Elite Heist | Mysite 1

Roles and responsibilities:

Producer, Designer, Programmer
Designed and programmed the puzzles
Managed and delegated tasks to the 7 artists
Build the levels with all the assets from the artist
Made the script sprites clues via Gimp2

Elite Heist is a Mobile VR-Cardboard Escape Room.

Play as a robber to debunk the puzzles and break into Rothcilds Bank.

Genre: Escape Room
Engine: Unity
Platform: VR

Team Size: 8 People (1 Designer/Producer/Programmer, 7 Artist)

Producer

During pre-production, there were 4 designers, 1 producer and 1 programmer (i was assigned as all 3 discipline since I was the only one who knew how to code and manage). 2 weeks went by and I was quick to learn that the other designers are constantly absent and not willing to participate.

In a sense this made things a little bit easier for myself because I can design puzzles that best fits my coding knowledge and skills. I had to plan!!

Prior to artist being involved in Beta, I had already planned out the execution- as I knew I could not waste any time since the artist are only working in the project for 4 days.

However, I was still unprepared. I knew that the fact was set in the 1800's because it's based off the Rothchilds; thus the decoration should be dated back to then. In addition, I wanted it to feel a little magically but could not give a clearly explanation to the artist. Thankfully the artist were very cooperative and so we all discussed and brainstorm the best outcome that will look amazing for t

Level Design

Prior to level designing, I did some research on VRcardboard. I wanted to know the mechanics of it- what are it's restriction, is it hard to customize things, how do we interact with objects using the magnetic button etc. I had a lot of questions that needed answers because this will make designing easier.

Through research and gameplaying VR games, I started to acknowledge that fact that the player cant really move since they don't have a joystick or control to help them move. However, the best trick in the VR book is to make them teleport to specific locations.

I designed a linear escape room map- it features a start/finish point, and 3 puzzles in between.

The idea behind the level design is that when the player solves a puzzle, they will be automatically dragged/pushed to the next puzzle.

Sketch: Linear room, 3 puzzles split into separate areas.

Mechanic

To reiterate, VRcardboard has TWO prominent mechanic: ONE interaction button to do whatever you want it to do (no joystick/direction key), and can view in 360degree. So, I need to make this game as easy as possible without having the player feeling overwhelmed.

From testing other VRcardboard games on the andriod market, I felt very ill playing them:

The movement was too fast
Moving and being able to spin 360 degree gave me motion sickness

If that's how I felt (and normally I don't get motion sickness) than imagine how people who cop motion sickness will feel when playing these VR games.

So somethings that cross my mind when designing the puzzles:

Dont move the player too much, let the player be grounded at most times and this should prevent motion sickness
the 360 degree rotation and ReticlePointer should be the main mechanic to solving the puzzles. I want to let the player interact with the puzzle without moving.

these two points made alot of sense to my because it ultimately favours a escape room type of game. Escape room games enforces a player to be stationary and find the clues. I wanted to exploit on this!

Puzzles

The game will start off being semi pitch black, except for a little light shone on a light switch. The idea here to let the player interact with it (as it's the only thing that is visible). This will teach the player how to click on the magnetic button on the cardboard. The light-switch will subsequently turn on the main light, which will show the first puzzle.

Puzzle1:

The first puzzle had to be something relatively easy for the player to feel comfortable with using the VRcardboard functionality- i.e pressing the magnetic button to activate the ReticlePointer, and get the feel of the 360view.

The intended design for this puzzle was to allow the player to look around their space to find a number that can open up 'something' to obtain a key to unlock the gate and proceed further.

First Iteration:

The telephone will feature certain numbers that corresponds to the correct deposit box.

So as you can see from the design, the player will choose a deposit box that contains the correct key to open the gate. If the player chooses the wrong deposit box then the timer will decrease.

When the player interacts with the phone, a UI with numbers on the dial will be featured (sorry I don't have a picture of the early version of the phone). But here's the picture of the secret numbers on the dial.

Second Iteration:

I felt that the UI was limiting the player from experiencing the VR-pop up UI's should be kept to a minimum and allow the player to experience the 360 view.

In this iteration, I decided to remove the UI and just enlarge the telephone. Now, player can see the selected numbers on the phone. However, the only question is why the hell is the telephone sooo BIG in comparison to everything else??

At the time, the simplest way I could think of was to give the game a theme- to give it a some magical vibe to the level. In correspondence, the telephone asset will enlarge when the player clicks on it.

In the above picture, the red and green boxes are the deposit boxes. The green box holds the correct key.

3rd Iteration:

The texture of the numbers did not turn out great, it was very hard to identify the numbers. Because this project were about 1 day away from being submitted, I had to make the decision to shrink the telephone and relocate the numbers.

It made sense to put the numbers on the instructions scripts and at the same time allow the player to use the blue chaulk to get the answer. This decision turned out perfectly well because originally the blue chaulk was introduced to solve puzzle 3 but it was so out of context. Now we can introduce it and teach the player how to use it at the start !!

Puzzle 2:

What is a bank robbery without high security and lasers? It was mandatory to add these features to the game; my only problem was how?!

I started with the idea of having the player solve a puzzle to deactivate the lasers in order to proceed to the next puzzle.

Quick few designs:

However, I got nowhere as these puzzle seemed out of place and boring. Subsequently, I did some research on how circuit board works, and how it can be implemented into a game. I began by playing circuit board flash games online (I cant link the game because flash games no longer exist ☹). However, this is what I have gathered from playing it:

It’s a balance game, adding/subtracting circuit to make the light bulbs work
Figuring out the positive and negative current of a battery to turn on the bulbs.

I took the idea of moving objects around the circuit board to activate/deactivate the fuse.

When designing this puzzle, I kept in mind that the design had to be consistent i.e using numbers; I didn’t want to introduce anything that the player might not be familiar with (battery, light bulb etc).

Below are information I jotted down when QA'ing them flash games.

The idea of this puzzle is:

To deactivate the laser, player will need to sabotage the two circuit board- 1 being the Laser and the other for Security alarm.
Attached to the circuit boards are fuses; voltages are shown on the fuses as well
Player will need to rearrange the fuses from the 2 circuit boards to get the desired voltage in order to deactivate the laser.

This is where I exploited my engineering maths skills, using basic algebra to make this puzzle work.

Alpha-Beta:

Beta-Gold:

Puzzle 3:

At the start of the project, we wanted to have a big vault at the end of the game which insinuates that that is the exit. To open that vault, the player will need to enter the correct pin.

The sketch illustrated below shows the initial thought process:

Just like the start of the game, the only thing the player see is the vault, a battery, the right side of the room, and a deactivated wall lamp bulb on the left. The left side of the room is pitch black
The idea is to allow the player to place the battery into the wall to activate the left lamp, which will subsequently light up the left room.
Get the numbers and pin it to open the vault!

The intention here is to allow the player to explore and engage with their surrounding, use clues and decipher the code.

Alpha

Reviewing playtest showed a different side- players were confused with the numbers on the wall and how they relate to the code.

Back on the drawing board we go!!

Okay, what if we use the same concept as the other puzzles and implement some maths into eyy??

To make this puzzle more straightforward and not beat around the bush, I decided to change the following:

Remove the battery and the pitch-black room. In lieu, the left side of the room is lit up.
Add clues in the scripts that can help player debunk the code

I did a thorough research on the Rothchild History, trying to find the important dates to use for the code. The following prominent dates were obtained based on:

The death of his dad- year 1812
The year napoleon was funded by the Rothchild- 1805
The year Nathan Rothchild’s empire rose- 1806

Adding these dates will give the code to the vault:

Beta

Now, not everybody is a mathematician and it would be very silly if the player has to take off the VR headset to whip out a paper and pen to do some calculations. I found a solution for this, I decided to add a drawing mechanic to the game! Player will be able to press and hold the button to draw on the ground.