VR Sea Legs – Update 3

Our goal for VR Sea Legs is to be the first VR game you play after introductory Oculus apps like First Contact. To make spaces for players to interact with, we’ll need to start with level design.

Design of the first level in our game is critical to the success of this project – this will, ideally, be one of our users’ first experiences of movement in VR. We’ll also be introducing the user to new concepts, such as “grab and throw,” UI interactions, crafting, and weapon mechanics.

Level 1 Goal: Introduce a movement system in a comfortable setting to build the user’s VR movement experience base.
In the first level, our user will:

• Learn grounded movement;
• Use a dialog to interact with game characters;
• Complete a quest;
• Perform simple material interactions.

We will teach them to use the movement system though fetch quests and crafting quests, creating situations to focus the user’s attention and develop flow as the intensity of the movement experience increases.

Production Status: We’re currently blocking out the first level (and later levels, so we get a jump on development for those). The setup for the first level is surprisingly breathtaking, even with the stand-in elements. We’re planning the quests that will take you up the hill and through the city.

The art direction for this area is PBR stylized, a bit on the cartoonier side, along the lines of games like Overwatch and Fortnite. This first area is a seaside town, featuring some models from a game concept of ours called Dragontooth Island.

These models are older versions and will need to be reworked to fit VR style, as they were originally created for mobile. You can check out some of these models here on Sketchfab:
https://sketchfab.com/3lbgames/collections/dragontooth-isle

Up next… the Lab!