This week we made a new prototype – Robo Rampage. Robo Rampage is a co-op mixed-ability VR game. Our main goals with the game, as stated in last week’s blog, is to promote teamwork, interactions between the players, and some quick, fun action. These things will hopefully combat the idea that wheelchair-users are overly or even universally sad and gloomy. To facilitate this, the game is all about fast, silly movement and constant communication.
It’s a two-player VR game, meaning both participants will have wireless VR headsets on. Attached to the wheelchair will be another chair, back-to-back, which the other player sits in. This isn’t necessarily a wheelchair, but it is a chair that has wheels. In the VR space, the two players are together on one vehicle. The wheelchair-user is the driver while the other player is the gunner on the back.
They will be in an arena – roughly the size of a large room – where they will have the task of surviving a fight with a giant robot that is off to the side firing missiles at them. The driver must do their best to maneuver around the space and keep both of them safe while the gunner has to fire on the weak points of the robot while providing pertinent information about the robot and missiles to the driver.
We playtested this briefly internally on Friday and found a few addressable issues. For starters, the tracking is a bit questionable. This could be a few reasons, prime among them the type of Vive we have or their charge on that specific day. On the design end, we decided to adjust the sizing of a few different things and will iron out a few bugs we hit. Next week we will attempt to run a playtest with a few folks outside the team, especially wheelchair-using players. That should give us some invaluable information.
ChairJam Kit – First Draft
We also finished up prettifying the first draft of the Kit. It was sent out to our clients as well as a few individuals who were identified to us as potentially useful contacts for feedback. Hopefully we will receive feedback from these individuals next week. Given that, we will do another round of iteration on the Kit to make sure it is well-developed and ready for Soft Opening in two weeks time. If we have the time, we have discussed converting the Kit into a web-format as well.