Ode aan Ede features a virtual reality nonlinear exploratory experience where a player can step into the world of Ede Staal and explore his memories, surrounding world, and life achievements through windows found within his house. Ede’s house acts as a central hub point in the experience that users are always able to return to, and contains all of the paintings and portraits that lead to other levels in the experience.

Each of the four levels in the experience has a deep connection to the topics of life, language, and landscape and how they relate to Ede Staal. The four levels in the experience are “Ede Staal’s House” representing life, “Het Hogeland” representing landscape, “Mien Toentje” representing language and life, and “Nij Stoatenziel” representing landscape and life. The experience is played through a virtual reality headset while seated, while simultaneously projected onto a large screen in the exhibit room so that others may view what the user wearing the VR headset is seeing and doing.

Much of the gameplay involves exploration of the levels, identifying key objects based on musical lyrics and context, and light puzzle solving. There was a great deal of focus taken towards making the experience as enjoyable as possible for the older than average target demogrphics at the museum compared to typical VR gamers. This was a fun and unique challenge to overcome through systems of thorough tutorialization, UX/ UI design, and objectie hints. For many patrons of the museums, this has been the first video game they have ever played.

I have led the development team of this project as the lead designer and developer over the past year, where I had the opportunity to work alongside my colleagues at Indietopia as well as a wonderful team of interns. This experience has allowed me to grow as both a game designer and as a leader, and has allowed me to gain valuable experience launching a commercial title to our client at the Borg Verhildersum Museum.

Now that the project has launched, I am working alongside my team to develop additional levels and experiences for the game which will be added in the future.