Sergio Hidalgo is an indie game developer who developed the Dreadhalls horror experience, which received an honorable mention in the Oculus VR game jam in 2013. He’s in the process of making a full commercial version as well as a mobile version for the Gear VR.
Some of the things Sergio talks about are:
- Designing horror experiences that go beyond jump scares
- Being able to experience a physical presence of the creatures in VR
- Using procedurally-generated maps in order to keep the user surprised
- Triggering the movement of creatures based upon the movement of your head is also unique to VR
- The change blindness mechanic and playing with a peripheral version mechanic
- Pitfalls of building a developer building tolerance of their horror experience & tips to help with this
- Design approaches for when a player breaks through walls with positional tracking
- The tradeoffs for supporting various input controllers
- Lighting considerations for Gear VR optimizations
Sergio also mentioned how the first VR game jam provided a lot of inspiration for him in terms of exploring different VR gameplay mechanics.
This morning Oculus just announced that there is a Mobile VR Game Jam 2015 happening specifically for the Gear VR. You can sign up for it here.
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
