This experience was made to explore the mechanic of being able to teleport between characters as a form of movement in the Vive. We built upon that mechanic to add more gameplay into the experience. We decided on putting each character on a planet, and having them be able to walk around the planet, similar to Mario Galaxy, as this way, it makes sense that they can’t walk beyond their room-space, and need to teleport.
The main objective of our game is similar to a tower defence style, except you are the tower. There are 3 planets, each with different colored cubes. You have waves of monsters coming from 3 sides towards the center, each of different sizes and colors. Monsters can only be damaged by similar colored cubes. Being hit causes them to shrink until they are destroyed.
This type of gameplay encourages the player to keep teleporting between planets in order to get the different colored cubes in order to destroy the monsters. The player simply walks around the planet, picking up cubes, and throwing them at the monsters. The waves are endless and the game lasts till the center base loses all its hit points, at which point you get a score.
Below is a video showing the entire experience, albeit with some slight bugs with the UI at the end.
Design Iteration
Mar 20 – Apr 2 : Iteration 1
- Teleportation mechanic between virtual characters
- Mapped tracking space movement to walking around circular planets, like in Mario Galaxy
- Added in pick up and throwing mechanics
- Added in gravity system to keep objects attracted to planets when thrown
Apr 2 -Apr 13 : Iteration 2
- Refining throwing mechanism to make it feel more natural
- Experimented with different ways of walking around planet
- Rotate planet, or rotate player’s tracking space?
- Added in a tower defence mechanism
- Spawned cubes automatically on each planet, and spawn more whenever player would pick up and throw one
- Refined and improved gravity system to make cubes attracted to planet
- Added in monster generation and endless wave system
- Added in scoring system and killing monster system
- Added in color-coding cubes to monster
- Added in UI, and BGM
Playable with some guidance from start to finish