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STORY HEIST

Project Overview

DESCRIPTION

Story Heist is a first-person VR prototype inspired by well-known story tales in which players have been tasked with causing chaos in various stories from Jack and the Beanstalk to Hansel and Gretel under the influence of “The Narrator".”  Move through three fairytale worlds, explore stories we all grew up hearing, interact (or shoot up) familiar faces as you rewrite the tales to get back to your homeworld.

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I was the lead game designer on this project, responsible for the game concept overarching narrative and level beats. 

ROLE

CONTRIBUTIONS

Game Designer

DURATION

3 Weeks

TEAM SIZE

4

  • Conceptualized theming and initial gameplay premise

  • Developed Narrative Design and overview of Level/Story Beats

  • Worked on Level Design of Snow White Story

  • Systems Design and prototyping of dialogue system

TOOLS USED

Unity, C#

Level Design

Level Design

SNOW WHITE AND THE CRUNKED UP DWARVES

Story Heist - Snow White and the Crunked Up Dwarves Map Wide Shot

Story Heist - Snow White and the Crunked Up Dwarves Level Overview

I had been responsible for blocking out and designing the level for the Snow White Fairytale level, where the player has to retrieve the poison apple from the dwarves' cottage. 

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Using Unity to blockout a woods environment, I created a tight level with four main areas for the player to go through.  For this level, I played a lot with spatial sound and using environmental blockers to hide different parts of the map to the player to get cool reveals for the wacky twists on the classic tale as well as utilizing sight lines in order to make the critical path to the cottage clear.  I had also utilized the dialogue system I prototyped in order to create a lot of opportunities for the player to interact with the fairytale characters and provide different instances of conversation/NPC interactions to further heighten the immersion.

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Responsibilities

  • Level Design and Blockout of Snow White Level

  • Integration of Dialogue and Spatial Audio

Narrative Design

Narrative Design

I had been the main designer of the overall game premise and stories that we would tell for Story Heist, I had worked on the flow of the puzzles for each story the player would visit and the items which they would need, and worked in a team effort to further develop the flow maps and narrative pacing of the levels, which included different optional dialogue and interaction opportunities for players and seeing the potential endings that a player could trigger based upon their in-game choices.  The flow of each level would show player mastery of puzzles as they became increasingly more difficult as they jumped from one story to the next.

Main Campfire Hub where players can step into different fairy tales

Systems Design

Systems Design

Dialogue System