VR — strawberrycongee

About

An introspective VR walking simulator that explores the sensation of post-surgical memory loss through the lens of “machine forgetting.” Navigating a non-Euclidean labyrinth of impossible portals, the player moves through surreal, decaying environments textured by custom next-frame-prediction models (pix2pixHD) trained on my personal video archives.

Shortlisted for FIVARS 2024 (Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories), showcased in Canada in Nov 2024.

Training “Machine Forgetting”

Because the model only predicts the next frame based on patterns, my original memories are fundamentally destroyed in the dataset. The resulting images are uncanny and unstable; the machine's process of data degradation mirrors the human labor of forgetting, and the absent presence of the memory lingers as traces in what remains.

Level Design: constructing broken memory space via Non-Euclidean architecture

spaces you can't return to. Rooms loop back into themselves, and spaces you walk into can never be returned to. Because VR rendering makes these portal transitions visually seamless, the medium itself does the conceptual work: your body believes the impossible geometry before your mind catches up. The architecture physically simulates the grief of memory loss — the harder you try to retrace your steps, the further you get from where you started.

About

Toxic Parents Simulator is a time-based simulation that uses VR to offer players a strong immersive and interactive experience. By situating them in a ‘toxic household’ where the player needs to complete their morning tasks on time, while dealing with the toxic parents who get progressively more abusive as time passes. ‍The creation of Toxic Parents Simulator is driven by my own experience growing up in such a family, however, it turns serious topics and personal trauma into a gamified experience with a tone of dark humour inspired by the satirical backdrop in Job Simulator. This game calls for care and awareness for domestic violence, and potentially be used in an awareness raising education setting for toxic parents themselves.

Developed for meta quest platform using Unity (XR Interaction Toolkit), the game is designed with diegetic UIs and high affordance, VR specific interactions that replicates what one does in real life, such as eating food and opening drawers. Each task comes with its unique challenge and interactions, we aim to deliver an intuitive and engaging playing experience.  ‍

over 200 downloads

Design Roadmap

When first entering the game, the player will see a complete dark screen with the mother’s voice playing, asking the player to wake up and catch the school bus by 7AM. This sets the context of the game, that the player is a student with difficult parent(s), tasked to leave the house for school in one hour. Once the sound finished playing, a hint text is displayed, asking the player to press A to wake up, which transitions to Scene 2, the main game.  Once the player enter scene 2, they'll find themselves in bed, with a phone ringing and vibrating (animation) on the bedside table. Player should be able to intuitively grab the phone to stop the ring, and a world-space UI to do list with checkboxes will float above the phone while it's being grabbed, , it’s an analogue list which the player can scroll and mark the tasks as complete if they wish. The player will also be able to press A to spawn the phone to their hands. This design reinforces the game objective, helps the player keep track of what they're doing. Time also plays an important role in this game, in the scene there are 2 analogue clocks to remind the player of the time. Mom's anger level goes up every 20 minutes, this is indicated by the number of fire sprites floating above her head, her animation and voice-lines also changes according to her mood, this gives the player a sense of urgency. Win/lose is decided by whether the player complete the tasks on time. Either way there will be a pop up window with educational debriefing text, with the option for player to restart. And if the player attempts to leave the house before task completion, mom will stop them angrily.

UI & UX

diagetic UI and anti-cheat

Conflict scene & Face Cap Performaces

player gets scolded when they show the failed exam paper to their parents.