The Puzzler Project

For my first project in my Udacity course, I designed a VR game called Puzzler using the Unity game engine. Puzzler is a great introduction game for someone who is just getting started using their VR headset. All you need is a phone-based headset that uses your mobile device as the VR screen. With basic controls, Puzzler can be played while standing or sitting. With a short and simple game loop, feel free to play in a group setting and share the experience! In Puzzler, players enter an old dungeon and are presented with a “Simon Says” like game in the form of glowing orbs.

Developing in VR

Designing a game for VR has been an extremely unique experience, but the most compelling for me has been working with 3d spacial audio to give the user feedback during gameplay.

Puzzler Project

Working on this project has been a step by step process with 3 iterations and user testing throughout development. My testers had a good first-hand experience with VR in Puzzler. With their feedback I was able to make the game more intuitive and immersive.

Keep in mind the experience only gets better once you take it for a spin in your headset!

With 3d stereoscopic sound (fancy word for sound in a realistic 3d space), smooth movement, and vibrant lighting, see how many times you can complete the game without making a mistake!

The Process

Statement of Purpose: Puzzler is a VR game on the mobile platform, that has users experience a “Simon Says” like game in a 3d environment.

Persona

Below is some info and a picture of the persona I made when designing this game.

Sketches

Click through some of the sketches I created during the early stages of development/design.

User Testing

Day 1:

**How accurate to your height would you say you are in this world?**
*I feel like I might be a little taller in this world*
**How is this environment making you feel?**
*Feel warm from the torches, maybe those blue spheres are cold*
**What draws in most of your attention?**
*The 5 spheres are standing out the most*
**Is there anything that breaks your immersion within in the scene?**
*When I look behind me I can see that this dungeon is floating and there is no ground*
**Any things that confuses you within the scene?**
*The blue spheres standout and I don’t know how I can interact with them*

Day 1 Dev Notes: The height difference between me and my tester is a foot. Seeing that we both feel like it is close to our normal height, it will not be a top priority to change. (implementing an “enter your height” adjustment tool at the start of the game could be a solid solution). I should add fire to the torches to really drive that warmth home. Maybe make the orbs a different color if i don’t want them to feel cold or dive in and make them icy looking! Having the 5 orbs standout is good. We want the user to interact with them. Add terrain outside the dungeon so it doesn’t break the users immersion. Add logic for the floating orbs.

Day 2:

**Are you prone to motion sickness or simulator sickness?**
*Yes I can get car sick easily, I don’t have much experience with simulator sickness.*
**How was the speed for moving into the dungeon?**
*I felt that the speed was good.*
**How was the speed for exiting the dungeon?**
*The exit speed was faster and I would prefer the previous speed*
**Any notes or improvements you would like to see?**
*First, I would like to see terrain around me.*
*Second: I don’t like that I can see the restart screen from inside the*
*dungeon, I can also press it and get stuck at the exit*

Day 2 Dev Notes: Need to address the bug with having the restart screen appear right after pressing the start button. This should appear after moving from the play endpoint to help rectify the user being stuck at the end way-point without a way to restart the experience. The end way point is too far from the play way-point, this is causing the itween to move the camera at a faster speed to make it within the same time window. We can fix this by moving it closer and/or reduce the speed in the itween hash table. Add terrain outside the dungeon so it doesn’t break the users immersion, this is more important now that the user starts and ends outside.

Implementation: Changed where the startUI and restartUI turn on and off along the path of the game to prevent this issue. Also using iTween.Stop(); on the reset puzzle so the user could press the restart button before coming to a stop and not break the game flow. Moved the end waypoint closer from 10z to 8z and increase time to 4 in the PuzzleSuccess() hash table. Added mountain terrain using the unity terrain editor.

Day 3:

**How would describe the game you are playing?**
*It is like “Simon Says” or “Bop-it”*
**What do you think about the visual queues on the orbs?**
*I think the change in color is fine, but maybe changing them to 5 different colors each.*
**What do you think about the audio queues on the orbs?**
*The audio sounds make sense, I would like the fail sound turned down because it scares me!*
**Any notes or improvements you would like to see?**
*More levels of difficulty would be nice.*
*You could add more than 5 orbs, change the colors, or increase the pattern*
*count you have to memories.*

Day 3 Dev Notes: Having the orbs color coded could make the game a little to easy. Going to turn down the fail audio since it also seems to loud for me. Going forward, implementing difficulty progression in the game would be fun. Users could get a score based on how far they went before failing.

Implementation: Fail audio was brought down from 1 to 0.5 volume.

In Conclusion

Working on Puzzler has been a fantastic experience both for my growth as a VR game developer and for those who got to try out my project. I plan to use the knowledge I gained in this project to catapult me to success with my future work.

You can get in touch with me by clicking the about link above.

Next Steps

Improved UI visuals, more user input options, improved animations/particle effects for better user immersion, game difficulty progression, score/highscore tracking, etc...