Breakout VR was a passion project over summer 2024 where I made an escape room within VR. This project was my first passion project and was very fun. I learnt a lot about Unreal Engine and learnt how to think in a more designer way. This means thinking about the game from a different perspective and that it will be played by a VR pawn and how interactions should differ for that.

The level consists of a cave with plants sprouting through gaps in the rocks. There is a magic wand (which is made in Blender) unlocked by completing puzzles that has spells which hep solve more puzzles throughout the level in order to escape. I also made a timer which displays at the end when you escape.

I also learnt how making puzzles can be really difficult and thinking ahead to make a good escape room that calls on prior knowledge learned and makes you explore. I also wanted there to be more interactions than just press button or pick up rocks so I tried to make more puzzles with the gem puzzle which unlocks more for the player. 

This is currently a work in progress and I plan to add more levels and refine the current one to enhance the experience more.

This was another project of 2024 which entailed me using Blender for the first time properly. After making the wand I realised I didn't really know what I was doing, so I took some time to learn blender. I followed a donut tutorial and then added a few tweaks like the lighting. I learnt about face points, altering, moving and scaling in all sorts of different ways to make the donuts look as realistic as possible.

I learnt about the importance of realism and how it can help with games and the art style you are after and how to achieve it. Such as donuts are not perfectly round, they have bumps. The lighter ring around the middle where it isn't cooked as much as it doesn't touch the oil. These are important factors to help convey what the objects actually is. 

I also learnt about camera splines and making an animation to showcase the donuts and how to keyframe within Blender. I then applied a screen blur to the background so the focus was on the main part of the project.

GitHub link:

Blender Donuts