The Development of a Prototype Board Game in Virtual Reality - Incorporating the Game Mechanic Fog of War

Abstract

In today’s society, most people live far apart from some of their closest friends and relatives. It is therefore important for us to develop a product that can unite them together once again. In order to accomplish this, a prototype of a board game was designed and implemented for the Oculus Virtual Reality Headset. The prototype made includes the game mechanic Fog of War and is played from a first-person perspective of a piece to take the classic board game experience to the next level. The game design is done from scratch and features playing as a Commander trying to defeat the opponent’s Commander. To achieve this, the player lead their troops through the battlefield in a Turn-Based Strategy format. To interact with the troops and menus, the user is given a Laser Pointer as a tool. The project’s findings suggests that game features such as first-person view and Fog of War improved the gameplay experience. It was also established that the game prototype produced in the project can be improved even further through improvement of in-game mechanics and additional features such as Multiplayer game modes.