Summary: A Virtual Reality game coming soon on Steam for the Vive. Use a pair of lightsabers to fight off glowing orbs that fly at your head from all sides.
Gameplay Description: Player is stranded on a small island in a dark forest, equipped with a pair of lightsabers, one red, one blue. Wisps rise up out of the water on all sides to attack. Defend yourself against waves of enemies to face the mighty Boss Wisp.
- Red wisps must be hit with your red sword.
- Blue wisps must be hit with your blue sword.
- Black wisps cannot be hit, only dodged.
- Tracker wisps cannot be dodged, only struck.
- Purple wisps must be hit with both swords.
- Armored wisps must be hit from a particular angle.
Additional Features:
- Unlock dramatic story-line by completing levels.
- Survival mode for open-ended challenge. Try to beat your highest score!
- Swap swords between hands for added comfort.
- Change difficulty mode between Easy and Hard.
- Achievements for Flawless Victories on Hard mode.
- In-game tutorial animations visually describe how to play.
- Dynamically-sized island expands to match the size of your play-space, allowing players with large rooms to make the most of the Vive's roomscale capabilities without disadvantaging players with small rooms.
Story of the Process:
This is my first independent project that I have taken to what I think is a finished product. It started when I was first learning to design games in Unity from video tutorials. After following FusedVR's videos on how to make Fruit Ninja and Audio Shield from scratch, I thought about combining those concepts into sword-targeting game where the player hits colored orbs, matching the color of the sword to the color of the enemy. The process went more smoothly than expected and rather than leaving it as an exercise and returning to tutorials, I decided to keep building as far as the process would take me.
As I elaborated on the design of Willowisp, I decided on a core goal of utilizing the Vive's roomscale capability as much as possible. That meant giving the player reason to move around without being absolutely required to do so. Hence the need to dodge bombs and escape from difficult situations. Also, while playing some other VR dungeon-crawler games, I noticed that it was hard to take advantage of being able to look in all directions because it was so hard to tell when enemies were attacking from behind--staying in first person is often necessary and sound does not provide an adequate cue to look around. That's when I came up with adding mirrors so that the player can watch what is going on behind them out of their peripheral vision. It took some work as a designer to find the perfect location for the mirrors so they provided as much useful information as possible without getting in the way of the game--as well as some practice as a player to get an accurate sense of distance from them--but in testing I found the mirrors to be fantastically effective. After playing Willowisp for many hours and learning to rely as much as possible on peripheral awareness, I eventually began to feel like I could see in 360 degrees.
Historical European Martial Arts has been a passion of mine for many years, so one of my long-term goals for VR is to build a realistic swordfighting system. Taking lessons from the countless games that have had limited success in this goal, I tried a unique approach: rather than create something that looks exactly like swordfighting but feels completely artificial, I would try to capture as much as I could of what fencing feels like--such as relying on fluid movements, tactical thinking, and snap decision making--and use abstractions to deliver that feeling in a game that doesn't necessarily look like anything realistic. Striking red and blue balls, for example, while entirely artificial on the surface, makes for excellent lessons in ambidexterity, timing, point control, and maintaining a soft focus so that one can be aware of threats from many directions at once. As I created additional levels, adding new enemy behaviors as a basis for each new level, I continued on this theme, requiring the player to be light on their feet, moving evasively without running away, and having to pay attention to angle of attack. I also strove to maintain a fluid level progression, adding no more than one or two concepts each level (and with occasional mastery challenges to practice what one had learned in a more difficult setting) to make the game an intuitive learning experience for the player.
I considered adding a lot of other features to the game, such as a bow and arrow, a shield, and spear-throwing, but after nine levels the game was starting to feel like a coherent whole (not to mention rather difficult) and that it would be best to wrap things up with a boss level, and also a continuous challenge for players who would rather strive for a high score than a clear-cut win/loss game. The boss level, however, turned out to be almost as involved as the rest of the game. I wanted something dramatic and settled on the idea of a giant wisp that moved slowly and menacingly across the island, leaving a trail of fire as it pushes the player back, and has to be hit many times to be defeated. As a final swordfighting-related lesson, I created a system where the armor would rotate on each strike, giving the player some high-speed target practice.
This is my first independent project that I have taken to what I think is a finished product. It started when I was first learning to design games in Unity from video tutorials. After following FusedVR's videos on how to make Fruit Ninja and Audio Shield from scratch, I thought about combining those concepts into sword-targeting game where the player hits colored orbs, matching the color of the sword to the color of the enemy. The process went more smoothly than expected and rather than leaving it as an exercise and returning to tutorials, I decided to keep building as far as the process would take me.
As I elaborated on the design of Willowisp, I decided on a core goal of utilizing the Vive's roomscale capability as much as possible. That meant giving the player reason to move around without being absolutely required to do so. Hence the need to dodge bombs and escape from difficult situations. Also, while playing some other VR dungeon-crawler games, I noticed that it was hard to take advantage of being able to look in all directions because it was so hard to tell when enemies were attacking from behind--staying in first person is often necessary and sound does not provide an adequate cue to look around. That's when I came up with adding mirrors so that the player can watch what is going on behind them out of their peripheral vision. It took some work as a designer to find the perfect location for the mirrors so they provided as much useful information as possible without getting in the way of the game--as well as some practice as a player to get an accurate sense of distance from them--but in testing I found the mirrors to be fantastically effective. After playing Willowisp for many hours and learning to rely as much as possible on peripheral awareness, I eventually began to feel like I could see in 360 degrees.
Historical European Martial Arts has been a passion of mine for many years, so one of my long-term goals for VR is to build a realistic swordfighting system. Taking lessons from the countless games that have had limited success in this goal, I tried a unique approach: rather than create something that looks exactly like swordfighting but feels completely artificial, I would try to capture as much as I could of what fencing feels like--such as relying on fluid movements, tactical thinking, and snap decision making--and use abstractions to deliver that feeling in a game that doesn't necessarily look like anything realistic. Striking red and blue balls, for example, while entirely artificial on the surface, makes for excellent lessons in ambidexterity, timing, point control, and maintaining a soft focus so that one can be aware of threats from many directions at once. As I created additional levels, adding new enemy behaviors as a basis for each new level, I continued on this theme, requiring the player to be light on their feet, moving evasively without running away, and having to pay attention to angle of attack. I also strove to maintain a fluid level progression, adding no more than one or two concepts each level (and with occasional mastery challenges to practice what one had learned in a more difficult setting) to make the game an intuitive learning experience for the player.
I considered adding a lot of other features to the game, such as a bow and arrow, a shield, and spear-throwing, but after nine levels the game was starting to feel like a coherent whole (not to mention rather difficult) and that it would be best to wrap things up with a boss level, and also a continuous challenge for players who would rather strive for a high score than a clear-cut win/loss game. The boss level, however, turned out to be almost as involved as the rest of the game. I wanted something dramatic and settled on the idea of a giant wisp that moved slowly and menacingly across the island, leaving a trail of fire as it pushes the player back, and has to be hit many times to be defeated. As a final swordfighting-related lesson, I created a system where the armor would rotate on each strike, giving the player some high-speed target practice.
User Interface:
I spent a lot of time experimenting with a developing a unique UI for Willowisp. Many VR games use a laser pointer to select options on flat panels. While this method is effective, I wanted to avoid it because I feel it is an old 2-dimensional solution to a novel 3-dimensional genre. Fruit Ninja's "chop the options buttons" mechanic worked very well for that game, but runs the risk of players hitting the wrong button, especially if they are close together. So what worked for Fruit Ninja (which had a very small number of buttons) did not feel like it would work for Willowisp, which has considerably more. This is why I decided on a touch-and-press-trigger as my button mechanic, to keep the UI authentic to VR while minimizing the chance of mistakes. To make the process as clear for new users to follow as possible, I made one of the buttons on the first screen say "Poke Me", and when the player touches the buttons with their sword, the button glows to show that something has happened and text appears above that says "Press Trigger". When the player presses the button, there is an explosion so the player knows they have done something and the game switches to its next state.
I was pleased to discover that new users generally had no trouble learning the button-pressing mechanic. What gave them more trouble, however, took me very much by surprise. Once the game would start, players would try pressing the trigger as they swung at enemies, which was entirely unnecessary and made coordination more difficult. I have attempted to solve this problem by making the buttons green and having the player's sword turn green whenever they have the trigger pressed, the intent being to make pressing or not pressing the trigger logically connected in the player's mind to the matching colors theme--pressing the trigger is necessary for buttons because they are green and counterproductive for enemies because they are not. This reduced player confusion, but it has not gone away entirely.
I spent a lot of time experimenting with a developing a unique UI for Willowisp. Many VR games use a laser pointer to select options on flat panels. While this method is effective, I wanted to avoid it because I feel it is an old 2-dimensional solution to a novel 3-dimensional genre. Fruit Ninja's "chop the options buttons" mechanic worked very well for that game, but runs the risk of players hitting the wrong button, especially if they are close together. So what worked for Fruit Ninja (which had a very small number of buttons) did not feel like it would work for Willowisp, which has considerably more. This is why I decided on a touch-and-press-trigger as my button mechanic, to keep the UI authentic to VR while minimizing the chance of mistakes. To make the process as clear for new users to follow as possible, I made one of the buttons on the first screen say "Poke Me", and when the player touches the buttons with their sword, the button glows to show that something has happened and text appears above that says "Press Trigger". When the player presses the button, there is an explosion so the player knows they have done something and the game switches to its next state.
I was pleased to discover that new users generally had no trouble learning the button-pressing mechanic. What gave them more trouble, however, took me very much by surprise. Once the game would start, players would try pressing the trigger as they swung at enemies, which was entirely unnecessary and made coordination more difficult. I have attempted to solve this problem by making the buttons green and having the player's sword turn green whenever they have the trigger pressed, the intent being to make pressing or not pressing the trigger logically connected in the player's mind to the matching colors theme--pressing the trigger is necessary for buttons because they are green and counterproductive for enemies because they are not. This reduced player confusion, but it has not gone away entirely.
Conclusions:
Building Willowisp was a fantastic learning experience, both in terms of creating a project in Unity and in designing for Virtual Reality. And the game turned out to be a lot of fun. I have spent at least a hundred hours playing it (largely for testing purposes) and I still have a fun time playing through it--especially the Survival challenge. It feels smooth, complete, and unique, and I am proud to make it my first published game. I hope my audience gets as much enjoyment out of it as I have.
Building Willowisp was a fantastic learning experience, both in terms of creating a project in Unity and in designing for Virtual Reality. And the game turned out to be a lot of fun. I have spent at least a hundred hours playing it (largely for testing purposes) and I still have a fun time playing through it--especially the Survival challenge. It feels smooth, complete, and unique, and I am proud to make it my first published game. I hope my audience gets as much enjoyment out of it as I have.