Mana Mix

In this magical VR game, brew your potions by throwing ingredients into a cauldron!

October 16, 2019

Mana Mix is a virtual reality (VR) throwing game (developed with the Oculus Rift S), where you are a young student of witchcraft tasked with throwing ingredients into a cauldron to make potions for your take home exam. The more ingredients you throw in, the more points you acquire. By making certain combinations, you can not only score more points, but also create helpful (or hurtful) in-game effects that can alter your gameplay.

This project was created at Carnegie Mellon University, and I served as the main artist and one of the designers; I oversaw all the concept art and 3D modeling, and helped with user testing.

Objectives

• Create a fun and understandable cornhole game in VR that felt rewarding to play, while conveying the setting through the art

Outcomes

• We created an immersive and clutter-free environment where the UI was embedded into the world.

• We prioritized intuitive controls and throwing physics which made the gameplay feel natural.

Project Goals

Our team was tasked with making a VR game based on popular lawn games, such as lawn darts and cornhole. We decided to do a spin on cornhole; this relatively simple game of throwing a sack into a hole, we felt, could be remixed in numerous ways. We thought of throwing a combination of items, or “combos”, as an interesting way to get more points. Our minds immediately went to “recipes” to construct these combos, and we thought a playful way to do this was through potion-making; throw in a combination of items, and maybe an effect would trigger.

Theme/Concept Art

Potion making led into a witch-themed game, which I got to make the concept art for. For such a whimsical game I wanted to go for a whimsical setting, and I looked to cute witch media like Kiki’s Delivery Service and Little Witch Academia for guidance. Since most of us were college students, we thought it would be fun to set the game at a college for witchcraft, where you were a hapless student stuck with a potions take home test.

Prototype

A room was measured out and replicated in a grey box prototype, where grey cubes represented major obstacles and environment assets. The programmers got to work on the throwing mechanics, potion effects, and a basic score system.

Playtesting/Feedback

We playtested the game multiple times every week, and came across some issues and concerns that needed to be addressed:

• Our game was very difficult, and took a lot of tries to get even a single item into the target (a cauldron).

  • The cauldron was a bit far and small, so we resized it and moved it closer. We also tried to style our game more on lawn darts, and thus removed the idea of a board, which worked better with our items and made the game easier by reducing its complexity and made it less about accuracy. We also added a suction potion effect to help draw in thrown items.

• People were often throwing with an overhand toss rather than an underhand one.

  • Players did this to get distance, since the cauldron was far and too high (related to difficulty). We moved the cauldron closer and lower to compensate for this.

• Scoring and potion effects were often unclear, and led to confusion.

  • We had a long discussion; should the game be about making potions or throwing in as many ingredients as you could? This helped us focus our game and balance potion scoring.

  • To help tell the score, time, and which ingredients were required for certain potions, we built assets that would display the relevant info that fit in the environment.

• Grabbing items felt very strange and didn’t feel right to some people.

  • We added a highlight effect and a reticle to help people pick up items. Based on user feedback we adjusted the speed at which the item flew to your hands.

• Some environment assets got in the way, and blocked some throws from getting in.

  • The chandelier was the biggest offender, and thus was removed. Other possible obstacles, like the bed ladder, were moved around.

• How do you restart the game?

  • To reduce the number of menus in our game, we made an alarm clock asset which had the timer and a physical reset button.

3D Art

I was in charge of the 3D Art and texturing. I had experience with making environment and prop art in game engines such as Unity before, but not in the context of a VR game. Things needed to be subtle and immersive, yet informative; there’s nothing worse than being in a world filled with text. Thus, the exit screen became the door behind you, and the restart button an alarm clock, with the score represented by a chalk board and report card. The items were color coded and made more vibrant than the background. The design of the carpet was subtly pointing to the cauldron, which had lights the glowed brightly to catch the player’s eye. Placement was key, to make sure that important information was in the periphery, but the path to the target was kept clear.

Based on the premise, I made a loose backstory which allowed us to dictate what would be in the room, and how things would be styled. Based on our theme, we went with a Toon Shader designed by Adrian Biagioli, and particles designed by Kenney. Aside from that, I made the props and room assets with Maya, Blender, and Substance Painter, with Connie Chau helping me with 2D assets.

Thoughts

This was my first rodeo in terms of making a virtual reality game in a game engine, but I learned a lot about what makes VR special, and how to design around it. Considerations have to be made for an experience that involves the player’s own physicality in a digital space. In fact, our team worked and learned together to deliver a project we’d all love to play. I love taking on challenges in new mediums, so this won’t be the last VR game from me!