Role
Software Used
Genre
Platform
Programmer
Unity, C#, XR Toolkit
Adventure Puzzler
Oculus Quest 2
Game Overview
Deep Sea Believer is an underwater adventure puzzle game. Player's take on the role of the last true believer of an ancient god. The god's underwater kingdom has been tarnished by humanity, and as such they enlist your help to regain their power. You are instructed to visit three monuments, solving short puzzles to locate one of three relics, culminating in a ritual to bring back the old god.
The game makes great use of the many affordances of VR. Players are able to freely grab objects in the world such as keys and the relics themselves. Buttons and wheels use physics to react to the player's touch. Haptics and surround sound greatly increase immersion. The player is also granted free movement by mimicking a swimming motion with their controllers, allowing them to fully embody their character and the space they're in.
Production Overview
Deep Sea Believer was made by a team of three in IGB388, a unit dedicated to creating virtual reality experiences. Six weeks were spent individually developing concepts for our games, before we were arranged into teams of three to work on a single project.
As a team we worked for over half the semester, roughly 7-8 weeks. Our team decided to use Unity's XR Toolkit for out project. This meant we were able to utilise their velocity based grabbables for physics objects in the world. Thankfully, my pre-existing experience in VR made beginning the project a lot easier, and I was able to take time to experiment with the limits of the XR Toolkit, expanding my knowledge of implementing physics, haptics, and a custom swimming controller.
The game was tested at numerous points during development, further providing me with extremely useful experience in VR testing. It was through this process that we were able to refine our puzzles, game loop, and story to a high degree.
This project was a lot of fun to work on, and the result is a polished and immersive game. Because of this, the game was selected as one of three VR experiences to be showcased at QUT open day 2022!
My Responsibilities
As the sole programmer on the team, my key personal contributions were:
A majority of in-engine work
Placing specific objects
Coding interactions
Blocking off and unlocking areas of the level to create a proper flow from puzzle to puzzle
Implementing "swimming" mechanics
Players were able to wave their arms back and be propelled forward
Implementing boids (fish that swam throughout the level)
Creating custom physics interactables
Buttons that could be pushed in
Wheels that could be turned around a central pole
Chests that would open on a hinge
Implementing a dialogue system
Dialogue system featured voice acting and subtitles
Setting up and finetuning puzzles
Placing triggers for dialogue
Programming the puzzles
Unlocking the relic after completing the puzzle
Implementing a custom haptic manager for easy to set up feedback
Implementing diegetic UI
Relic collection system
Custom XR grabbables that would provide visual, audio, and haptic feedback when the player "absorbs" them
