Learning VR Game Design through Udacity's VR Developer Program

Udacity’s Puzzler Project

By

Fritz Templin

This is my puzzler project for Udacity’s VR developer program. The main focus of this project is game design and the game design process.  In this short article I will show you how I approached the game design process for this project. Enjoy!

First here is a quick video of the finished game project.

In the game design process it is important right from the beginning to know for who, and why you are designing the application. For this project I created a persona, and used this as my typical VR game user for this application. In a real development application research into the actual market and user that you are trying to connect with will be essential to the success of your project. Creating an awesome game that no one is interested in will not bring much more than your self satisfaction for completing it. 

Meet Michael.

Name: Michael,

Age: 13 – 45

Occupation: Do I really need a job to play games?

Quote: Get your game on!

VR Experience level: New to VR just starting to experiment with mobile VR applications.

This game player will like to solve puzzles and challenges. They will most likely be using a smart phone in combination with a VR head set. Performance and lightweight resource overhead will be major considerations to insure a high level of functionality for the targeted devices.

Next I needed a rough sketch of the application that I would be making. It is important that the technique used to create the sketch allows for quick creations. You will likely need to make a number of changes as you iterate through your project with user feedback and test runs.

Your first sketch should give you a general idea and layout details will be added through iteration.

Sketching new ideas or changes as you come to them.

Adding sketches for more detail to objects or scenes. 

With your sketches completed you can begin your build using the sketches as blue prints to work from.

As you build continual iteration and improvements are made such as changing the name, text instructions or highlighting buttons on gaze as was done on the panels above. While game testing and from user feedback see through panel aesthetic were discovered to look better than the original solid panel did.

User testing and feedback is essential to creating and interesting and compelling application. It is also important in VR application to help avoid simulator sickness and create natural feeling movements and comfortable game ergonomics.

Asking open ended questions that encourage insightful and non-directed input from the testers is important.  One of the questions I used for this game development was, “Please describe the environment and the mood you are feeling from it. “. One of the responses to this question was “a simple stone room with two doors that feels rustic and gloomy, with a strange light shining on some floating balls”.  With follow up questions on key parts of the test users response I was able to deduce that improvement was need in the lighting of the orbs, the complexity of the room and enhancement of the environment with fog.

 Adding a layer of fog and some fire animations to the surrounding mountain terrain helped to enhance the mysterious and ominous feel of the environment.

Adding the fire animation on the torches added complexity and movement to the interior scene.

Adding individual spot lights improved the glowing appearance I was going for on the orbs

Later tester responses like this one, “I feel like I am in a spooky torch lit dungeon with glowing spheres floating in the room.”, showed me that the changes I made were moving the game feel in the intended direction.

Currently the game is still a simple VR experience that can be enjoyed and tested by users who are new to the VR environment. It is also a solid building block and concept piece that could be added to and enhanced to become a deep and interesting game application. I will expand by adding new rooms with different and more challenging puzzles that users can work their way through and become immersed in the game.

If you are interested in down loading the project please feel free to visit my Github account to get it.

Github account