6 Letters

6 letters is a narrative VR game where the player writes letters to her loved one who has gone to the war.

Collaborators

Programmer Yutian Xie, Tairan Gao

Sound Design & Producer Yigang Wen

My role

Designer & Artist

Narrative writing, modeling and texture

Platform

Oculus Quest 2 Hand Tracking

Tools

Maya, Substance Painter, Unity, Adobe Photoshop

Timeline

2 weeks

Prompt

Human beings have told stories for millennia. Your assignment is to tell a compelling, meaningful, interactive story where the guest has some ability to interact in order to bring  the story to a fulfilling climax.

Design Process

Prompt

The story is about the consequences of war. The player plays Evelyn, whose husband Henry has gone to the war. Unsure about what the future holds for them, their only way of communication is letters. With this story, we hope to show the cruel reality of war.

Platform

We use Quest 2 hand tracking to simulate letter writing. When the player stops the gesture, the writing would pause as well.

Gameplay

This is a video showing a classmate playing the game with Oculus Quest 2 Hand Tracking.

 

Modeling and Game Details

For the game narrative design, we researched a lot of real WWII letters between soldiers and their families. Through studying these letters, we tried to convey the same emotions of helplessness. The letters are in the same V-mail format ( Victory mail ) that was used in WWII. We also created the art assets based on WWII merchandises and decor.

 
Cocoa tint model

Cocoa tint model

Cocoa tin from WWII ( Reference )

Cocoa tin from WWII ( Reference )

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letter_portfolio_5-01.png
letter_portfolio_6-01.png

Reflection

There are a few game design details we would focus on if we had more time to work on this project.

  1. Through playtesting, we realized that letter-writing itself can become laborious for the player quickly. To improve the mechanics, we incorporated sending packages to Henry, based on what is being discussed in the letter. This mechanics could be developed further, if the player takes time to complete the package being sent (in game mini game, knitting the scarf for example), they could feel more attached to the story.

  2. Due to time limit, the story only include time of the day when the player is reading/writing letters. The story could be more powerful if it includes more life details and interactions with people who stayed in the home country.

  3. The story is mostly driven by listening. The interaction should hold more weight in the story and give the player more autonomy.

 

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