Stunt Corgi VR
Studio Roqovan, 2017 - 2018, Unreal Editor 4. Steam game homepage
Stunt Corgi VR is a physics sandbox game where you build a wacky stunt course for your pet corgi to run through. The game featured a wide variety of props — fans, trampolines, cannons, portals, skateboards, and such — that you can arrange in your “backyard,” dress up your star corgi, set the course and actions to perform, and then see how it all plays out. Its vibrant, cartoony style perfectly supports the game’s emergent and exaggerated physics simulation.
After the halting development on World War Toons, the studio held a 2 week game jam. I got a cute corgi model from a tech artist, and with some designer art and scripting made a prototype, which then got selected as the studio’s next project. It was a small scale production of twenty-something developers taking less than a year.
As project lead I led the creative vision, planned out features, and managed scope with the heads of the studio. It was a great opportunity to build and demonstrate my leadership in keeping the team aligned on a creative vision, and on track from start to ship. I was also the acting lead designer while working as an individual contributor, standing up the core systems and implementing game mode, corgi logic, player-corgi interactions, and many of the props. Most of the work was done in C++.
I wanted this to be a toy, where the main loop is for players to try out something, get an idea, build it, and then see it succeed or fail in ways that gave them new ideas to try. To do that, we made sure a lot of the props had interactions that were not lock-and-key.
The explosive combination of variables between a prop’s function, affected by other props, and also the corgi’s movement skill was the heart of it. Even as we implemented new props, we weren’t sure of all the possible ways it would work. And sometimes that unexpected result gave us inspiration for more props.
Full video here
With all this happening in a restricted playspace, many props (even the corgi) often ended up being flung out of bounds. I made it so these props get de-spawned with an audio feedback of them comically crashing into your neighbor’s yard, cat, sometimes themselves. The corgi always comes running back through the doggy door.
The best part of working on a physics driven game is that even the most frustrating bugs can be absolutely hilarious.
Here’s one I found while working on the prototype:
The other very important pillar of this game was that yes, you can pet the dog. You can also ask for its paw, give it belly rubs, pat its cute, loafy butt. I scripted these interactions by calculating the angle and proximity of your hand in relation to specific bones in the corgi’s skeleton.
I also scripted actions the corgi randomly performs when left alone including splooting, sniffing in circles, and sometimes barking back in response to the neighbor’s dog.
Early alpha footage of various ways you can pet the dog