Snow Day

Development time: 2 months

Number of developers: 5

What I contributed:

-Concept

-Mechanics Design

-3D models

Main Design Challenge:

-Create a demo for the company VRelax with the goal of creating a relaxing game for the target audience of 8-14 year olds with a focus on interactivity in the VR space without controllers, only through headtracking.

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Game Description:

Snow Day is a Virtual Reality game with the main purpose is to relax the player through its soothing snow covered forest environment and intuitive interactions afforded through such. Within the game the player will naturally discover different interactions all built with the idea of interconnectedness and relaxation such as digging in the snow by looking at it, discovering objects under the snow that can be collected to build a snowman and throwing snowballs at targets just to name a few.

Design Explanation:

When creating the concept and design for our game I focused on the overall goal of relaxation, regardless of how fun an interaction was, the player should not be overwhelmed or overstimulated. This lead me to going with the approach of fewer and simple mechanics but making them more interconnected in order to lessen the mental load it takes to figure them out and learn.  To add to this, every mechanic had to be executable by just the Pico headset without a controller.

The primary mechanic within the game is the ability to dig into the snow, this mechanic takes advantage of the natural need to look down into the snow only to discover that you can actually dig through it and eventually even find objects within it to build a snowman. This sense of discovery naturally leads them to exploring the map through teleportation points that they can access just by looking, leading them to discover more interactions such as drawing animals in and petting them by looking at them and eventually even discovering snowballs you can throw at targets.

Original One Pager of Concept