This was an attempt to use our grappling-hook world traversal mechanics to create a room escape experience in an open world, rather than a confined room. Seeing as “escape the room” puzzles usually take place, as the name suggests, in one room, we felt that some players might be turned away from the genre due to feelings of claustrophobia, which would only be made worse moving from a traditional screen to a VR play-space.
Accordingly, our goal with this project was to take common “escape the room” elements, namely solving puzzles in the environment by finding and using items in that environment in interesting ways, and transpose them to a large, open space. The idea was that we could move away from a ‘locked-room’ design while still keeping the spirit of that type of puzzle, thus allowing players to enjoy this genre of experience without needing to worry about feeling too confined.
Unfortunately, we had difficulty designing puzzles that, from the beginning, work in such a large environment, and instead ended up with an experience that sees the player start in a small area, then escape into a larger one. While we ran into a design issue more than a mechanics issue, it is possible that mechanics issues would present themselves in this type of game.
Instead, the biggest lesson we learned here is that it can be very difficult to think outside the mold of established design paradigms, and very easy to fall back onto tried-and-true designs. Even starting with the intent to make something different from what had been done before, we fell into the trap of thinking “This is how these games are usually put together, so let’s start with that and build from there.” Certainly, this doesn’t mean that method of design can’t lead to innovation, but it does mean the designers need to be very careful not to lose sight of their original vision. Otherwise, the end product can very quickly be much more formulaic than intended.
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RIT VR Design 