Westhall Basement UE5 VR Project)

Environment, characters, animation, VFX, and programming by Alex Goss
Sound, and programming by Logan Davis
Intro writing by Jamie Laks

In our exploration of developing embodied parallelism in VR, we focused on conveying the experience of “being observed” by another entity, utilizing this exchange as both a metaphorical theme and a fundamental game mechanic. Through invoking a bidirectional “gaze” between player and NPC through the mediation of a VR system, the resulting “call-and-response” rhythm offers another form of play--the fluidity of subject/object positionality. In other words, we wanted to create a scenario that modeled a reflexive relationship in which the watcher recognizes they are, in return, watched. In a wider scope, we are interested in the increased ways instrumentation of a user's movements and interactions with computers are, in a sense, a reading of the user. Mediation of movement is therefore, a conversation between the player and the rules and space they inhabit.