fun worlds that we would love to inhabit ourselves and settled on a magical castle with a mysterious vibe to compel players to explore their environment. We understood that many players would happily do physical gestures they otherwise wouldn’t do if they were having fun and were immersed inside another world. While designing the levels, I met up frequently with our 3D modeller and sound designers to establish the feeling we wish to give players as they move through levels with visual and auditory cues.
Game Concept
Our finalized concept was to place players in an enchanted castle where they will be able to explore their environment, learn magical spells and solve puzzles to escape from the castle. Spells are learned by having players trace large shapes in front of them with their wands, once complete they will have learned a new spell and have the ability to execute it. Since we only had a few months of part-time work to complete the game we chose the two most fun abilities to implement; fireball and levitation. Essentially players could shoot balls of fire at objects breaking them / lighting up their environment and can shoot a levitation beam out from their wand to grasp and move large objects around.
Player Abilites / Tracing
The tracing system was a large part of our game. It's the primary way that players would be using upper body motions, so it had to be done well. Building up from the prototypes I had made, I didn't feel the need to change much of the mechanics as a lot of players felt they understood what to do instinctively during our playtesting sessions. The changes made were to polish up the effect more for the few playtesters that didn't understand what to do. I added a glowing material to the tracing orb as well as particle effects to draw their attention, thickened the connecting line between the wand and orb to give it a more elastic feeling, and the final touch was to include controller vibration as the tracing sequence began so players had haptic feedback that something was happening.
Playtesting
We ran several playtesting sessions in which I walked players through the concept of our game and monitored them as they played to ensure everything was running smoothly, making sure all major bugs were taken care of asap and watching/taking notes of how players behaved in certain situations to varify our design choices and level layout.
Final Game and Showcase!
Our original plan to have an alchemy section where players can mix potions for power-ups and stats boosts Haiding several wands in each level for the player to collect was ultimately shelved in the end due to the time constraints we had. Watch our showcase documentary and gameplay at the top of the page.