The AVROPOLIS files: Origins

As promised, here's another post regarding the development of AVROPOLIS. This time I'll talk a bit about how the project originated, back in 2021. It all started after Future Immersive, the studio I was working at before starting this project, closed its doors in July 2021, after we finished releasing Furious Seas.

After developing for a while in VR, I decided to buy my own VR headset (Rift S - which abandoned me not too long after). I was already working remotely during the last months of development, so it just made sense.

When Alyx was announced, I remember feeling something magical, a new Half Life game? In VR? That's crazy! And indeed that experience felt like nothing I've ever played before, but it did feel like Half Life.

This was the spark I was waiting for, I wanted to make my own VR game, inspired by industry giants that I highly respect.

So, in August 2021, I started writing and sketching in a little notebook I had received as a welcome package gift in College in 2016, and let me tell you, I had a general idea of what I wanted to achieve but not even close to what it ended up becoming. Steam post image

Originally, the game was supposed to be about an angry man that demolishes old buildings and houses to calm his nerves, and the prototype I had quickly made was fun, but lacked depth, and I knew I also wanted to have a deep story, which was hard to achieve with this type of game.

Because of this, I slowly started to change the setting, adding more interactivity, and moving towards a more adventure based game, with some action. Mainly still with just a sledgehammer to break through obstacles, and some light environmental puzzles.

So it ended up being closer to a small adventure surrounded by a forest, where you had to find a way to enter a hidden temple.Steam post image After reaching the temple, the player would have to figure out how to get past the wall gate, and survive the traps protecting the temple.

This last part actually ended up being the start of Chapter 3 in the game, the forest area before the temple got scrapped and was replaced with a jungle island environment which became Chapter 2.

At this point, while moving from Canada back home to Sicily, I spent more time thinking about the game I wanted to make.

I've always liked action-adventure games with good narrative, and maybe a couple of puzzles along the way, so why not in VR? I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel but deliver a solid experience players will hopefully remember one day, and adding some character to it.

I've spent months after that working in parallel between the design, technical side and the game's narrative, as well as making some prototypes of the environments I had envisioned.

This is how I came up with the protagonists, and from there the Narrative started growing and taking shape.

If you have any questions, or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment!

Until next time!

• Marco