Moss: Book 2

Project Overview

A VR action-adventure puzzle game where you play as two characters at once: yourself (the Reader) and Quill.

Won "Best VR/AR Game" at the Game Awards 2022

Work Examples

Weapon Abilities

Example of some of the traces used to decide where the player should land with the sword dash

Prototype for the chakram ability that was based on one of the shield variants in Hades. The chakram was thrown out and would stay spinning in one location until it was recalled

Another prototype chakram ability which led to the final version. In this version the chakram would stick in any wall that it hit even when recalled. The player would have to hold down the recall input to get the chakram to phase through walls. We decided that this version was a bit too complicated for our target audience and reduced the ability to stick to a wall after the initial throw and always return all the way to the character when recalled.

Other Systems

I also worked on a few other systems including target snapping in combat, a system for preventing the large hammer weapon from clipping into walls during attack animations, and a ragdoll system for when Quill died mid-air.

A demonstration of the system I built preventing the hammer from clipping through walls

In the first Moss, all death would play a canned animation. In Moss 2 we found that Quill's normal, spinning death felt weird in cases where she died in mid-air. So I set up a system that would ragdoll her if she died mid-air.

I discovered that pushing the character away from walls would in some cases push them off of a ledge. This was undesired behavior, so I adjusted it so that it would prioritize keeping the character from falling over preventing clipping

I worked on the abilities for all 3 of the weapons in Moss 2; the sword, the chakrams, and the hammer. I don't have captures of all of the variations I did, but the captures I do have are displayed below. I worked closely with design and my lead engineer to craft abilities that felt good in VR and were easy to use for players of all skill levels.

Much of the work done was to try to predict what players were trying to do. The initial prototype of the sword dash that I was given to iterate one was difficult to aim with the VR perspective and would often shoot Quill to her death. I wrote a lot of logic for the sword dash trying to find valid landing spots and picking which one made the most sense based on what the player was doing. I also wrote logic for trying to optimize the trajectory to hit as many enemies as possible when using it in combat.

The chakram ability had similar problems to solve. Though I created prototypes for several chakram abilites, some of which are featured below, the final version that had the chakram stick to a wall so that it could be pulled back through a switch or through enemies needed similar aim assist to throw the chakram at areas that would set the player up to be able to solve the puzzle without worrying about having perfect aim.

See it on Steam