Echo
An Explorable Soundscape
Overview
This VR game prototype explores wayfinding and worldbuilding with a combination of audio feedback and figure-ground relationships.
Research
To begin, the research question of "How can immersive gameplay engage beyond the visual?" was posed. With the affordances of Virtual Reality limited to visual, audio, and tactile feedback, the key user research at the beginning of the project was determining whether sound or touch would be used to drive the primary mechanic of gameplay.
Through surveys and user testing based upon auditory and tactile stimuli, it was found that auditory feedback could both communicate more spatial information to players while also providing a greater self-reported experience of joy.
Pain Points
Personas
Final Product
The mechanic developed in response to this was an emittable radar which both reveals objects in the scene and activates an auditory response upon collision. The player would use this to both navigate and discover, as all themativcally simiolar objects only revealed themselves as they were hit with the radar.
The result? A procedural exploration of a 3D space defined through acoustic exploration. Similar objects are indistinguishable until interacted with, and, even when revealed, have a short visual lifespan. The visual feedback mimics the ephemerality of the soundscape created by the player's sonar, leaving the player with a rich, completely temporary experience.
