The Factory VR - A Rube Goldberg Game
My aim with this project was to make a fully functional language compatible multi-platform VR game for PC. The premise is that you are a worker at “The Factory” as a national consumer tester. Your job is to test out the new highly technological gadgets The Factory has prepared for you. The concept revolves around the classic Rube Goldberg game that challenges players to create contraptions that solve physics puzzles. You have to carefully place contraptions capable of guiding a ball through several collectibles and then on to a goal.
The end product is a game where you entirely decide the solutions. There are endless possibilities. At times you might feel joy, frustration, anger and even shame. But nothing really feels as good as solving a really hard puzzle. Seeing real-like physics at play in VR is extremely fun. When you add absurd physic-based objects into the mix the results can be extremely entertaining and surprising.
In the making of this project
I wanted to focus on the importance of what went into someones mind when playing a VR game. I asked myself “What made these kind of games immersive, fun and entertaining”. I reflected over my younger life since I would often find myself (as most children) running away from obligations. Playing games or watching cartoons was an easy solution to simply forget about these obligations. I still remember how immersed I felt playing the classic Goldeneye 007 on Nintendo 64. I spent countless hours into this (now) graphically limited game. What made this game immersive to me? Well, it was the simple fact that I was able to forget about the “real” world. It allowed me to still be a child when I did not want to meet the harsh reality. That is when I came to a conclusion; A lot of people for certain seek a different reality in games to simply vent and forget their daily lives. I think with out a doubt this factor holds the main key to immersion.
Discover Latest Jobs in AI, ML, Big Data & More
- Conversational Designer
- NLP / NLU Engineer
- AI Jobs & ML Jobs
- Big Data, Data Engineering & Data Science Jobs
- Product Manager
Design choices
It was important for me to create a game which allowed you to simply play, enjoy and “switch reality”. From my thought-process I made a few key notes which would guide me:
- Intuitive and fun game mechanics.
- Minimalistic or no UI.
- Immersion in the form of mental involvement (emotion through level design).
Most of the time was spent into designing and implementing key features I wanted in the game to fit for VR. I wanted a fully functional control panel to work with a Cannon in the game. To create an intuitive experience the buttons and lever had to be physics based. Getting the Cannon to work with the interactive control panel was extremely fun. It took some time and effort to wire up all the functions together, but the end result felt satisfying to use.
To invest emotion into the player, the games puzzle and mechanics gets gradually more complex. I created two levels which would work as a tutorial. The point of this was to make the player naturally learn the core mechanics before the main levels. After a short dialog at the first stage in the tutorial the player gets greeted by two simple semi-transparent World Space UI’s in his front view. My aim for these tutorial-styled UI’s was to make the player understand the controller scheme by simply looking at the highlighted areas in yellow.
After you teleport the UI’s gradually fades away. Your first mission is to power up the Cannon. There are several batteries scattered around distanced close to the Cannon. The battery holders has a big collision detection, and simply dropping the battery close to it will allow it to snap in place.
Placing three batteries on the Cannon will power it up. This will allow for teleportation on the platform the “Control Panel” is on. Your next task now is to get familiar with the mechanics of the Cannon.
There are no guidance other than the text on the panel. The text is self-explanatory and sets up success by trial and error. After firing a couple of shots the game process you to the next stage of the tutorial. This part enables another gadget, the “Object Spawner”. Another two semi-transparent World Space UI’s fades into the players mid-peripheral view showing the new game-objective, and how to use the “Object Spawner”. Your job now is to carefully place contraptions capable of guiding the ball into the goal. After solving the first puzzle you are done with the tutorial stage of the game.
This is where the main concept of the game “Rube Goldberg” starts to shine. The level design gets gradually more elaborate and complex as you complete levels. Eventually you have to make the ball go through several collectibles before hitting the goal. The available contraptions at some levels are also limited to only a few. In total there is 6 different levels with very different level design. Some levels focus on obtaining many collectibles, and some levels focus more on limiting the availability of different contraptions. At a certain point the level design gets so complex, tracking the ball with your own eyes gets difficult. This implies that adjusting upon failure gets near impossible at some of the higher levels. By then another asset is added to the scene, a monitor which tracks the ball.
The future of The Factory
Upon user testing the final build I could clearly see how my test subjects went through a lot of different emotions. My players had a big anticipation of watching the outcome of their work, joy from completing the level and frustration from failing. Depending if the tester had played through the levels before, the average time of full completion was very different. The game could take somewhere between forty minutes to one and a half hour to complete.
Without a doubt I could clearly see the players feeling immersed. The user testers was way off when guessing how long they had played. Most of them had guessed a much shorter time than what they had actually played. In that sense I would say I was successful at achieving my goal; the players could simply play, enjoy and “switch reality”. Which again would allow them to forget about their real reality, even if it was for a little while.
I am proud of this project and I feel accomplished. Playing through the game myself I have a lot of fun. From user testing I am also made to believe that many others can get enjoyment from this game as well. I have therefore planned to release this game for free at one point in the future for others to enjoy as well.
