Crystal Rift is an experiential horror challenge game that takes the player through a series of increasingly mysterious locations. The game has been developed primarily for Virtual Reality headsets such as the Oculus Rift and GearVR, but is also a great experience for those without headsets. It was inspired by classic games such as Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder with grid-based movement.
An immersive virtual reality experience, Crystal Rift will be released with a over 20 levels, with unique styles and settings, to provide many hours of gameplay. The player slowly uncovers the narrative and story through exploration, discovering dark secrets and following the path of those who have come before.[/size]
Hey folks! I am Nick Pittom, one of the two developers working on Crystal Rift, along with Jon Hibbins, who created the game originally. We're pretty excited about what we've been working on, and hope you like it. You are not required to. I'm not the boss of you. I merely entreat you to have a look at it all, and then decide it's pretty good.
Jon has 25 years of experience designing and writing games and enterprise business software and was inspired by the games of yesteryear - Eye of the Beholder and it's cousins - to create his own Dungeon Crawler in their image. It was the opportunities and unique benefits of VR that finally gave him something to really get his teeth into, and thus Crystal Rift was born.
I have been working on my own VR projects, which Jon was a fan of. He asked me to join the project at a developer meetup and I was extremely impressed with what he had managed to create, and saw the ways in which I could bring something to the project. I'm very excited to explore the ways we can build the experience with challenging puzzles, scary atmosphere, story and all the goodies that VR itself can bring.
This dev-log will be our way of chronicling our path from the current alpha to the final product, hopefully getting some great feedback and giving other people some useful insights into our process. For now this is an introduction, but we're looking to go in depth into creative and technical aspects, including design of scares, narrative and how we're putting together our levels (it's quite ingenious!). For now, here's some pretty pictures!
Key Features:- Designed for Virtual Reality First, this leads to a rich immersive 3D environment with details you can lean into and see, this also presents perfectly in 2D.
- Classic dungeon crawling experience with grid-based movement, hidden rooms, pressure plates, trapdoors, fireballs, challenges, tactics and more. Over 20 levels, with evolving and changing environments.
- A unique and compelling story told through the environment, text and speech.
- An ingame Editor, you can create, edit and share maps built inside the game, no external tools required.
Gameplay and ChallengesA very large part of the game are the puzzles and challenges - danger rooms with traps and complicated paths to navigate past them. There is no fighting in the game - no RPG style stat upgrages giving you more hit points or strength to beat giant spiders with. It's you verses the environment. Sure, some of the environment has demonic presences peering from the shadows - and you will need to watch out for those - but this is not a maze you can fight your way out of with fists - you have to do so with your mind. Symbolically. Literally would be messy and you would likely suffer severe brain trauma.
VR - Oculus Rift and everything elseCrystal Rift was designed with VR in mind and everything has been optimised with that in mind - we're really blown away by the Rift and all the awesome possibilities VR offers. The ability to be INSIDE the game allows for not only a more compelling atmosphere and setting, but actual gameplay elements you would not get otherwise. But while we hope everything will get to play in VR, the game will not be VR only, as we want to give people the option of how they play.
In any case we are looking to target as many platforms as possible, PC, Mac and Linux first, but consoles and elsewhere as well. The Samsung/Oculus GearVR is a very cool piece of kit and we absolutely want to be one of the first games on the platform.
We hope to bring some insights into VR development as our blog continues, but feel free to ask questions or make requests! There are SO MANY aspects of VR that pretty much everyone is still working out and it's an exciting, fast moving area to work in.
Unity3D and our methodsWe're using Unity3D to build the game - it's pretty awesome in general, but especially so for VR. Additionally, it was well suited to our 'tile based' movement and level creation. Jon has managed to create a very aggressive optimisation system, with very efficient culling and draw times - perfect for VR, including mobile VR such as GearVR.
Another benefit of the method Jon has taken is that the editor we use to create the game is also going to be readily available to release with the game, and allow people to make and share their own levels.
The game will have more than 20 levels, with an evolving art style as the story unfolds. This also means a varied selection of 'tile sets' to chose from to build your own levels. Custom assets are also planned for support some time after the game launches.
Story telling Storytelling is one of my own focusses for VR and game development and we are hoping to create a compelling and original narrative, told in part through the environment itself, but also through messages scrawled or otherwise left by previous occupants. Storytelling is difficult at the best of times, and even more so in games. It's a challenge, but a fun one.
We Scare because we care!Important to that storytelling is the atmosphere we're building, with scares and creepy elements being a particularly tricky element to get right. We discovered early that jump scares can perhaps, in some situations, work well, but only when used very carefully, and indeed some people outright hate them. In VR these elements can be particularly jarring and many people have difficulty with them.
An innovation we're particularly proud of is the ability to customise your 'scare' level. 'Standard' play delivers you the game experience as it was designed to be, with a creeping dread giving way to stalking creatures and shadowy threats. But we will also allow the play to turn this up to 'Extreme' allowing for a more intense experience, jump scares and all - with a final 'Scares off' setting for those who wish to play the game safe in the knowledge no horrible beasties are going to get them.
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Hopefully you'll all enjoy our updates and we'll both get something from it. Good times!
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