This here is a short reflection on the short VR game with the weirdest name ever created. We created this alien-themed 3D jigsaw puzzle in the last global game jam, and uploaded it to our labs collection for you to download and play.
The reason for this strange name is either the alien language spoken on the planet where the experience takes place, or the late hour we came up with it. It really depends on how committed you are to in-world jokes.
In the game, the player works in the galaxy's third-largest spaceport. The alien travelers are frozen and diced before traveling (which makes space travel much safer in terms of pandemics), and when they arrive at the airport, it's the player's job to reassemble them while respecting their privacy.
It's the first time we used Oculus Quill to create game assets, and we were super happy with how they turned out. It gives a hand drawn expressive look to the game, and it's so much faster to create than to go through the whole 3D animation pipeline. In fact, we liked it so much, that we created a whole workflow based on it, which we're using to create our upcoming game. We'll share more on what actually went into putting up this pipeline in a separate post.
The game mechanics were tricky this time. We usually gravitate towards story-rich mechanics, and when we came up with the idea of a jigsaw puzzle we were very intrigued and excited, but also weren't sure that we'd be able to pull it off, since it's different than most of what we did prior. But by heavy play-testing during the jam we think we achieved a balanced experience that's fun to play with. Add the back-story and design on top of that, and you get this cute prototype, that we're very proud of. Perhaps it'll even become something bigger in the future. Who knows...
Comments