Global Game Jam 2014 using Oculus Rift

First things first. Here is the GGJ page for our game, Schizophrenia. At the bottom of this page are two links. One called source files and the other is the executable. If you prefer a more immersive experience you can log into Facebook using this and copy your number when the game boots.

I applied for the Global Game Jam 2014 only a week before it was actually being held because I wasn't sure I could combine it with moving to Ghent for my internship and finishing course work. But I managed and participated in this incredible event. My team and I consisted out of six people of which two were programmers and four were artists. We registered ourselves 'Fat Kids are Hard to Kidnap' and thus our team sprung into existence.

At around 4 pm on Friday we were entirely set up and ready for GGJ14 to commence and so were the hosts as around that time the presentation started where (among other things) the concept of this year's contests was being revealed. It being really vague just supported the idea we had before it was announced.

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

So with this knowledge we individually started concepting idea's, writing down single word brain farts on individual post-its. After that we combined all of the post-its and put together the ones that were similar. Quickly the word schizophrenia was tossed around and we decided to build our game around the experiences a schizophrenic has. The multitude of totally different and unrecognizable impulses for the player to deal with in an environment that featured a symbolic meaning for losing one's self in an area devoid of structure save for the environment itself... and since we didn't want to creep too far into the 'experience' part of games, we stayed relative close to the horror cliche of an abandoned subway system. All this combined into an Oculus Rift experience made it a little daunting for some people to proceed into the dark.

Below are some images from the game.

Oculus Rift gameplay

Unity Editor screengrab

Unity Editor screengrab

Unity Editor screengrab

Unity Editor screengrab

During the next few days I have nothing on my plate except for sleeping and doing other stuff to survive so I'm planning on working on the game for another day or two to get rid of the bugs and some ugly textures.

Kind regards,
Pim