UIUX | INTERACTIVE DESIGNER | TECHNOLOGIST
PANDERA
Virtual Reality Interactive Storytelling
Executed with Oculus Rift S and Playable PC
Made with Unreal Engine 4, Photoshop & Illustrator
Featured at the ADM Graduation Show 2021 @ Gillman Barracks.
DEV NOTES
Final Year Project means that we had to come up with a project that showed we didn't waste our school fees at Uni.
I was also at a pretty stressful crossroad of my life as I got overwhelmed by studies, work and the pandemic all at once. Hence, I decided to go out with a bang by coming out with a crazy idea.
Crazy idea = Let's do everything I never did before! Let's do something I never learnt in the 4 years of university life.
I knew I wanted to do Virtual Reality. I knew Unreal Engine was pretty cool. It was the software that helped develop "The Last of Us" and "Blade & Soul" after all. But I needed a topic, and my professor was going to fail me if I didn't have a completely rationale topic to work with. Hence, I decided to follow my dreams based on an off-hand comment by my professor as she stared at me with a disgruntled gaze.
I loved watching horror! So monsters! Mutants! Dystopian world! Apocalypse! And I had nothing to lose- I already chained my professors up in a metal crate I spent 48 hours putting together while alternating between 1) lying on the dust-covered ground of the studio screaming and 2) munching on 7-11 snacks asking myself why I'm drilling metal all weekend, all for good grades.
Pandera; a Pandora Box of Pandemics was born- in courtesy of the unpredictable covid with more evolutions than Eevee.
Pandera is a Virtual Reality Interactive Storytelling Experience done through graphic novel-styled environmental storytelling. It tells the fictional story of the Chimeric Pandemic in Singapore in the year 20XX, where the infected turn into Mutants. In this simulation, you play as a child exploring and navigating the streets of a monochromatic Singaporean neighbourhood while on the way home from quarantine in the hospital. Struck by a long-running pandemic, the neighbourhood is no longer how you remember it to be.
Sounds: Me. Art: Me. Animation: Me.
Unreal Engine Programming: Me. Level Design: Me.
I miraculously scrapped this together within a span of 5 months, with 2 months dedicated to screaming at my lousy illustrator skills, and the last 3 months building the UE4 experience and debugging. Lots of debugging. The experience was crafted mainly with 2D Animated Sprites on UE4, with 2D art also laid on a 3D space to give an illusion of a 3D Children's Storybook. Bone-rigging was used for the animation with the help of 2D sprite sheets. I created my own fonts as well!
I must have gone crazy working on it because I became an Unreal Engine nerd by the end of it all and my professor was asking me for notes for his students.
My professors- Prof. Elke Reinhuber andd Prof. Gray Hodgkinson- both helped me super a lot and never gave up on me despite the frustration I put them through. It was also slightly entertaining to see all my professors almost-puke when they tried my installation during the showcase because they wore the headset for way too long.
I am NOT putting my concept arts here because they ugly, yo. Just imagine kindergarten scribbles with crayons and markers. I wasn't much of a sketcher.
If you would like a playable version of my game, you can hit me up on my email. :) Otherwise, feel free to view the many walkthroughs I have put on my youtube channel. Just hit up the Pandera playlist.