Inside a Looking Glass - A Cooperative VR Experience

What is 'Inside a Looking Glass'?

Two Player Only Cooperative Virtual Reality Experience

This project is called ‘Inside A Looking Glass’ which is a cooperative virtual reality experience that needs to be played with two users who need to work together to complete tasks and progress to the end of the story. This experience is a science fiction exploration game where two players portray parallel universe androids who are sent with the same goal of finding the cause of a multiverse tear in a hotel in both of their worlds. The main aim for this experience is for the users to explore, discover and work together to progress through the mirrored environments while also finding out some more back story, hints and information about the different worlds they are in which will hopefully encourage replayability depending on which path the user went into first. The main mechanic of the experience is completing tasks or objectives in tandem with the other player while seeing one another in both horizontal and vertical reflections to create a visually unique world to explore together.

What you do can effect the others world...

Click on these links to view PDFs of the story script and Game Design Document:
Story Script (Click Here)
Game Design Document (Click Here)

Inspiration and Concepts

The original inspiration for this project came from two places and the first one was multiverse and parallel world media such as Spiderverse, Tatami Galaxy, Everything Everywhere all at Once etc. However another source of inspiration was cooperative narrative driven games such as Portal 2, A Way Out, It Takes Two and the We Were Here franchise etc. So the idea of having two people portray alternative versions of one another in virtual reality to work together and progress through a story was very exciting for me! This led to some sketches and ideas of how the environment could show players separated by realities but seeing one another through reflections in windows, puddles and metal surfaces.

Level Design and Map Layout

One of the most challenging aspects was designing a mirrored map and world because each player is in the same level and are directly seeing one another through transparent surfaces so to achieve this the same map was duplicated side by side allowing the users to see one another depending on the position of the mirror. To further emphasize the mirroring concept, the second player is actually teleported around Player 1's environment to allow different mirroring positions rather than just being continuously side by side to one another which includes the alleyway being upside down to player ones using reverse gravity to make it seamless for both players of the experience. All elements were planned out and highlighted using icons to identify different interactivity, events and direction.

Experience Sound and Style

Free-to-use stock sounds and music were used to create a mysterious and other-worldly effect when exploring the environments paired with the obscure coloured visuals and 'vortex' effect in the windows. The audio that the players hear are performed by two different voice actors so that the 'agent' in universe 1 is a male voice and then the voice in universe 2 is a female voice to emphasise the idea that they are in parallel worlds. One voice actor recorded their lines while the other timed and copied them exactly to keep the timings of the game similar for both players.

Playable Characters

In the experience both users play as android characters because only machines can pass through the vortex into multiverse zones. To create the online multiplayer, Photon Pun 2 was used to create the network connection between two XR ready machines. The characters are simple in design but still show some character by having blinking eyes as well as head and hand tracking to still show both players body expressions and movements.

Seeing the Multiverse Through the Looking Glass

Throughout the environments, players are only able to see themselves through reflections of mirrors, metallic surfaces and water such as puddles in the rain. This was achieved through the duplicate level design as well as some camera's displaying one another on certain surfaces throughout the level.

These are some captures in Unity Engine, showing some different angles to the experiences demonstrating the environment and level design which was mostly created by myself with some free assets online used for decoration and texturing around the experience.

Experience Interactivity

Through the game there are multiple instances of player interaction where you need to work together in order to progress further. These interactions were kept relatively simple so that it would not take too long for the users to progress in order to keep the gameplay short and considerate of those using the headset for extended periods of time.

The Process

Audio commentary of myself explaining the full game build in Unity and how it was developed as part of my final major project during my masters degree in virtual reality at University of the Arts London.

It Takes Two To Play Virtual Reality!

This experience needs to be played in Co-Op in order to play and progress through the world and story and so the whole game was designed to be played using two seperate VR ready machines or headsets that can be connected over a wifi connection from anywhere in the world. The first time the final project was demonstrated was at the end of year post graduate degree show at London College of Communication in December 2022.