The Old One // Developer, Designer & Producer
The Old One is a narrative driven virtual reality horror game developed in Unity with C#. Inspired by Lovecraftian lore and concepts, the initial goal was to frighten the player through fear of the unknown and focus on worldbuilding more than direct storytelling.
Watch the alpha demo below for a full playthrough
This was developed as a solo project in six weeks. Part of the experimentation phase was implementing the benefits of virtual reality, such as a sense of scale, depth, and spatial audio. Being able to not only witness the sheer scale of the environment and enemies before you, but truly feel their presence.
Designing the combat was a fun challenge. The end goal was to find a good balance between offensive combat and the ‘run and hide’ trend. I wanted to avoid creating a shooter while still implementing a way to defend yourself. Settling on using light and shadow along with spatial audio as the main mechanics allowed the user to tap into an unfamiliar/unexpected combat scenario. Again, focusing on fear of the unknown.
One of the main challenges faced while creating the project was learning exactly what makes a VR game different from a standard flat screen game. I’ve played a few VR games where the actual implementation of VR mechanics left a lot to be desired. I sought to combat that issue, and I believe I succeeded.
The game is complete, save for some bug fixes and general improvements such as:
a better onboarding, more player direction as to what to do/where to go and subtle animation improvements.
Watch the alpha demo below and stay tuned for future updates!