River Tale XR
Displayed at IAAPA expo 2024!
River Tale is an XR-driven party game featuring custom controllers, developed Unreal Engine. In this adventure, you are on the river Styx and try to escape. You and up to two friends must collaborate to tackle a variety of challenges without sinking.
Physical Interactions
The game plays on a massive 3.5m x 8m screen! To enhance immersion, we utilize Arduino-based controllers integrated into props. As you perform actions in real life they will happen in-game. These unique physical interactions make the experience more personal and engaging than traditional controllers.
Chaotic Coordination
As you go on your journey, your boat will move forward automatically, creating a dynamic and frenetic environment. This momentum leads to challenging moments where effective teamwork and coordination are essential to escape the underworld.
Highlight at open days!
On this project I got the responsibilities of a Gameplay System Designer, being responsible for enemy behavior and player comfortability. This included:
Prototyping different AI types
Designing and balancing AI
Setting up behavior trees, which included:
Creating Bahavior Tree Tasks
Creating Custom Decorators
Using a Modular Node Structure for Reusability
Designing gameplay systems to improve experience
Anchor Mechanic
Ship Guidance Mechanic
QA testing to ensure intuitive gameplay, making adjustments based on feedback.
Balancing the Player Character 3C’s
Worked closely with other designers to align AI behavior with gameplay requirements.
Working with level designers to create a modular moving hazard
Creating the animation blueprint and implementing the enemy animations, with layered blending.
University Project
About
~8 weeks
Overview in general & Gameplay floorplan
River Tale official Trailer
Reception
My Role
Showcase
Unique XR Setup
Roles
22 people
Personally, I was responsible for prototyping, designing, developing, and balancing enemies for River Tale, as well as creating gameplay systems to enhance the player experience. This included implementing mechanics like the anchor system, which slowed the player’s constantly moving ship, enabling better interactions with enemies and allowing the environment to catch up. Another key system was a guidance mechanic that kept players moving forward and within bounds, addressing backtracking behaviors observed during playtests.
We designed the game around three core pillars:
Havoc Storm, emphasizing chaotic, high-pressure gameplay requiring quick reactions;
Physical Interaction, encouraging immersive real-world coordination; and
Chaotic Coordination, fostering teamwork.
The XR format added a layer of physicality—players had to run to specific locations and interact with a custom controller. Balancing this movement was a challenge: too much could tire players, while too little risked disengagement.
A significant part of my role involved researching what makes a compelling enemy roster. I studied how enemies could challenge players physically, strategically, and collaboratively, ensuring they aligned with the game’s pillars. This research required analyzing similar mechanics in other games, evaluating player behavior in playtests, and understanding the interactions between enemy design and the unique XR setup. I also collaborated closely with 3Cs and level design teams to ensure designs felt intuitive and the desired experience was met.
The result was a set of enemies and systems that not only promoted chaos and collaboration but also balanced the physical demands of XR gameplay, keeping players fully immersed and engaged in the game world of River Tale.
As can be seen on the images the power of the XR stage hugely comes from the immersion it allows the people to experience. The huge screens of 3.5 m x 8m and 3m x 8m give a lot of ambient light and set the mood easily in the entire room.
To create the enemies there were a lot of factors that were important to take into consideration. Some of them were:
The players are moving forward at all times
The players need to physically interact to make things happen
There are two screens that are used,one in front of you and one above you.
Reaction time of people
Enemies need to be different yet easy to combine together.
On top of all of this we wanted our game to be like an amusement park ride, where everyone emerges victorious, meaning it should be hard to reach the fail state.
Slow players down and making them targets.
Challenges players with old and new mechanics.
These enemies were designed to function well together with eachother and the XR stage.
The highest priority here was to have a comfortable player experience while interacting with these monsters.
Next to that synergy was the most important so that the enemies compliment eachother and do not feel like loose additions.
To know more about the enemies read below here, otherwise click here (redirection to the next systems).
What
I designed a ranged enemy for the game, set on a constantly moving boat at a good speed. Since players only see one side of the boat, the enemy’s attack needed to be clear and visible, with a slight delay to keep it challenging but not overwhelming. Only the front half of the boat has collision for the projectile, making it easier to focus on dodging.
How
To make each shot fair yet engaging, the enemy predicts where the player will be, aiming slightly ahead instead of directly at them. I switched to a prediction formula in a function library, which keeps the performance efficient and allows the logic to be reused for other enemies as needed.
I also tried having the enemy move in flight, but it made hitting the target too difficult, so I kept it stationary and enlarged the cannonball’s collision box to make it more satisfying for players to engage with. The projectile speed is balanced so players have room to dodge but still feel the tension as it approaches.
Why
The enemy’s design adds a skill-based challenge, letting players focus on timing and anticipation rather than speed alone. It also helps set natural boundaries around the boat area, giving players a sense of controlled movement within the game’s environment.
What
I designed all enemies to compliment eachother’s functionality or to create a more engaging player experience. This was focused around the three design pillars.
How
By combining mechanics known to the player together with the functionality of the enemies I made everything synergize together. All enemies have a unique role that they fulfill. Indiviually they do their own thing to challenge the players, but together they come to their full potential to challenge the players.
Why
To facilitate the players with a challenge it was important to look at the gameflow and at the mechanics that were available. Since the gameplay only lasts 5 minutes the deisgn challenge was to make the enemies simple to distinguish, yet challenging to encounter.
XR Party Game
Create panic and damage players.
Please zoom out using CTRL + Scroll Wheel.
Navigate with RMB + Dragging.
Gameplay System designer
Hazard
To quickly sketch an image of what I was working with I want to elaborate on the playfield, followed by an analysis of the enemies.
Boss
Above here you can see what the XR Stage looks like when it is in use.
Damage Dealer
Set-up
Designing the enemies
To make sure the enemies syngerized well together they all have a slightly different role:
Damage Dealer
Deals damage to the player.
Blueprint Usage:
Modular Predictive Projectile
Synergized Enemy Systems
What
I designed a ship guidance system for our game to address issues identified during QA, where players frequently attempted to turn the ship around, disrupting the game flow.
To solve this, we created "Border Splines" and a "Guidance Splines."
The border splines ensure that if a player collides with them, they are redirected back to the guidance spline where they last left off.
The guidance spline allows the ship to sail along a designated path while still providing players a sense of freedom and control.
How
The system enables players to slightly deviate from the guidance spline, maintaining the feeling of freedom. However, if players try to turn the ship around, they smoothly snap back to the spline within 3 seconds, preventing them from sailing away or stopping the game by simply reversing direction. This approach encourages continuous movement and engagement.
Why
The ship guidance system is crucial for maintaining the game's momentum, ensuring players remain focused on progressing rather than getting sidetracked by attempting to turn around. It reinforces the overall game design by establishing clear boundaries and guiding players through the environment.
Retrospective
I’m pleased with how the guidance system turned out. Implementing it required careful consideration, but it has proven to be an effective solution. Although the initial feedback from QA was positive, I believe further testing could still enhance its functionality. This system has helped create a smoother gameplay experience and encourages players to explore rather than retreat.
What
Concepted and developed the anchor function. This function would make sure the players get slowed down from their original game flow, making them vulnerable to surrounding threats and breaking the current pacing.
How
By completely stopping the ship, which is continuously moving, and requiring a player to run to the anchor to raise it. You create vulnerablity in the players setup. This required players to physically move around, exposing them to attacks or making them lose track of their course.
Why
During early playtests it came to my attention that it was hard to keep the players engaged with the game. They would remain stationed at the cannons and the gameplay would be mounting a cannon and steering. It would lose it’s special touch and players would feel bored. By adding this extra mechanic that required players to move around more, we created a more physically intensive challenge that challenged players to plan ahead of time.
Ship Guidance System
Communication with other departments
Anchor System
As a designer I like to provide my team with the necessary tools to fully grasp the concept and help them to develop it accordingly.
Design Document
I like to write down how things should work and why they should work in a certain way in my design document. Here I make references, show my research, and provde all the tools that are needed to develop the feature.
Flowcharts
To ensure this would be implemented in the way which was designed I created a flowchart and a technical flowchart.
The Technical flowchart can be seen on the right and was passed on to the programmers to assist me with this system.
The generic flowchart was there to explain the system to team members in general.
In these flowcharts I provide a legend and use color coding. The legend is in the top for readability, whereas the color coding is on top of the numbers. These colors are used to refer to the design document and sketches to elaborate upon features and functionality.
Sketches
Along with my flowcharts and design document, I provide sketches. For this sketch I made digital sketches to show the vision and explain features more in-depth.
You can see an example of sketches in the section above.