“Anchorage” for Accipiter Labs Released Summer of 2020
Product Owner, Lead Designer, Production Manager & Technical Director

• A title I put into Game Studio focusing on the use of Virtual Reality to produce an engaging, movement focused, 3D puzzle  game with a visual storytelling component
• Designed around story progression based on room-scale interaction and diegetic interface
• Showcased at Pax East 2020 with over 40 positive feedback surveys (90%)

I started with a goal to explore immersion in VR — what qualities of VR lend themselves to allowing a player to feel not only physically engaged, but immersed in progression. It is important to identify a mechanic or series of mechanics that lean into the uniqueness of VR but also align with the goal of immersive interest in the story. I have developed projects such as EMMA and Puzzle Hamster VR, in which I also focus on interesting physical controls and a strong sense of immersion in a place you could not otherwise be, but each had a very specific tone. EMMA was upbeat but futuristic and relied on the allure of cyberpunk aesthetics to drive home the feeling of racing, intricately partnered with your vehicle, in a technologically advanced society. Puzzle Hamster of course relies on a feeling of whimsy and the joy of inhabiting a hamster body, playing with scale and physicality otherwise unobtainable.

In Anchorage, I wanted to consider how a slower, more deliberate movement coupled with a time element might create a psychologically dynamic experience. As a player in Anchorage, you must locate items/clues physically, literally moving in room scale, and picking up, moving aside, and selecting objects in the space surrounding you. For each level, you are audibly told the items (audio is both helpful and difficult to keep track of in this case) to locate. If you succeed, you clear that blocked memory which will then be revealed to you in a cut-scene played out in shadows across the wall of the room you are in. Each level has a theme, a color, and a soundscape that reflects the repressed memory. The goal is an analogy if you will — you are working through the clutter in your brain — a difficult to reach space with undeniable clutter and very real consequences. A sense of urgency, curiosity, and agency — these are the goals I set for the design of this experience.

I also of course enjoyed the challenges inherent in VR development with a strict scope but also with quite limited resources — resource limits including overall time, production experience, and varied productivity levels due to a student team. My final review of any project I design and develop is, would I continue to play it? The answer is absolutely yes.

This is a tech video without audio, but captures the core mechanics.

This video has no audio, but shows the timer integration and the VFX for end of level as well as the lighting changes.