In my spare time, I worked on a VR battle game with a core team of five: a 3D artist/project lead, a programmer, an audio designer, a 2D animator, and a scriptwriter. I mostly worked with the programmer Yohji Kusakabe and the 3D artist/project lead Zsa Zsa Wen, but the full team roster can be found on her website. The game was a thesis project for Zsa Zsa; she describes it as,
[The] game allows players to access a private space recovering from previous traumas by rebuilding a healthier relationship with their inner shadow through the journey of a chosen hero. The method we use is virtually fantastic physical battles with believable characters and world setting in touching storytelling… The main character [is] named Shadow, a kind warm shadow differentiated with other evil ones. It is a representation of the player’s dark side that needs [the] player’s help to grow up in a moral way by defeating other people’s evil shadows. Eventually, save the human world and shadow world.
I held a technical role, mainly C# programming on the Shadow character (a partner the player can control) and the tutorial scene.
For Shadow, this included following the player, getting items for the player, attacking enemies, and evolving. Attacks change depending on Shadow’s form (for now, there’s Little Shadow and Mega Shadow).
For the tutorial, this included orchestrating the right triggers to play at the right time to guide the player through the game’s basic mechanics. This ranged from instructional UI sprites and speech bubbles to timing Shadow’s actions.
We have received great feedback from over 100 people Zsa Zsa has shown it to at three different New York galleries and public spaces.
For more details on Warm Shadow, check out zsazsawen.com
