Gushan VR Game
Major Studio - Parsons School of Design
Project Duration: 2 months
Instructor: Kyle Li
Team Members: Solo
Project Statement
Music game is a very typical category among all game categories. And on the VR platform, rhythm games suitable for VR devices were born with novel narrative and interaction ways. But from the perspective of rules, they still belong to rhythm games and the main goal is to take action at the correct time. So instead of following the traditional rhythm game mode, my project is to explore more potential and possibilities in VR music games.
Design Process
Cultural Background
Gushan features in the combination of traditional Chinese martial arts culture and VR gameplay. Ancient Chinese cultural elements not only exists in the architecture, landscape of the game scene, but also permeate the gameplay. The project is inspired by the guqin player in Chinese martial arts movies. Guqinis is a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument which has been played since ancient times. In many martial arts movies, the guqin played by the warriors can emit sound waves towards the enemies. The sound waves looks like a sharp blade and cause a lot of damage. And the two controllers of VR device enable us to play as a Guqin knight in the virtual world.
Gushan is a combination of music game and FPS game. The player's goal is to survive and kill all enemies by moving left and right controller to play Guqin in the virtual world. A sonic wave will be generated and emit along the direction that the player’s hand moves towards.
Skill setting & Interactions
Ordinary attack: The player moves left and right controllers towards the enemy.
Skill - Sonic Bubble: The player presses the left trigger and puts the left hand on Guqin, moving right controllers towards the enemy. A bubble will be emitted and will explode when it touches the enemies, causing AOE damage.
Skill - Sonic Ring: The player presses both the left and the right triggers and moves left and right controllers together towards the enemy. A big sonic ring is formed around the player and will cause a lot of AOE damage.
A energy bar was also designed to add some restrictions to the use of skills. Normal attacks do not cost energy, but special skills costs some energy. The energy value will slowly recover over time.
Skills prototype
Game Scene Design
Referring to the themes commonly used in Chinese martial arts novels, the narrative of this game is about revenge and finding the truth. This story happens in ancient China. In this world, Gushan, the male lead, used to be a courtier, but he retired and lived a peaceful life in the mountains. One day his old teacher was killed. Before he died, he sent pigeons to bring letters to tell Gushan that someone was going to rebel. In order to keep it confidential, killers were on the way to get rid of Gushan. Gushan wants to be alive and avenge his teacher’s death, so he goes out of the mountain, battling with the killers all the way.
When building the scene, I used many elements of traditional oriental buildings and gardens: ancient buildings, lanterns, clouds, lotus flowers, bamboo, plum blossoms to build a scene full of eastern traditional feelings. And used special lighting and rendering effects to simulate the foggy night to create an immersive experience.
Level Design
Combined with my scene building, I designed different levels for players. Initially, the player is in the birthplace and there will be a teaching level to instruct them how to attack in different ways. After finishing each level, the player will move automatically to the next place. When they reach the new level, the battle will start and the player needs to kill all the enemies at the current level.
Gameplay Demo
I integrated the above prototypes and tested them on Oculus Quest. Currently, these is only one type of enemy, which is used to test the game mechanics. In the future, I will continue to improve the design of levels and gameplay, and optimize the overall experience of the game.
