Shorty Awards Winner!
The VR Vault is another eBay social project The Many brought me on to lead over the finish line. I had briefly worked on the initial version of the game in the Spring of 2023, ironing out some aesthetic and gameplay decisions early in the process. That first version of the game was well received, but had some issues both in the visuals and in the gameplay. Luckily eBay, being the amazing client that they are, saw the value in taking another at bat on the game and we got a second try with a new production partner to really make the Vault Trials the experience we knew it could be.
For the second round, we simplified the game and scoring, making sure it was understandable and fair, as well as easy to play for someone who maybe had never even tried VR before. The biggest overhaul, however, was in the visual wrapper of the gameplay. The clients really wanted to feel the scale of their Collectibles Vault, a real world location where collectors could stash their highest value cards etc safe from hand oils and light damage. However, the real vault is more like a storage facility in Maryland - not very exciting. So they gave us free reign to romanticize how technologically safe advanced their storage facility really was.
We decided the version of a facility that felt the most tech-safe and really took advantage of being experienced in VR was a storage facility on the edge of the atmosphere, accessibly by space elevators. The elevator gave us a simple way of escorting the player through levels that both became more visually impressive as you went through the game without making the player have to walk or move around in VR space. The facility at the edge of the atmosphere allowed us to have consistently expanding epic views as you go from level to level, culminating in a breathtaking view seeing the rounded horizon of the edge of the earth, making sure no one forgets their VR Vault experience.
Shoutout to Juan Delgado, John Duchy Duch, AJ Rivvers, Joe Robbins, and the talented people at both Buck and X-Studios