INFINITE INSIDE

Early Development

Infinite inside was initially conceived to be a short hand-tracking experience for the upcoming apple headset (the Apple Vision Pro, before it was delayed) that would incorporate both AR sections within one's real world room and VR exploration through strange abstract environments.

My initial gameplay investigations focused on the use of portals and stencils to create impossible geometry. Puzzle solving would revolve around manipulation of the environment with portals of differing positioning, rotation and scales throughout the environment (such as increasing the size of a key by pulling it out of the world from one portal and placing it back into the world through another portal with a differing scale view of the environment)

However, it soon became clear that with our limited resources, the technical limitations would prove too difficult to ensure bug free gameplay experience on the Quest 2 headset within the production timeframe, so we instead settled on a jigsaw puzzling mechanic with the following simple game loop.

However, we were able to retain elements of impossible geometry: the AR plinth sections feature many fantastical elements - drawers longer than the width of the tower, separate compartments that overlap each other etc. - and the players scale and rotation changes as they delve further into descending layers of the environment.

Additionally, certain dioramas throughout the game allow the player to change the environment once they teleport into the appropriate layer.

Network: Text

In the AR sections of the game traversal around the plinth was intended to be roomscale. However since we know that not everyone has easy access to a 2x2m playspace we knew we would also have to accommodate seated play, and so when playing in this mode it is possible to grab the edges of the plinths to rotate them, or move them up or down.

Traversal

Network: Text

Within the VR section of the game, we needed a way to traverse the space in a way that:

could be performed with and without the use of controllers
could be visually tutorialised without UI or textual explanation
remain accessible to players prone to motion sickness
would not cause a roomscale player's virtual playspace to become out of sync with their real world playspace
could be integrated into traversal puzzles to clearly indicate to the player where they can and can't move to from any given position

My solution was to have centrally placed teleporting orbs that the player must aim at with their hands, closing their fist to initiate the teleport.

Seated players will be teleported to a specific location, while roomscale players will teleport to the same position relative to the stone they are travelling to, as they are from their current stone - i.e. in the below image players standing in a blue square will appear in the blue square of the orb they are travelling to (and not just directly in front of it, as this WOULD cause their virtual playspace to become out of sync with their real world environment).

Below you can see the editor only markup we attached to teleport stones, to more easily visualise the player's non rotatable real-world playspace. Interactables were to be kept within the 1.5m² black square where possible to prevent players from bumping their hands into the edge of their playspace/guardian.

Teleport orbs are presented to the player in different stages:

Active

orbs floating in the air can be used to teleport. When being actively aimed at by the player they will open, releasing a trail of particles and emitting a sound until the player either teleports or ceases aiming.

Dormant

orbs hovering just above the ground are not currently able to teleport the player, but will be once the player gets closer to them, at which point they will rise up and become active (This allows the player the opportunity to assess potential routes at greater distances)

Inactive

orbs lying broken on the ground remain inaccessible to players until they have modified the environment to allow passage

Transitioning between AR roomspace and the VR environment, as well as transitioning between multiple layers of the virtual environment at differing scales/rotations, also needed to be an intuitive but deliberate action the player could perform without the need for controller buttons.

Using a lock and key system with figurines allows us to have the player teach themselves by a finding a figurine whose base slots onto a pedestal within a diorama representing the location they will find themselves warping into. To warp back up a layer, the player will come across figurines pre-placed on pedestals that will initiate the transition when grabbed.

ROOMSCALE TRAVERSAL ISSUES

Such a system, however, can of course lead to accidentally teleporting into level geometry in instances where a sector of the playspace is clear from geometry at the current location, but is not clear in the next orb's area.

To avoid this I had been intending to fix this by displaying the player's future position with a ghostly figure as in the video below.

However, through player testing, we found that many people didn't fully grasp what they were seeing, and since the game director did not like constantly seeing the representation, we abandoned the feature.
To ensure that the most important occurrence of this issue - where players returning to their AR room space might find themselves standing inside the interactive plinth - was negated as much as possible, we place all returning portal figurines on a central pedestal themselves, to disincentivise players from grabbing it while standing in the centre of their playspace.

Puzzling

For our puzzle mechanic it was important that we provide a simple and yet satisfying 3D jigsaw system for the player to interact with.

Since the game director was keen to keep completed jigsaws resembling regular geometric shapes for artistic reasons, it was important we develop them under certain conditions to ensure that, as the number of constituent pieces increased, the puzzles remained manageable and not overly frustrating:

puzzles pieces should snap together when released in the correct position & rotation within a certain tolerance, complete with satisfying feedback.
to avoid rapidly escalating the complexity of our system, puzzle pieces cannot be taken apart once snapped together, and so puzzles should be created in such a way that the player never feels like they have assembled it out of order and need to disassemble exterior parts in order to fit interior ones together
Since the edges of puzzle pieces being regular and flat is antithetical to way people solve jigsaws, they must be shaped in such a way that they always form interlocking segments.

Avoid lines of symmetry on individual puzzle pieces to ensure that each piece has only one possible correct rotation. (This enables us to vastly simplify the code if each piece has only one correct position and rotation, rather than one correct position but several acceptable rotations, without visual snapping a piece round if the player does it "wrong")

Faces of a puzzle piece that end up on the exterior of a completed shape should have differing textures to internal faces, to aid the player in finding adjoining pieces in their collection.
In order to maintain comfortable and precise handling of fitting multiple pieces together in VR/AR, pieces would need to be much larger than a real world tactile equivalent. Thus, we deliberately scaled them up, and then when the puzzle is completed, shrink the entire completed shape down. This would serve to a) serve as satisfying feedback for completing the task and b) ensure we could have puzzles made out of many pieces without sacrificing more precious space on the interactive plinths just for slotting in the completed puzzle.

Lastly to ensure the player always knows how many pieces in total are required to complete each puzzle, even while exploring in VR, constellation like patterns on the AR plinth slot and on the back of the player's hands light up as pieces are collected. Pieces can be transported back to the plinth for assembly by depositing them into a watchstrap, to prevent the cumbersome need for an inventory.

Network: Text

Level Design

As well as designing and implementing all the AR plinths across the game, with all their overlaying interactive spaces, I was also responsible for the level design of the majority of the game's levels. I worked alongside art from whiteboxing through to final implementation, to ensure a gradual tutorialisation of the games mechanics and a steady build up of complexity.

As part of this exploration I developed a system of intractable miniature dioramas that could be used, both within and without the plinth, to change the layout of the section of the world and afford the player some light environmental puzzling. Players would move small representative pieces of geometry in order to change the layout of the environment elsewhere at scale.

These puzzles were intended to grow in challenge to provide interest to the player, but were never intended to be too difficult. The aim was for the zen like satisfaction of going through the motions, allowing to treasure hunt all the pieces through intriguing looking environments, like walking through an interactive M.C.Escher print, rather than particularly difficult brain-teasers for puzzle game enthusiasts.

1/12

INFINITE INSIDE

Early Development

Traversal

Within the VR section of the game, we needed a way to traverse the space in a way that:

My solution was to have centrally placed teleporting orbs that the player must aim at with their hands, closing their fist to initiate the teleport.

Teleport orbs are presented to the player in different stages:

Transitioning between AR roomspace and the VR environment, as well as transitioning between multiple layers of the virtual environment at differing scales/rotations, also needed to be an intuitive but deliberate action the player could perform without the need for controller buttons.

​

Puzzling

Level Design