August 18, 2018
After our successful Mechatron VR outing at the 2017 Rio Tinto Innovation Festival at Scitech, we were invited to return in 2018.
Although the Mechatron was well received in 2017, we did run into the issue that we could only put up to 6 kids on per ride – meaning a lot of people missed out. So for the 2018 festival, I decided to develop a fun, little networked, mobile VR game called Star-Bot.
The premise of the game was that you are 1 of up to 18 science cadets remotely teleoperating probe droids on a distant, alien planet. You see through the bot’s eye and can direct the probe to move in any direction by looking in that direction and pressing a button on the side of the VR headset.
Starting on a spaceship in orbit, players must navigate themselves down to the teleporters. Upon entering the teleporter, the player can choose 1 of 9 worlds to explore. Once planetside, the player collects hidden crystal samples.