Veritas Rugiens

Dev Blog 2022-01-27

Greetings everyone,


Ali here, to bring you some information on one of my other side projects, namely Veritas Rugiens! Veritas Rugiens, or VeRu for short, is a Virtual Reality thriller game being made in Unreal Engine. It has been a real treat working on it, and I thought it would be nice to show some of it.


I'll briefly mention the two goals of this project:


  1. Apply gameplay and systems design knowledge on a VR game, and challenge myself to learn more about the variations in between games I've made in the past compared to VR, and best practices.
     
  2. Make a Narrative focused game in VR.
     

Narrative


In VeRu, the player wakes up in the sick bay of an abandoned space ship. They have to find a way off of the ship while figuring out why it was abandoned, and where its inhabitants went. The players does this by searching the ship's many rooms, and investigating clues. These clues can be the passengers' personal entries, research data, environmental storytelling, and audio logs. Each clue brings the player closer to the truth.

Progress


Recently, my priority has been making this game as comfortable as possible and combat motion sickness, allowing players to enjoy the story and the scenic views. As such, progress has been made in the following systems:


  • Custom Gravity: Ensuring that differences in height and terrain wouldn't affect the player's perceptions, balance and game feel.

  • Easy Interaction System: Many functionalities are point and click, and needed to be an easy and intuitive player experience. Buttons are big, texts are clear, interactive items glow and move, and are detected easily.
  • Sub-Levels: By splitting the entire ship into smaller pieces, each section could be decorated with more objects without sacrificing performance, which prevents motion sickness. Even better - it fuels the thrill of the mystery!

Most of my personal development time goes into Project: Bounty Squads, so I don't make as much time for VeRu as I would like. Every now and then, though, I manage to continue its development!


There is something oddly satisfying in making a thriller game in VR, so I will keep posting more about this project when it progresses. I hope you've enjoyed this short insight into the project.


Thanks for reading, and good bye!