Water Bears is a well-received mobile puzzle game Schell Games made to teach systems thinking. I’ve been fortunate enough to be working as Project Director on a Virtual Reality re-imagining of it on HTC & Valve’s Vive platform. For Jam Week this year, I wanted to explore interacting with the super-cute water bears without a puzzle to worry about, so I figured a beach party would be just the thing.

Tone & InteractionsI knew from previous testing that people want to play with the water bears. I mean, who wouldn’t?! Look at that cutie! But how and what would they want to do? From testing we knew that tickling and throwing were two often requested features, so those had to go in. I also had a dizzy animation to use and knew I wanted some flocking and other group behaviors. I also wanted the overall tone to be relaxing. No pressure, just hanging out on the beach with some cute friends, having a good time.

EnvironmentI grabbed one of the environments from our Vive version to start. Our artists Brad and Todd had done a great job making a scenic island with some palm trees and other points of interest around. Tim, one of our Audio Engineers, was working with me so I asked him to whip up a gentle, ocean wave lapping, loop of sound to set the mood. He also had an amazing, steel drum-infused re-work of the Water Bears theme that I included. The secret was to attach it to a “boom box” model I whipped up from cubes and cylinders so you could pick it up, making it louder; or toss it into the ocean, making it fade away into nothing.

I also needed a place to spawn the water bears. I wanted people to introduce themselves to them at their own pace. Just being in VR is overwhelming to new people, so being able to control when you start interacting with more elements is a nice feature. In this case I grabbed a “water bear house” Brad had made and moved it over to the island. That way, when you knock on it, I can spawn a water bear in its doorway and, voila, instant control over the rate and number of water bears you’d be dealing with. A polite “please knock” sign gave all the tutorial that was needed.

ControlsI wanted to keep interactions as simple as possible. I also wanted to leverage the existing systems our engineers John and Ken had set up. We had a fun water-themed controller that mimics the shape of the Vive controller, so I kept that. I did add some simple water particles to it so you were always sprinkling water from your “hands.” I decided, thematically, that that’s what was attracting the water bears, so at first I had the water bears always following your hands (same as a simple first pass John had made earlier). There were two problems with this method:

1. The water bears looked for your hand every frame, so they’d change course constantly, resulting in a robotic, unnatural feel to the flocking of multiple water bears (especially as you moved your hands around quickly). I solved this by making the water bears swim toward your hand, but only check to see where your hand was every 1 - 4 seconds. This gave a nice natural variation to their chasing of your hand and gave each water bear a little bit of personality. It did result in bigger direction shifts when you moved your hands a lot, but overall it was a good quick fix.
2. It’s disconcerting to have them always following you. I solved this by having a press of the thumb pad toggle the water flow out of the controller. If water is flowing, water bears seek that hand. If no water flowing, the water bears “mill about.” Milling about is accomplished by a water bear picking another random water bear, then picking a point near it and heading toward it. Turning on and off the water with the thumb pad makes the controls a little more complicated, but it isn’t required and people tend to find that feature on their own anyway.

ToysWhat’s a beach party without toys?

• Beachball: Actually the first toy I got working. I started with just a big ball that had a low mass and drag, and tried to get it to feel good to hit. I actually had to impart an extra force when you touch it with the remote because of some scale and physics issues unique to water bears, but I finally got it feeling good. Then, since I had the code doing stuff when you hit it anyway, I added a counter to the center of the ball, incrementing every time you hit it, going to zero if it hit the ground or water. See if you can beat your high score!
• Boom Box: Mentioned earlier. I mention it again just because throwing it is so much fun. Hearing the “doppler effect” on the music as you wave it around, and hearing it fall off as you toss it away is super satisfying.
• Food: I knew from previous goofing around that large water bears are fun. I made spheres “growing” from some flowers, that when “fed” (basically, hit them in the face with it) to water bears changes their size. Blue made them shrink, pink grow, and I added yellow food to change their color because it was easy to do (we have 6 different color water bears). While large water bears get the biggest reaction, I do enjoy shoving my head into a swarm of tiny ones.
• Water Bears: The water bears themselves can be grabbed (they wave happily), thrown (they tumble), tickled (they wiggle), and shaken (they get dizzy). By far, throwing is the most popular activity.
• Hoops: On the last morning of Jam Week I added green hoops. If you throw something through them (bear, boom box, food, ball) they burst into particles and make a fun sound. Simple and oh so satisfying, these hoops become goals people can use in their own games they invent. I put a large one nearby, easy to get things through and gives you the fun reaction quick. I put a 2nd at an angle higher up and further up; harder but still doable. I put a 3rd almost directly above you; hard to notice and hard to get through because of the angle, but a fun reward for those who look and practice.

ConclusionI had a lot of fun working on the water bear beach party. VR excels when people get immersed and when they get rewarded for interactions. I tried to accomplish both those things while incorporating the super cuteness of our water bear character. If you have an HTC Vive, you can download the game now from Steam. Enjoy!