VR-game «Cast Iron Master»

Multimedia exhibition “Not by word, but by deed”plunges the viewer straight into the beginning of the 18th century, where the dreamer tsar built a fleet, new cities and a new image of Russia, and the businesslike Tula master Nikita Demidov created an industrial support for transformations in the Urals.

In one of the 11 thematic halls of the exposition, we placed the iron foundry of the ironworks. Here one could see and touch models of casting molds, pull the lever to “pour out” liquid metal, listen to the Master in the holographic theater. And of course, here we have placed a VR-zone, about the creation of which, read below.

VR-simulator

For a more complete immersion in the atmosphere of the era, visitors were invited to act as a worker of the plant – the Master and create a cast-iron product with their own “hands”. The game is built around a real production process. We turned every action of the wizard into a game stage.

We have a compromise between historicity and game convention. The player can complete the stages successfully or fail. The final test of the cannon depends on this: in one case, the cannon will hit the target, in the other, the cannon will be torn apart, in the third, the cannonball will not reach the target.
In the format of the game, we showed not just the device of the factory workshop, but immersed the participant of the exposition into the life of a factory worker, repeated the algorithm of actions that he performed daily.

Roadmap

1. Pre-project study, 3 weeks.

We are very sensitive to facts and try to immerse ourselves in the context as much as possible.
Therefore, in addition to the development team, 3 professional historians, an archivist and an archaeologist worked on the project.
We studied the drawings of the monograph and the reconstruction of the Demidov factories in the Urals. In order to see the architecture of the factory shops live, we visited the Severskaya Domna, the museum complex of the Seversky Pipe Plant. The only blast furnace in Russia and Europe from the middle of the 20th century has been preserved there.

2. Development, 9 weeks.

The longest and most voluminous stage. The second stage consisted of sketching, creating a visual style and game mechanics, prototyping and modeling.

When designing the visual styling, a styling approach was taken to make the game more appealing to the audience while improving its performance. An actor with an authentic accent was invited for dubbing, and a lot of attention was paid to the sounds of the environment. An interface was created to facilitate communication with the player.

3. Launch, 2 weeks.

This stage took only two weeks, thanks to the quality work done in the previous stage. Inside the development team, testing was carried out from the first days of work. Then we added tests with the director and producer and tests on the focus group: all in order to bring the gameplay to perfection.

As a result, we have a game that takes 3-5 minutes to complete, which is optimal for our exhibition. During the game, visitors get a unique gaming experience, since the product can be executed perfectly, or you can fail this or that stage – the result will be different.