“Virtual Reality Prospecting” was a VR game developed over the course of a month for a Virtual Reality class at my university. It was developed for Meta VR using the Unity engine. In this game, you play the role of a gem prospector, where you must dig treasures out of a wall. You can then clean these treasures and sell them to earn money.
I knew I would be presenting this game at my university’s computing showcase, so I designed much of the game with that audience in mind. I did my best to design mechanics that someone who has never played a game before could understand in seconds. To do this, I made sure that button presses on the controller were limited to the grab button, and that no UI menus would pop up. Additionally I made sure that the motion of swinging a pickaxe into a wall would make sense to anyone watching the game.
For the computing showcase, I was given a booth and set up my computer so that people can play my game. However, I knew that there would be a lot of people at the showcase, so I designed the level layout so that the player would never have to turn around or swing their arms in a direction other than forward. This allowed people to group up closer to my booth and watch others play my game.
This game was developed by 1 person: Mark Helminiak
Documentation
While developing the game, I knew that it would be difficult for others to play my game, as it requires a VR headset; so I did my best to record my development process and post updates to my YouTube channel. There are current 5 videos on my channel, saved to a playlist you can view here:
Reflection
After completing this project, I felt very satisfied with the result. I had accomplished my goal of creating a digging minigame in VR, as well as added extra mechanics I did not originally plan (such as refining the treasures). I also put a lot of extra work into making the pickaxe swinging feel satisfying, with a bunch of hit particles and sound effects. I personally feel like my game was quite fun to play, as not only was my booth crowded for the entire showcase, but I also enjoyed playing it too much during development.
I definitely learned a lot about VR game development during this process, and have a list of things I would love to improve on if I ever work on a VR game again. However, I was also able to see the many limitations of this medium. Overall, I think VR has a lot of potential for new experiences, and I would love to work on another project again.