Get Me Out

Designing an immersive VR horror co-op game, where a PC player controls a VR player's movement, but doesn't see the VR monster...

• Designed systems, experience and level for the game.

• Conducted an A/B playtest to decide on the core gameplay.

• Contributed to the development on Unity, implementing the map, movement and level puzzles for example.

• Worked in a small team, communicating my designs and learned to use SCRUM together.

Project goals

Get Me Out was a project I did together with three teammates for the HKU. Our goal as a team was to design a VR experience that was highly immersive. I designed a concept for a co-op puzzle horror game, which I wanted to be tense, scary and fun. 

The game was about a VR player being moved around by another player, who both had to communicate together with their different perspectives of the game world. We believed this would achieve the intended scary immersion, and I wanted to conduct a playtest to see if that was true and what way of controlling would be best. I also wanted to learn to work effectively in a team and to get more experience with SCRUM.

Design & development process

I conducted a physical A/B playtest to see if a player controlling another's movement would be more tense, scary and immersive for the controlled player (test A) than having no control over movement but more control over the environment (test B). Test A (player controlling player) ended up being more tense, scary and fun than test B because of the lack of control, confirming my theory, but also for the controlling player which I hadn't even considered. The test also featured puzzles about matching shapes, math questions and counting which I wanted to include in the eventual game. 

Testing these puzzles led me to conclude that they needed to be (more) simple and clear, as the pressure from the roaming monster made thinking harder. While creating and testing out the prototype we made the monster speed slower, even  slower than the player, because you have to communicate where to go and solve puzzles in the meanwhile. I also adjusted the level to be small in scale and with a lot of corners and tight corridors, because the map being too spacious took away from the intended tension. Lastly I implemented a move cooldown so the VR player could never be moved sporadically and likely get motion sick.

Project conclusion

After about two months of working together using SCRUM we created a finished prototype of the game. I was happy to see that playtests of the game had VR players really scared and immersed as they frantically communicated with the PC players. The intended design goals I felt were reached, and the end product is a prototype I really wish to work on further someday. 

I also got some good experience with Unity development, and working together with talented teammates.