Ramble: Venice
What is Ramble?
There is a magic in visiting new places. Walking unknown ground, and learning stories of far off lands, allows us to see the world through fresh eyes. Our goal with Ramble is let people feel the delight and discovery of travel in VR through bite-sized adventures.
Our Mobile VR Jam project focuses on Venice, the ‘City of Masks’.
What are the controls and gameplay mechanics?
The goal of each ramble topic is to mine the interesting stats, stories, and creative so a user only sees the best pieces, quickly. There is no scoring system or win state.
Users can control what content they consume via look-based interactions. By looking at an object for 2- seconds it will come to life or bring other elements to life. If they don’t like any content they can simply avoid a prolonged gaze. Movies, stats, audio, 3d content – many types of content appear at a user’s whim.
Users are able to move vertically and horizontally around an object via the Gear VR touch pad. This “orbiting” is comfortable and fun, while providing a simple way to navigate.
To move to a new topic/place/person in Venice users can simply look at the Ramble logo. When looked at for 3 seconds they move forward.
In the full app we would like to randomly select the next topic, but for the purposes of the Mobile VR Jam we have scripted the path to provide a nice contrasted mix.