About Olympia (VR Sandbox Game inspired by EA Maxis)
Olympia is a team of six graduate students at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center working on a VR experience for their client EA Maxis. Their deliverable is a game that takes inspiration from Maxis titles; giving guests god-like powers and unique forms of environmental control in a slime themed world.
The gameplay experience focuses on creature evolution and behavior simulation. The project will require technically rigorous work which includes exploration into soft body physics and fluid simulation to give our players the feeling of slime. Furthermore, players will be able to mold the virtual world around them in tactile ways and form new creatures through engaging interactions.
More information: http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/olympia/
My Role
UI/UX Design
Storyboarding
One-page game design
Sound design
Tools
Logic Pro
Sketch
Timeline
Jan. 2019 - May. 2019
Game Design Ideation
Playtesting
We took time to do a playtest with a group from outside of the ETC (at the middle point of this project). We had some EA employees come in and play our demos. What we saw was that the slime molding was very enjoyable, people were excited about that piece of our demo. They enjoyed interacting with slime creatures as well, but it got old fast. There was no direction and no goal. Many of our interactions were not working as expected and so the world felt a bit bland. This set the bar high for our next playtests: we should have plenty of goals available to our player.
Finalize Slime Interaction
Storyboarding
Sound Design
