I pitched this game during the early days of NDreams studio compass. I was allocated a team of a dozen developers and given 1 month to turn it into a working prototype which was later tested with an external focus group and received solid feedback competing well against the other prototypes it was tested against.

The idea was to make a racing game where the player could experience a sense of extreme speed through the immersive VR headset, while reducing motionsickness by doing a complete 180 against conventional VR norms and making the game third person.

Contributions

Controls

I build the original racing controller modeling the players vehicle after a rolling ball to give the player the sensation of rolling uncontrollably down hill, struggling to control their steering against overwhelming speed and momentum. I then passed this controller over to one of the programmers on the team, and worked closely with him as he iterated on my original foundation.

I knew from the start that the game needed motion driven controlls (rather than interaction driven, ie.. more like a traditional Wii controller), and I tested various steering mechanisms, ultimately settling on chariot style rope controls for their intuative steering. Following this I planned to use a pull-back interaction for breaking, however in external playtesting we noted that players wanted to break while turning, and it was hard to do both interactions at once, directing us to move these controls to buttons instead.

Level Design

The level design went through multiple major iterations, initially starting on a heavy downhill slope and then progressing to floating maps for performance reasons. With this in mind, I pushed the team towards a concept of a city floating on a cloud, which provided a tight structured racetrack while keeping drawcalls to a minimum.

Significant cuts where made to the map to reduce difficulty, with the initial map bolstering multiple regions that each stepped up in mechanical complexity, aiming to onboard testers gently to the control system while still having the opportunity to show them how extreme the game could get for those able to master the controls.