Hansel and Gretel – Virtual Reality

• Code

What

Like how the children in “Hansel and Gretel” follow a trail of candy to the witch’s house, the player in our environment follows a trail of Cheerios to the witch’s shrine. The player can pick up and throw the Cheerios as they follow the path. Once at the witch’s house, the player finds a cauldron. Coming out of the cauldron is an arm holding a box of Cheerios.

Why

We wanted to guide players toward discovering a story in our VR world without explicit clues. Thus, we find inspirations in the popular fairytale - “Hansel and Gretel”, where the "bread crumbs" would serve as a non-intrusive guide. It’s meant to be an alternate version where the witch is smarter, the children are more obsessed with dubiously healthy cereal, and the setup is much darker.

How

The environment is developed in Unreal Engine 4 and desgined by a team of 4. The enviroment objects are modeled and UV mapped by the designers, from our own photogrammetry, or taken from Sketchfab. All object interaction physics and movement are scripted in blueprint. This scene includes light and audio, both directional and nondirectional, triggered by player interaction with the world. Two modes of transportation are enabled: joystick movement and teleportation (ray tracing).