A VR obstacle course about the struggles of game development; dealing with burnout, motivation, and a search for meaning - skinned as a salmon swimming upstream.
Traverse increasingly hostile and alien environments as the world beats down on you, pushing onward, through the current, to whatever your goal may be.
Roles - Project Manager, Lead Programmer, Audio/SFX Creator
Screenshots
Breakdown
This project was made in GSAS Capstone -
from September 2022 to December 2022.
It was only a two-person project,
due to the nature of the class.
But hey, we exhibited it at Game Developer's Conference '23!
Sisyphish was our first attempt at VR design - and all things considered, I'm happy with it.
The narrative is the strongest aspect, tackling deep and complex concepts by integrating them into gameplay - and the VR headset helps achieve this effect. A player feels the fatigue, challenges, and frustration of "I know I'm better than this" that plague creatives; just in the form of a salmon.
While the current demo only has one area, there are plans to expand into 9 different areas, exploring both distinct and alien visual environments - but also expanding on the narrative.
Being a two-person project, and with my partner focusing on art, a lot of my time was focused on programming. Being the main programmer didn't take anything away from my management duties, though! I still worked to carefully measure scope, which was a bit easier, considering I was writing the code myself. VR development's pretty difficult - handling motion sickness and hardware optimization for such a motion-heavy game proved quite a challenge, but we swam through it.
I really believe in the potential of this project, but wow, I'm not cut out for solo-programming large games.
Would love to come back to it though!