Blasters of the Universe; Infinity Forever

  • Released 2020

  • Studio: Secret Location Inc

  • Platforms: SynthesisVR

  • My Role: Lead Game Designer & Lead Level Designer

  • Engine: Unity

Summary of Contributions

I was the Lead Game Designer for Blasters of the Universe; Infinity Forever. As such, I worked on the game from early concept through to final release. This work included writing GDDs, contributing to funding applications, building prototypes, designing gameplay systems, weapon functionality, enemy behavior design, bullet pattern creation tools design, level design, enemy spawning tool design, boss battle design, UI & UX, and tutorial design.

BOTU; Infinity Forever is a new game in the Blasters IP. This title was designed for the SynthesisVR freeroam VR system. This meant players would be co-locating in the real world while playing the game. This posed a number of challenges including important safety considerations to ensure players did not run into each other while playing. Building upon the existing work of the original BOTU, we designed new bullet pattern tools and enemy spawning tools to take advantage of the wireless 360 experience untethered VR has to offer.

Design Challenge; Continuous Throughput

In order to hit our needed throughput targets, I designed a system that allowed us to seamless move groups of 4 players through a large tracked volume.

Players would be carefully guided through a series of levels, physically walking to the next location as the game progressed. This was all done while the players were in VR, seamlessly being guided through the large playspace with the use of carefully planned animations and trigger points. When a group completed a level, they would be directed towards the next area. Only when the area was clear of the group, would the next group of players get the go ahead to progress. This carefully orchestrated progression ensured players would finish each level of the game at a specific time and end the whole experience with an epic boss battle.

This allowed us to continually send new players into the experience and ensure different player groups would never collide with each other, all while hitting specific throughput targets.

This system was so successful, players would often be very surprised when they took off their headsets and where in a completely different location than where they started. This hidden re-directed walking would be the key design inspiration for our next out of home game Teller Falls.