The Hidden Design Behind the Ingenious Room-Scale Gameplay in ‘Eye of the Temple’

Eye of the Temple is one of the rare VR games that focuses on not just on pure room-scale movement, but dynamic room-scale movement. The result is a uniquely immersive experience that required some clever design behind the scenes to make it all work. This guest article by developer Rune Skovbo Johansen explains the approach.

Guest Article by Rune Skovbo Johansen

Rune Skovbo Johansen is a Danish independent game developer based in Turku, Finland. His work spans games and other interactive experiences, focused on tech, wonder, and exploration. After positive reception of the 2016 VR game jam game Chrysalis Pyramid, he started working on a more ambitious spiritual successor, Eye of the Temple, and at the end of 2020 he quit his day job to pursue indie game development full-time.

In Eye of the Temple, you move through a vast environment, not by teleportation or artificial locomotion, but by using your own feet. It makes unique use of room-scale VR to deliver an experience of navigating an expansive space.

In Eye of the Temple you move around large environments using your own feet

But how does it work behind the scenes? To mark the upcoming release of Eye of the Temple on Quest 2, I wanted to take the time to explain these aspects of the game’s design that I’ve never fully gone into detail with before. In this article we’ll go over a variety of the tricks the game uses to make it all work. Let’s start with the basics of keeping the player in the play area

Keeping the Player in the Play Area

Say you need to go from one tall pillar in the game to another via a moving platform. You step forward onto the platform, the platform moves, and then you step forward onto the next pillar. But now you’re outside your physical play area.

Moving platforms are positioned in a way to keep players inside the play area

If we instead position the moving platform to the side, it goes like this: You sidestep onto the platform, it moves, and you sidestep onto the next pillar. Since you took a step right, and then left, you’re back where you started in the center of the play area. So the game’s tricks are all about how the platforms are positioned relative to each other.

Now, to get a better sense for it, let’s look at some mixed reality footage (courtesy of Naysy) where a grid representing the play area is overlaid on top.

Mixed reality footage with a grid overlaid on top which represents the play area

Keeping an Overview in the Level Design

Now that we’ve seen how the trick works, let’s take a look at how I keep track of it all when doing the level design for the game. First things first – I made this pattern, which represents the player’s entire play area – or the part of it the game takes advantage of anyway:

A pattern representing the physical play area

As you can see, there’s a thick white border along the edge, and a thick circle in the center.

Every platform in the game has a designated spot in the play area and a pattern overlay that shows what that spot is. For platforms that are a single tile large, it’s generally one of nine positions. The overlay makes it easy to see if a given platform is positioned in the center of the play area, or at an edge or corner.

The play area pattern overlaid on each platform and its end positions make it easy to see if they are lined up correctly in the level design

Additional overlays show a ghostly version of the pattern at both the start and end positions of a moving platform. This is the real trick of keeping track of how the platforms connect together, because these ghostly overlays at the end positions make it trivial to see if the platforms are lined up correctly in the level design when they touch each other. If the adjacent ghostly patterns are continuous like puzzle pieces that fit together, then the platforms work correctly together.

It still took a lot of ingenuity to work out how to position all the platforms so they both fit correctly together and also take the player where they need to go in the virtual world, but now you know how I kept the complexity of it manageable.

Getting the Player’s Cooperation

The whole premise of getting around the world via these moving platforms is based on an understanding that the player should step from one platform to another when they’re lined up, and not at other times. The most basic way the game establishes this is by just telling it outright to the player in safety instructions displayed prior to starting the game.

One of the safety instructions shown before the game begins

This instructions is shown for two reasons:

One is safety. You should avoid jumping over gaps, otherwise you would risk jumping right out of your play area and into a wall, for example.

The other is that the game’s system of traversal only works correctly when stepping from one platform to another when they line up. This is not as critical – I’ll get back to later what happens if stepping onto a platform that’s misaligned – but it still provides the best play experience.

Apart from the explicit instructions, the game also employs more subtle tricks to help ensure the player only steps over when blocks are correctly aligned. Consider the following example of a larger 2 x 2 tile static platform the player can step onto. A moving platform arrives from the side in a way that would allow the player to step off well before the platform has stopped moving, but that would break the game’s traversal logic.

In this room, ‘foot fences’ are used to discourage the player from stepping from one platform to another when they are not correctly aligned

To avoid this, “foot fences” were placed to discourage the player from stepping over onto the static platform (or away from it) at incorrect positions. The fences are purely visual and don’t technically prevent anything. The player can still step over them if they try, or right through them for that matter. However, psychologically it feels like less effort to not step over or through a fence and instead step onto the static platform where there’s a gap in the fence. In this way, a purely non-technical solution is used as part of the game’s arsenal of tricks.

Continued on Page 2: Correcting for Unaligned Platforms »

The Hidden Design Behind the Ingenious Room-Scale Gameplay in ‘Eye of the Temple’

Eye of the Temple is one of the rare VR games that focuses on not just on pure room-scale movement, but dynamic room-scale movement. The result is a uniquely immersive experience that required some clever design behind the scenes to make it all work. This guest article by developer Rune Skovbo Johansen explains the approach.

Guest Article by Rune Skovbo Johansen

Rune Skovbo Johansen is a Danish independent game developer based in Turku, Finland. His work spans games and other interactive experiences, focused on tech, wonder, and exploration. After positive reception of the 2016 VR game jam game Chrysalis Pyramid, he started working on a more ambitious spiritual successor, Eye of the Temple, and at the end of 2020 he quit his day job to pursue indie game development full-time.

In Eye of the Temple, you move through a vast environment, not by teleportation or artificial locomotion, but by using your own feet. It makes unique use of room-scale VR to deliver an experience of navigating an expansive space.

In Eye of the Temple you move around large environments using your own feet

But how does it work behind the scenes? To mark the upcoming release of Eye of the Temple on Quest 2, I wanted to take the time to explain these aspects of the game’s design that I’ve never fully gone into detail with before. In this article we’ll go over a variety of the tricks the game uses to make it all work. Let’s start with the basics of keeping the player in the play area

Keeping the Player in the Play Area

Say you need to go from one tall pillar in the game to another via a moving platform. You step forward onto the platform, the platform moves, and then you step forward onto the next pillar. But now you’re outside your physical play area.

Moving platforms are positioned in a way to keep players inside the play area

If we instead position the moving platform to the side, it goes like this: You sidestep onto the platform, it moves, and you sidestep onto the next pillar. Since you took a step right, and then left, you’re back where you started in the center of the play area. So the game’s tricks are all about how the platforms are positioned relative to each other.

Now, to get a better sense for it, let’s look at some mixed reality footage (courtesy of Naysy) where a grid representing the play area is overlaid on top.

Mixed reality footage with a grid overlaid on top which represents the play area

Keeping an Overview in the Level Design

Now that we’ve seen how the trick works, let’s take a look at how I keep track of it all when doing the level design for the game. First things first – I made this pattern, which represents the player’s entire play area – or the part of it the game takes advantage of anyway:

A pattern representing the physical play area

As you can see, there’s a thick white border along the edge, and a thick circle in the center.

Every platform in the game has a designated spot in the play area and a pattern overlay that shows what that spot is. For platforms that are a single tile large, it’s generally one of nine positions. The overlay makes it easy to see if a given platform is positioned in the center of the play area, or at an edge or corner.

The play area pattern overlaid on each platform and its end positions make it easy to see if they are lined up correctly in the level design

Additional overlays show a ghostly version of the pattern at both the start and end positions of a moving platform. This is the real trick of keeping track of how the platforms connect together, because these ghostly overlays at the end positions make it trivial to see if the platforms are lined up correctly in the level design when they touch each other. If the adjacent ghostly patterns are continuous like puzzle pieces that fit together, then the platforms work correctly together.

It still took a lot of ingenuity to work out how to position all the platforms so they both fit correctly together and also take the player where they need to go in the virtual world, but now you know how I kept the complexity of it manageable.

Getting the Player’s Cooperation

The whole premise of getting around the world via these moving platforms is based on an understanding that the player should step from one platform to another when they’re lined up, and not at other times. The most basic way the game establishes this is by just telling it outright to the player in safety instructions displayed prior to starting the game.

One of the safety instructions shown before the game begins

This instructions is shown for two reasons:

One is safety. You should avoid jumping over gaps, otherwise you would risk jumping right out of your play area and into a wall, for example.

The other is that the game’s system of traversal only works correctly when stepping from one platform to another when they line up. This is not as critical – I’ll get back to later what happens if stepping onto a platform that’s misaligned – but it still provides the best play experience.

Apart from the explicit instructions, the game also employs more subtle tricks to help ensure the player only steps over when blocks are correctly aligned. Consider the following example of a larger 2 x 2 tile static platform the player can step onto. A moving platform arrives from the side in a way that would allow the player to step off well before the platform has stopped moving, but that would break the game’s traversal logic.

In this room, ‘foot fences’ are used to discourage the player from stepping from one platform to another when they are not correctly aligned

To avoid this, “foot fences” were placed to discourage the player from stepping over onto the static platform (or away from it) at incorrect positions. The fences are purely visual and don’t technically prevent anything. The player can still step over them if they try, or right through them for that matter. However, psychologically it feels like less effort to not step over or through a fence and instead step onto the static platform where there’s a gap in the fence. In this way, a purely non-technical solution is used as part of the game’s arsenal of tricks.

Continued on Page 2: Correcting for Unaligned Platforms »

One of VR’s Smartest Room-scale Games Finally Comes to Quest 2

Room-scale puzzle Eye of the Temple (2021) is available on Quest 2 starting today, bringing one of VR’s most clever room-scale experiences to a platform where it probably makes the most sense.

Update (April 27th, 2023): Eye of the Temple is now live on the Quest Store for Quest 2, bringing its innovative room-scale puzzling to the standalone headset.

Ported to Quest with the help of Salmi Games, Eye of the Temple lets you explore a vast and treacherous temple and uncover the ancient legend of the Eye. Just make sure to have plenty of space in your room for plenty of walking, whipping, and hopefully no tripping.

Check out the new launch trailer, linked below:

Original Article (April 13th, 2023): Released on SteamVR headsets in 2021 by indie developer Rune Skovbo Johansen, Eye of the Temple is a unique puzzle that we haven’t seen before or since.

The game’s innovative locomotion style lets you explore a massive temple complex with your own two feet, ushering you to jump onto moving platforms of all shapes and sizes, which importantly takes place within a 2×2m physical space.

What results is a mechanically pleasing and immersive experience that teleportation or even joystick-controller smooth locomotion simply can’t provide. We liked it so much at the time, we even gave it Road to VR’s 2021 Excellence in Locomotion award.

Skovbo Johansen says the secret to the unique locomotion style is keeping the player in the center of the play area, which he says are “all about how the platforms are positioned relative to each other.”

Take a look at how it works in the explainer video below:

While most PC VR tethers provide enough slack to get around the required 2×2m play area, the amount of turning and jumping you’ll do in the physical space really pushes the user’s ability to ‘tune out’ the cable to the limit, as you have to unwind yourself and hop over the tether constantly—something you might not notice as much in less physical games.

There’s no word on when we can expect Eye of the Temple to release on Quest 2, which critically removes any cable faffing woes you may have.

In the meanwhile, catch the trailer below, and follow along with Skovbo Johansen on Twitter where he regularly posts updates on the game’s development.

Eye Of The Temple Room-Scale VR Platforming Comes To Quest 2 ‘Soon’

Eye of the Temple, a room-scale VR platformer, will make a surprise leap onto Quest 2 soon.

Initially released for PC VR, Eye of the Temple comes from solo developer Rune Skovbo Johansen, who is collaborating with Salmi Games for the Quest 2 port. Requiring a minimum play area of 2m x 2m, this Indiana Jones-style adventure sees you exploring ancient temples, dodging traps and solving puzzles. Instead of artificial locomotion or teleporting, movement is entirely physical. You can read the full description below:

Eye of the Temple is a VR adventure that will take you on a daring journey through a treacherous temple. As you attempt to uncover the legend of the Eye, you’ll step between moving blocks (don’t lose your balance!), dodge hazardous traps, and solve environmental puzzles. What mysteries will you uncover with just a torch, a whip, and your wits?

“A lot of the game’s visuals, such as the lighting and water effects, had to be reimplemented from scratch in order to retain the same aesthetic on the lower-powered hardware,” says Johansen in a prepared statement, who continues detailing the technical challenges involved in this Quest 2 port. “We also had to create our own manual occlusion system to supplement the engine’s built-in solution in order to support the game’s expansive world.”

There’s no pricing details or confirmed release date yet for Eye of the Temple, but its “coming soon” to Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro. A PC VR version is available now on Steam, and you can check out our preview impressions from 2020 to learn more.

Eye Of The Temple Gets Speedrun Challenges On Steam

Highly rated room-scale PC VR title Eye of the Temple now includes speedrun challenges and leaderboards.

The free update to one of 2021’s best PC VR games can turn the title into a bit of a workout with three speedrun challenges you can unlock by playing through the relevant section of the normal game. Danish developer Rune Skovbo Johansen wrote in an email that more challenges are planned for the future as well. For now, the leaderboards feature also extends to the regular game with the current world record holder beating it in just 36 minutes — a normal playthrough is estimated at taking four to five hours for completion.

The trailer embedded below shows off the new speedrun challenges.

Eye of the Temple released in October last year offering players the opportunity to explore “a vast and treacherous temple in VR using your own feet. Keep your balance as you step from one moving block to another, dodging traps and solving puzzles with your torch and whip in hand,” according to its description on Steam. The game carries very positive reviews on Steam but also requires “2m x 2m with 360° tracking” in order to be playable. That requirement makes Eye of the Temple a pretty unique PC VR-based experience to check out if you’ve got the space to support it.

You can check out Eye of the Temple on Steam and there’s a 20 percent discount off the regular price at the time of this writing.

SteamVR’s Eye Of The Temple Is A Great Use Of Room-Scale, And It’s 10% Off Today

It’s your last chance to grab a launch discount for Eye of the Temple, the new PC VR game that makes great use of room-scale locomotion.

The title, solo developed by Rune Skovbo Johansen, has been a long time coming, but finally launched on Steam earlier this month. Check out some gameplay from the demo version below. It’s on sale with a 10% discount to $17.99 for just a day more and, although we haven’t had a chance to review the final product yet, we thought it was worth mentioning for those of you that want to be reminded of the power of room-scale VR.

That is, of course, if you have the space for it. Eye of the Temple strictly requires a play space of at least 2m x 2m, so make sure your room meets those needs before picking this up. If you can make the space, you’ll likely get a real kick out of the physical gameplay, which sees you stepping between moving platforms to be ferried around an ancient temple, using your whip to solve puzzles and defeat enemies.

Did you pick up Eye of the Temple? What did you make of it? Let us know in the comments below!

Review: Eye of the Temple

Eye of the Temple

Roomscale gaming where you purely use your body and not the controllers isn’t something often seen anymore. There are plenty of virtual reality (VR) titles where you can move about a virtual space, crouching or walking over to pick up an object but actually employing your two feet as the only locomotion isn’t easy; especially if you’re working with a minimum 2m x 2m area. Sure, videogames like Space Pirate Trainer DX offer the chance to run around a play space if you can find an area large enough. This is why Eye of the Temple is a bit of a rarity, a true roomscale experience with an awesome Indiana Jones vibe.

Eye of the Temple

Eye of the Temple is the work of solo indie developer Rune Skovbo Johansen who’s been working on this project for several years now. The whole ethos behind the title is navigating your way through an ancient, trap-filled temple, carefully watching where you place each and every foot. One wrong step and it is instant death.

While you might be quite comfortable walking around in any normal VR experience, Eye of the Temple is very different, for one you spend a lot of time looking at the floor and around your feet. Traversal through is primarily via stone blocks that move in one particular direction, carefully gauging your timing so you don’t fall between the gaps. There are some cylindrical blocks as well, encouraging you to keep your position by walking backwards as it rolls forward.

It’s this type of movement where some players are going to struggle, Eye of the Temple even offers a warning right at the start. You might think that physically stepping through the environment would be fine, however, a disconnect can happen when a block suddenly drops down, raises up or moves in an unexpected way. As long as you’re aware of this Eye of the Temple can be a lot of fun.

Eye of the Temple

The gameplay is challenging right from the outset, it isn’t just about looking where to step next, there are gems to collect, multiple pathways to choose from and then there’s the whip. In fact, you have a whip in one hand and an unlit torch in the other, both designed to help you interact with the environment and solve puzzles. At times Eye of the Temple is like trying to rub your belly whilst tapping your head, as well as being spatially aware of obstacles; ducking under stuff plays an important part.

Even though Indiana Jones makes using a whip look easy, that isn’t the case here. With it, you can smash jars filled with gems, use it to pull levers from afar or kill enemies like little annoying flying scarabs. It certainly takes practice as the first few times trying to wrap the whip around a lever just seemed impossible.

As you can probably tell, Eye of the Temple is a physical experience all the way through, and it’ll have your heart thumping in no time. Not in the same way a rhythm action title would as the pace is steadier but you soon notice it after an hour or so. It becomes that engrossing you really do need to make sure your gameplay area is clear of any objects, it’s used to the maximum. If your boundary stops at a wall at times you’re going to be right up against it.

Eye of the Temple

Eye of the Temple isn’t hectic in any way, encouraging you to take your time and explore. All those extra pathways offer secrets to discover which is exactly what you’d expect when exploring a lava-filled temple of death. No difficulty option is available, surprisingly though some accessibility options are, like being able to change the duck height or the whip hand if you’re left-handed. Best of all though is the auto-saving which seems to happen at every block. So there’s no trudging through swathes of a level if the worse happens.  

This October features some really big VR releases and sandwiched in between them all is this nugget of indie inventiveness. Eye of the Temple feels like it goes back to VR’s roots in a way, the gameplay is simple but very effective, always keeping you thinking and on your toes. The whole experience achieves that one sort after quality in VR, immersion, where you become so focused on what you’re doing it’s easy to forget that the temple is actually your living room. Just be careful not to topple over, that can happen!   

Indiana Jones-inspired Puzzler ‘Eye of the Temple’ Coming to PC VR in October, Trailer Here

Eye of the Temple impressed us with its unique room-scale gameplay and inventive locomotion style back in its free demo last year. Now indie developer Rune Skovbo Johansen announced the full game is coming to PC VR headsets starting next month, and it’s bringing the bullwhip, hat, treasure, and plenty of ancient temples to explore.

Fans of the surprisingly full-featured demo on Steam will be happy to hear that Indiana Jones-style adventure Eye of the Temple will be releasing on SteamVR headsets on October 14th, 2021.

Eye of the Temple is a unique experience for sure. It requires a 2m × 2m area (6.5ft × 6.5ft) and asks the player to move through its massive room-sized puzzles by rolling atop virtual logs and riding on moving platforms. It sounds odd, but in our hands-on from last year we found the game’s various locomotion methods worked quite well as you walk, dodge, and duck your way through its vast temple complex.

Another fun (and fundamental) bit of the action is the game’s physics-based bullwhip. You’ll use it to grab levers out of reach and to defend yourself against flying enemies. It took a little finessing in our initial hands-on, but it proved to be a handy little tool when you’re far away from puzzle pieces.

Eye of the Temple is launching on October 14th for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index and Windows VR headsets. Unfortunately Eye of the Temple is a PC VR-only title, however like a majority of SteamVR titles Oculus Quest users can play via Link or Air Link.

There’s no pricing info available yet, although if you’re looking for your own hands-on with Eye of the Temple before it launches, make sure to download the free demo here.

The post Indiana Jones-inspired Puzzler ‘Eye of the Temple’ Coming to PC VR in October, Trailer Here appeared first on Road to VR.

Roomscale Adventure Eye of the Temple Launches This October

Eye of the Temple

For the past five years, indie developer Rune Skovbo Johansen has been building Eye of the Temple, a virtual reality (VR) adventure that utilises roomscale tracking as its core mechanic for navigating and solving puzzles in a treacherous temple. Today, Johansen has announced the official PC VR launch will take place in October.

Eye of the Temple

Players have been able to sample Eye of the Temple’s gameplay for over a year now with a free demo called Eye of the Temple: First Steps available on Steam. Evoking a very Indiana Jones vibe, the videogame explore a vast temple using your feet – rather than stick-based locomotion. So that means physically stepping onto moving platforms or walking along ledges. Hence why Eye of the Temple requires a 2m x 2m play area.

It’s not just about watching your step as you try not to fall down a chasm or into a pool of lava. Eye of the Temple throws in traps to avoid and puzzles to solve, with a handy whip on your hip to put to good use. It can be used to defend yourself against flying enemies and grab levers out of reach.

Eye of the Temple was born out of a desire to combine the immersion of moving with your own body in roomscale VR with the ability to explore a vast environment with lots of verticality and large open spaces,” says Johansen in a statement. “When I started out, I never expected it would take five years to finish the game, but the scope and ambition of the game grew along the way. After going full-time indie last year, I’ve finally been able to complete it, and now I’m very excited for players to be able to experience this adventure for themselves very soon.”

Eye of the Temple

While the main campaign features plenty of hidden treasures and areas to encourage you to return, those who love a challenge can unlock a speedrun mode. You’re able to speed up the gameplay with every timed step speeding up the moving blocks a bit.

Eye of the Temple is scheduled to launch for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index and Windows Mixed Reality headsets on 14th October. Take a look at the new launch trailer below and for further updates keep reading VRFocus.

Room-Scale VR Platformer Eye Of The Temple Finally Releases Next Month

It’s been years in the making but room-scale VR platformer, Eye of the Temple, is finally releasing next month.

The game, solo developed by Rune Skovbo Johansen over the past five years, will hit Steam on October 14. You can catch the release date trailer below.

Eye of the Temple Release Date Confirmed

Eye of the Temple is essentially Indiana Jones in VR; you navigate ancient temples, avoiding traps and, yes, using a whip. But the game is powered entirely by your own movement – there’s no smooth locomotion or teleporting here. Instead you step between tiles that taxi you to new areas. You’ll need to think fast to solve challenges, or you might meet a grizzly end.

We tried out a preview version just over a year ago now. It proved to be a potent reminder of the power of room-scale VR, relying entirely on your own movements to get around. The full version of the game will feature an expanded campaign, plus an unlockable speedrun mode.

You’ll need a 2m x 2m play space to experience the game, then. Not sure you’ve got the space? There’s a free demo available now so you can test it out. There’s no Oculus Quest version announced, but this’ll definitely be one to try with AirLink if that’s possible for you.

Will you be picking up Eye of the Temple? Let us know in the comments below.