Upending

So, there I was at the Biennale of Venice 🎭 in 2019, and this crazy idea pops into my head: What if we create a virtual reality experience that attracts a whole new audience by focusing on hands? 👐🏽 I mean, hands are important, right? Anyway, I couldn’t wait to pitch the project to René Pinell, one of the minds behind the award-winning VR project, Spheres. 💫

To my surprise, René was on board, and he told me to get a pitch together ASAP 🔥. So, I teamed up with the brilliant Allison Crank for user experience design, and we were off to the races. 🏎️ Before we knew it, we got selected for residencies, received funding, and found ourselves at the VR Arles residency in 2020, where our project transformed into an immersive game. 🙏🏼

Our game, Upending, is set in a world where gravity just up and disappears one day ↕️, leaving the city floating like some kind of bizarre urban dream. You follow the story of a mother trying to find her daughter 🧑🏾‍❤️‍🧑🏿, and here’s the kicker: You, the user, get to help her by applying forces and bouncing off floating buildings. 🌪️

The whole thing starts when the drift alarm goes off, and you, as Morgan the mother, have to find your lost 😱 daughter, Serena. You learn to navigate this low-gravity world, making friends 🫱🏽‍🫲🏾 with the locals and discovering which direction Serena might have gone. The game is designed to be accessible to VR newbies and casual gamers, with multiple endings to keep things interesting. 🌱

Now, let me tell you about the user experience. Picture this: You’re lying down 🛏️, and the city 🏙️ is mapped to your ceiling. Each building 🏢 has its own gravitational force, and you use hand gestures to propel the mother through the floating city. It’s like you’re in control of her destiny, deciding her path and fate as she searches for her daughter. 🤏🏽

🫸🏼 The hand-tracking feature on autonomous headsets lets you manipulate the city, pulling buildings and elements closer together to create gravitational forces that affect the characters’ paths. 👣 It’s intuitive, magical, and there’s no need for tutorials ✨ or UI – just pure immersive gameplay. 🫷🏼

🎯 Our goal is to create a visually stunning and emotional journey, showcasing the positive effects Serena has on the city and its inhabitants. The generational opposition 🧑🏾‍🤝‍🧑🏾 between the mother and daughter, and their struggle to adapt to a changing world, forms the emotional core of our adventure. 🩵

And that’s the beauty of Upending: Users get to be the catalyst for change, propelling the mother into action and directly influencing the story. It’s a reminder that our children constantly adapt and grow 🪴, often much faster than we can keep up with. So, that’s the story of our project – an immersive, gravity-defying adventure that I had the privilege of co-creating and writing. ✍🏼

🎮 As Co-Creator & Narrative Designer, I developed this VR game, designing an intuitive zero-gravity 🪂 movement system, an emotional mother-daughter story, and a unique immersive upside-down world. 🌍

The project received funding for the writing from the CNC 🫶🏼, which helped us build a prototype 💻 of the experience and write the game design document. 📃