Operation Echo is a VR project made with Unreal Engine 5.3 for the Game Development Workshop course in my 3rd year of university. Early in development the team decided on creating an escape room and tried to figure out what we enjoyed most about escape room experiences and came to one conclusion: physicality. This drove our core design vision, physically moving through the space and interacting with all the different elements in order to uncover hints and secrets. To do this, we decided to use Meta Quest
devices running the game natively to utilize the unique
and immersive
input method to help further this vision.
I worked as the lead game designer and project manager in my team of 6 students of various disciplines. I helped to guide the team along our core vision, designed and prototyped puzzles, as well as facilitated focused discussions on gameplay mechanics and puzzles. I worked with our main programmer to implement features and provided feedback where necessary. I also worked to optimize the project's assets and setting in order to run the game performantly on Quest devices.
Throughout development we had to work around various challenges that surround building a project that runs native on the Quest devices, as well as the effects VR has on people as they play the game. After doing research into existing studies surrounding VR simulation sickness, we decided to make a short core experience to help alleviate any discomfort that would come from prolonged exposure and make the experience as enjoyable as possible. It was also really interesting to see how VR changes the way players interact with your game.
We also ran into some issues trying to hint toward puzzle solutions for players. What seemed obvious to us was actually really hard to decypher for some players and we wanted to change that. After a lot of playtesting we decided to tie in the thematics to the hints and so we created some stone tablets that helped to both help players to think about puzzle solutions, but also to encourage more physical exploration in the space.
