A look into Wayward Sky on Project Morpheus

Hi all, this is Eka, Game Director of Wayward Sky at Uber Entertainment. We’re super excited to introduce our new look and click VR adventure game in development for Project Morpheus on PS4. We set out to make a unique adventure game that shows off the magic of VR while simultaneously making it accessible and comfortable for first time Morpheus players.

In Wayward Sky, you are Bess, a young co-pilot flying with your father when you crash into a mysterious fortress that emerges out of the clouds. With your father kidnapped and plane in ruins, you set out to explore the flying fortress and rescue your father. To guide Bess around the fortress, you point with your head to anywhere and press an action button on the PS4 controller to have her walk there. We’ve designed wide open environments and we play with layered verticality to really show off the power of what it feels like to inhabit a space in VR.

The game switches between a third-person for movement with cameras hovering over a space and at times switch to a first-person view as Bess interacts with puzzles in the world. There’s also a scale change switch between the two perspectives that’s only possible to do in VR. In third-person, we scale the player camera so it feels like you are a giant looking down on a miniature world. When switching to 1st person, we scale the camera to a standard human scale and you feel like you are standing in the space.

 
In VR, the camera is essentially your head so moving it around without the player’s consent like most traditional games can be uncomfortable to players when there’s a disconnect between what your eyes see and what your body is experiencing. So character movement and exploration of a big environment can be tricky. To solve this, we do camera “blinks” between areas as the player guides Bess through it. During these blinks, we switch camera angles to allow you to explore the world thoroughly.

Whether it’s avoiding Repairbots or flying with chickens, we feel Wayward Sky offers a unique perspective into the world of Project Morpheus and VR. If you have any questions for me about the project or working with Morpheus, ask away!