The goal of the roof tear prototype was to explore a high-impact moment that emphasized sense of scale & spectacle. I wanted to see how it felt to have a giant feel like they were invading your real world space, and to create a sense of danger and uncertainty.

Within the project, I pulled together what assets I had at my disposal. A singular guard NPC, that I scaled up x20 and manually posed and animated. Found and plugged in skybox to make it feel more abstract and colourful. Set up the guards animation states and controlled the logic through a grabbable object. Dynamically changing an object that calculated itself as the rooms roof, and make it follow the guards hand and placement.

In headset, it felt much more grandiose and immersive. Even without placeholder audio or visual effects, it surprised & delighted testers. It got the development team invested, they were suggesting how we could make it better!

We ended up injecting this as one of the first moments of the game. After some light tutorialisation, and letting players get their bearings in Mixed Reality - we throw them straight into this unexpected moment.

Video From: Bearded Benjo