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Virtual Reality · 2017

Night in the Woods

An intuitive VR game for HTC Vive, designed so first-time users can play and ward off monsters until dawn — with almost no instructions.

Night in the Woods

Introduction

As a member of a construction-worker team, cook and guard the food from monsters until dawn arrives. The game is designed to be played by naive guests — people who have never used VR before — with as few instructions as possible. The environment itself teaches players what to expect.

Designing for first-time VR users

Several rounds of playtesting drove the design. To onboard naive players without explicit instructions, we:

  • Created a fenced, lit patch of ground to indicate the player area.
  • Added unfinished buildings and construction materials to establish context.
  • Used a subtle sign board with visual cues to hint at what to focus on.
  • Added spatial sound to help players prepare and focus on attacks.
  • Introduced a gradual increase in difficulty to ease players into the gameplay.

My contribution

The theme was “make a game for naive VR users with no explicit instructions.” I worked as a programmer and producer, balancing the build while shaping the onboarding experience.