BVW Round 2 “Deer Stranger”

Round two’s assignment was to “Create a VR experience for the Quest 3 that lets naïve guests enjoy a high degree of agency, WITHOUT RECEIVING ANY INSTRUCTIONS.”

The challenge within development is creating interactions where guests feel like they have a high degree of agency when their range of supported actions is limited.

• A naive guest is a “first-time guests who have no prior knowledge of your world”

• agency is defined as “the ability of the guest to affect situations (or influence outcomes) that they care about,”

An additional narrative aspect of the project was the requirement to use CROW (Character, Relationship, Objective, and Where/When) an Improv activity that when combined with indirect control assists with building user agency.

• Character (what role does the guest take on?)

• Relationship (what is the character’s connection to the scene/world and NPCs/things in it?)

• Objective (what is the guest/character’s goal?)

• Where/When (what is the location/situation in which the guest/character acts?).

In order to hold teams accountable for creating an experience that can be navigated for people unfamiliar with VR we were also required to write predictions for what the guest would do- ensuring that we had overall control but while delivering a sense of agency. For our final presentation we gave a list of 12 predictions (only 3 were required) and our naive guest accomplished all of them in sequential order.

We had some technical issues navigating the quest 3’s small storage space and boundary and physics constraints but overall we learned a lot and had a great team dynamic.

I got the opportunity to co-produce with the incredibly talented programmer, Devika, and we managed to get lots of naive guest playtesters to help us refine our experience.

For sound I designed radio background music along with lots of spooky sound effects that fit the horror narrative.

Game Synopsis: Deer Stranger is a VR horror puzzle game experience that takes place after your car stops working during a storm and you must seek shelter. After locating a cabin you can seek refuge in you realize a monster is lurking. Follow the clues and solve the puzzles in the cabin to find a way to defend yourself.

Team Credits:

• Libby Egan (Co-Producer and Sound Designer)

• Devika Santosh (Co-Producer and Programmer)

• Derek Wong (Programmer)

• Eliana Huang (Artist)

• Skye Gao (Artist)

Trigger Warning for the Video Below: Horror themed, A gun, a scary deer monster named craig