Camp'n Chew
In Camp and chew the player is offered a buffet of different foods and can witness the impact choosing them has on the environment.
Role: Lead Designer
Target Audience: Classrooms
Key Insights: The players can look away in VR at any time, which could make them miss crucial information. Level design can mitigate this as well as presenting the information through intercatables, or audio.
Camp 'N Chew had two main iterations. The first was made in a week, to compete in The B.E.A.N.S. (Because the earth actually needs saving) Jam. The second was made after the Jam to polish it so it could be used shown to brought to schools.
The main message of the game was to communicate how much more resources are needed to cultivate meat compared to fruit and vegetables. The Jam encouraged making a VR game and the team decided to take the opportunity. VR games lend themself to exploration through interacting with objects. This innate benefit of VR led to the idea of allowing the player to eat any food they would like and see the consequences happen for themselves. To facilitate the the player seeing these consequences, the game is set in a forest where every food the player eats affects the environment.
My responsibilities included:
Determining the cost every food item needs to be produced, while balancing the player's experience with the real worlds costs.
Ensuring the Player picked up on the difference in cost between foods and the overall message of the game using emergent rhetoric rather than explicitly stating the message.
Ensuring the player their vision would focus on the changes in their environment through adding sounds, interaction feedback and level design.
