Project Description
Tower VR is an action game that borrows heavily from the Tower Defense genre. In Tower VR, a player stands in a tower and shoots fireballs to defend their castle. The player is able to explore the vast world by teleporting from tower to tower. The tower acts as a natural anchor point for the Vive interaction space. The game is a good fit for the Vive VR space because it allows the player to move around with a natural tether which avoids the claustrophobic feeling of being constrained to the physical limits of the room.
We had the opportunity to build a prototype of this game using the Vive dev kit during Vive VR Jam Vancouver and received positive feedback from all players who had a chance to experience the game. Attached is a screenshot of what we were able to achieve in the limited 48 hours of development.
Our goal is to turn this prototype into a real product. We would like to be a launch title.
What We Would Like to Explore
We learned it's possible to explore an open space by using a teleportation mechanic. As long as anchor points are placed properly, you will never run into a scenario where you can collide with a virtual wall. We would like to scale this experience for varying room sizes, which may be challenging but we believe it can be done. In Vancouver, we typically have small room sizes and the ability to scale with the space available is important to us.
The act of moving across the interactive space is one of the most engaging parts of using the Vive. Some of our anchor placements allowed the player to simply turn around, whereas making the towers higher would force the player to walk to the edge of the play space in order to properly engage the enemy. We would certainly focus more on player movement within the interactive space in the future.
Teleportation is another area we would like to explore. Our first implementation had a warping effect which was received positively by most players, but always became part of the player experience conversation. When we changed it to a simple fade-out, the focus was on other aspects of gameplay. We would like to explore how to move the player across an open space while keeping the player's sense of orientation intact.
Being active members of the indie development community in Vancouver, we would like to share (with your permission), our experiences with other developers by doing presentations, live demos, etc.
Team
The core of our team has been working together for over three years. We've shipped multi-platform mobiles games, and TV software created in Unity that is used by NBC, CBS, and FOX. We have a passion for making indie games, as we've done every game jam together since 2011. Everyone on our team has at least three years of experience in Unity 3D and shipped multiple titles.
Jodon Karlik - Worked in AAA for over eight years. Shipped FIFA, Turok, Tron, Homefront, and most recently worked on Gears of War 4. On the indie side, he's shipped a multi-platform cell phone game, spoke at Unite 2013 about the experience, and is technical lead on sports announcer software that beams out to millions of viewers.
Vince Jewlal - Worked in AAA for 16 years. Shipped FIFA 2000, NBA Live 2003, 2004, NCAA March Madness 2004, 2005, Turok and Blood Brothers Puzzle.
Alain-Daniel Bourdages - Shipped five mobile games with his own studio, GreenCod. He has over 8 million downloads and reached the top-ten on Android. He is also an organizer of the "Full Indie" game developer community in Vancouver.
Doug Insley - Has a certificate in digital animation. Worked in games and film. Created artwork for over eight games. When you watch an NFL feed on NBC, CBS, or FOX, you can see his artwork showcased every time an announcer annotates a play.
Ahram Lee - Has a certificate in digital animation. Multi-discipline artist who joined the games industry six years ago. Shipped Rock Paper Missiles, Petra's Planet, and Fling Theory.