E McNeill is the developer for Darknet, which is a cyberpunk hacking game developed for the Gear VR. It was originally developed in three weeks as the game, which was the winner of the game jam that Oculus sponsored back in the summer of 2013.
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E’s intention is to create a VR experience that has more of a deeper gameplay mechanic and keeps people coming back to play more. He resisted calling it a puzzle strategy game, but he’s now resigned to describing it that way.
E reflects upon the design process creating the rules that form the basic gameplay for Darknet. It’s an iterative process that sometimes forces him to abandon gameplay that isn’t working. He went through the process of creating rules that were too hidden and random for players to figure out, and they’d have to resort to random guessing in order to progress through the game. He ended up shortening the feedback loop cycles and experimented with a variety of different gameplay mechanics so that a player could progress from being a novice to an elite hacker. He’s even embedded some more advanced optional features where you could gain an advantage if you’re willing to learn how to read the matrix.
Finally, he talks a bit about how Darknet worked more naturally as a mobile game, and some of the optimizations that he needed to do in order to get it ready to be a launch title for the Gear VR. He found that playing the game in a swivel chair provided the best experience, but he also added a VR comfort-like option for turning in his game in order to avoid feelings of simulator sickness.
Thinking about VR too far into the future is a bit too speculative for E, as he’s not sure if VR will be able to live up to the potential of everyone’s expectations. But for now, he’s just happy to think about VR in the short-term and help pioneer some of the gameplay mechanics that work really well within this medium.
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
