Reverie - a state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts; a daydream
Developed in Unity + Maya
Team: Skylar Knight, Zoey Chen, John Xu, & Hunter Habersaat
https://github.com/skylarhknight/190FS-Final-Project
Reverie is an interactive virtual reality experience about dystopian escapism. The project was developed over the course of 3 weeks, and is designed as a commentary about running from our problems and the concequences.
The experience is separated into a series of levels for the user to explore, interact with, and "escape".
The starting level is a simple room with a table and VR headset on it. This level establishes the mechanic to the user that the user is supposed / able to put the VR headset on. This is the mode in which they are able to move between levels.
This level emphasizes the effects of the anthropocene and the effects of polution and climate change. The scene takes place on an iceberg in the middle of an ocean, which continuously begins to spawn in more and more garbage in the ocean.
The iceberg the user stands on breaks apart over time. The pictures below show the model of the iceberg, annotated with the parts that are able to break away from the main structure.
Level three is themed around monotony and corporate dystopia and takes place in an infinite array of cubicals. The main challenge for developing this level was designing it in such a way that the cubicals could seem infinite but have an optimized design that allowed the scene to render smoothly. This was done by limiting the details of the models in cubicals further away from where the user was located.
Level 4 is the highest level of the experience and is themed around urban lonliness and dystopia. This level involved developing a number of skyscraper models that were designed in such a way that they wouldn't overload the computer when there would be numerous models.
Once the user has reached level 4, they learn to take off the headset and descend back through each level. However, each level they return to is in a far worse state than it was left. This is in order to drive home the idea that we cannot truly escape our problems, and that trying to find ways to avoid them only worsens them.
If the player continues to go back through the levels, there is an easter egg: Level 0. A level below level 1. The player sits in a space capsule, looking down on a desolate earth, all alone.
