Working at the nonPareil Institute, we got our hands on an HTC Vive several months before it came out and got to be part of the first wave of VR games on Steam. It was the wild west. We were trying anything and everything and I got to experiment with new ways to do menus and control schemes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Light of Mine was a VR horror game where players had to navigate the world with a candle and flashlight to solve puzzles while avoiding the living statues. The statues would only move when out of view, similar to the ghosts in Mario or the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. 

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We wanted the player to move through the world without getting motion sick and without having to teleport around. Early research and examples like Eagle Flight showed the dominant way that players should move is always to orient to the head and it should be analog input so players could smoothly get up to speed. Rotation orientation locked to the head made longer play sessions possible and felt really fun. It also lent itself well to the gameplay where players have to keep looking at enemies to keep them from moving, putting players in a situation where they had to either walk backwards to keep them in view, or whip around and run away.
 

Using the HTC Vive trackpad, a player could dial up the speed to their comfort level by moving a thumb back and forth.

For menus, I found that while it was possible to hold a controller over a menu item and press a button to select it, it was annoying because the act of pressing an input would sometimes move the controller enough to move the aim off the menu item. I found that holding the laser over an item while a fill bar completes felt much easier to navigate.

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One of the priorities I was given was to tell the story of the nonPareil Institute, so in the about section I made a panoramic texture full of candid shots of members of the institute. I also incorporated video clips and in VR they could be viewed as tall as a movie theater screen.

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We took the game to several conventions including QuakeCon. Out of 60 testers, only 10 reported discomfort after 15 minutes of play, which is quite remarkable since reports show somewhere between 40% and 70% experience motion sickness.