Development Info
Features
Genre: Adventure
Players: 1
Engine: RAD Engine (proprietary, Maya based)
Platform: PC (Oculus Rift)
Time on Team: February 2017 – March 2018
- Zero-gravity navigation, letting players move by physically grabbing and pushing off of the environment
- A compelling and personal sci-fi narrative with branching dialogue options
- High fidelity environments that create an immersive VR experience
- Puzzles and obstacles that take advantage of VR and navigation in zero-gravity
- A 5-8 hour experience complete with optional missions and audio logs, delivering one of VR’s first AAA experiences
Game Overview
In Lone Echo’s single player story, you’ll be transported to an advanced mining facility within the rings of Saturn, complete with a detailed space station, expansive outer-space environments, and interactive space equipment. Taking on the role of Jack—an advanced artificial intelligence with a state-of-the-art synthetic body—you’ll help Captain Olivia Rhodes solve an increasingly threatening mystery as you use futuristic tools, clever problem solving, and interactive dialogue to engage with the world around you. Taking advantage of the Oculus Touch controllers and full 360° gameplay, Lone Echo lets you take a hands-on approach to exploring space unlike anything you’ve ever played before.
One of the most acclaimed and successful VR titles of all time, Lone Echo has an 89 on Metacritic, and remains the top selling title on the Oculus store 5 months after its release. It has received acclaim from VentureBeat, Destructoid, IGN and even been called the Oculus Rift’s “Super Mario 64 moment” by Tech Radar. Polygon listed it as the 18th best game of 2017 overall and Yahoo! Finance included it in their list of the best 12 games of the year, all in addition to the awards and nominations displayed in the image above.
Responsibilities
- Wrote in-game dialogue for multiple main storyline missions, side missions, optional point-of-interest objects and tutorials
- Devised a storyline and wrote all of the dialogue for the game’s collectible audio logs
- Worked with the rest of the narrative team to solve narrative problems as they arose and adjust the overall storyline based on feedback
- Implemented branching dialogue and mission progression via visual scripting
- Fixed both narrative and mission/level design bugs in script and Maya
- Implemented POI and objective markers across the game in Maya
- Imported dialogue into the game with proprietary tools and fixed audio/dialogue bugs in Wwise
Collectible Audio Logs
To reward players for finding the game’s hidden Cube-Sat collectibles, I crafted a side story told entirely through audio logs that expanded on the world Lone Echo while linking it the backgrounds of its existing characters, and even other games in the Echo franchise like Echo Arena and Echo Combat. You can listen to them in the video below.