For my final project, I built a haunted woods. I wanted a place where people could get together to tell spooky stories, since I had a fond memory of bonfires in the woods at night as a child. Throughout this course I’ve been consistently interested in much more personalized, niche environments that facilitate one mood or atmosphere very well, as opposed to catch-all apps like zoom or gathertown or what have you — I’m of the opinion that specific is always going to evoke stronger reactions than general. So, let’s explore how it works
USER JOURNEY:
All participants spawn in at the empty bus stop at the beginning of the forest. It’s supposed to simulate this journey to an unknown place, a kind of mysterious place. I’ve always found bus stops to be interesting liminal places — they’re only there to move you to the next spot. So, I thought it was fitting to start with one!
After the bus stop, people venture into the haunted forest itself. There are about 1700 trees here in a roughly 500 cube area, and from experience it’s pretty easy to get lost. I liked that feeling though, so at the end of the day I opted not to make it easier to navigate.
In the center of the forest is a bonfire with a set of seats. Sometimes it takes people an awful long time to find their way here. This is the place where I imagined people sitting and telling spooky stories. There’s a positional audio based around the fire so it crackles pleasingly when you are near it.
That’s about all there is to this environment… except for the ghosts, of course.
THE GHOSTS?!!
Yes, I put ghosts in!! It’s a haunted forest, it wouldn’t be very haunted if there weren’t ghosts.
These aren’t very advanced ghosts, unfortunately, but they do the trick.
Since everyone is a cube in this cube world, I figured it would make sense for the ghosts to be the empty, black cubes you see when someone hasn’t loaded in properly. Maybe they’re the spirits of people who didn’t disconnect from the server properly!
The way the ghosts work is that there’s a random chance every frame that one will spawn near you. If you get too far away from the ghost, it relocates to a new random position near you. If you take courage and charge directly at the ghost, you can banish it for a time — it will disappear and have a random chance to come back later. I loved adding in the ghosts because it made the environment feel more “alive”, but I do think they need some work; I’m not sure if they’re creepy enough as is.
