I’m home
I’m home is a VR horror game where the player explores his apartment and discovers what happened there.
Collaborators
Artist Elisa Ye
Programmer Shan Jiang, Chao Li
Sound Design Yutian Xie
My role
Designer & Artist
Modeling
Platform
Oculus Quest 2
Tools
Maya, Unity, Adobe Creative Suite
Timeline
2 weeks
Prompt
Create a consistent, highly interactive, and engaging experience that lets naïve players feel like they have a lot of freedom in the choices they make. Despite this feeling of freedom, you must be able to predict their choices, also ensure they have a very enjoyable time in the brief experience you provide for them.
Design Process
Prompt
How can we predict players’ choices while giving them the feeling of freedom? One way to predict players’ choices is to use human nature, things that we all share: sympathy, fear, curiosity, etc. Our game uses Fear and Curiosity to lead the players into making these decisions. Through playtesting, we realized that it is important to balance Fear and Curiosity. If the fear element is overly done, then curiosity isn’t enough for those decisions to happen. We also designed the actions to trigger the next event, guiding the players along in the game. For example, opening the drawer triggers the knocking on the door; opening the door triggers footsteps to the fan light; pulling the light switch triggers going into the next room. Now that we can predict players’ choices, how do we give them the feeling of freedom? It’s important to allow the players to move around and interact with objects in the space as they wish. Use lighting, and sound as indirect control to guide them to places of importance, but not force them there.
Platform
We chose VR as our platform because it is good at creating immersive experiences. As early as the very beginning, when the players open the door, they realize that they are the husband in the story and they have come home. Being in this imaginary world, not separated by a screen makes the experience more realistic and engaging.
Gameplay
This is a video showing a classmate playing the game with Oculus Quest 2.
Modeling
I modeled half of the art assets in the game, including cellphone, ghost, fan light and etc. We chose to give color and texture only to some significant objects (cellphone and photo) in the game to show their importance. Everything else has a grey monochromatic tone to create an ominous environment. Use uncertainty and mystery that draws the player in.
Reflection
There are a few game design details we would focus on if we had more time to work on this project.
The cellphone was used as a storytelling element in the game, but it doesn’t fit the environment well. The furniture style and movie ticket suggests an older time period. We could change the cellphone to a short letter that serves the same purpose.
The ending lacks some clarity and purpose. After showing a bloody knife in the player’s hand, an additional scene could make the ending feel more meaningful.
