Late Night, Lost Way Home
is a virtual reality experience in which players find themselves stranded in a phonebooth with a monster waiting outside.

"Late Night, Lost Way Home" was made in two weeks, and was designed specifically for a naive guest who is not previously familiar or comfortable with VR. As per project specifications, we avoided direct text instructions and instead relied on indirect control techniques such as constraints and visual design to guide the player.


Individual Contributions

• Schedule and facilitate meetings, oversee task & asset spreadsheets, maintain documentation through note-taking
• Prototype phone system dialogue options with Twine
• Implemented state system in Unity scripting to transition the player between phone states, dialogue, scenes, and environment animation
• Helped implement sound effects, such as monster spatial audio
• Implemented final credits scene

Team Contributions

• Facilitate indiviudal playtesting across a variety of demographics, gathering written testimontials from participants to view feedback
• Participate in formal group playtesting to ensure guests will know how to navigate experience intuitively
• Create story document by identifying character, relationship, objective, and location

Challenges & Lessons
Our biggest challenge was getting naive guests to do the right actions without simply reading written instructions. Here are some examples of how we used indirect control to ensure the player intuitively knew how to move forward in the experience:

• Through constraints and visual design: We placed the hotline poster in a position next to the phone so that the player is likely to see it, and we designed the poster to have text specific to the user’s situation to get their attention, both ensuring that the player will call the correct number to move forward.
• Through NPC behavior: The story and dialogue manipulates the player to rate the service low during the survey, creating a natural transition to the final scene.
• Through music: In the final flower field scene, we wanted the player to open the phonebooth door to understand that they are now free and the conflict is solved. We play calming and peaceful music in the scene to indicate safety.