Every Loop Ends Where It Began
Trapped inside a mysterious house filled with puzzles, a player navigates a series of challenges — from sorting books to searching a garden of roses — slowly uncovering the truth of a drunk-driving accident and the death of their friend.
A single-player VR psychological horror experience for the Oculus Quest 3. Each failure resets the loop, but knowledge persists — a reflection of the protagonist's inability to accept the past.
More Than Just Puzzles
Most escape rooms rely purely on puzzle mechanics with little emotional resonance. Our goal was to give players a narrative to uncover — each puzzle tied directly to the story, motivating players through curiosity and emotional connection rather than just task completion. The intent: combine escape room gameplay with a real, meaningful story that lingers after the headset comes off.
What Makes It Unique
Psychological Horror
Narrative-based immersion built around real-world issues — mental health and the consequences of drunk driving.
Rich Backstory
Our protagonist and his best friend Jacobe celebrated a win, got drunk, and drove home. He will never forgive himself.
Time Loop Mechanic
Failure resets the loop but knowledge persists — a metaphor for the protagonist's inability to move on.
Environmental Storytelling
Every bottle, every rose, every whisper tells part of the story. Each room has its own distinct atmosphere and narrative layer.
Spatial Audio
3D spatial audio brings the house to life — sound effects and voice-overs are tied directly to player interactions.
Twist Ending
Break the loop, embrace it, or never learn. Your actions determine not just the ending, but the nature of reality itself.
The Journey Through the House
Four rooms, each with its own puzzle and emotional tone — together building toward the truth about Jacobe's death.
Library
The opening scene. Sort the colored books in the correct order to unlock the door and progress into the house.
Hallway
Find 4 objects placed around the decorated hallway, decode the number sequence they form, and enter the code to advance.
Rose Garden
An old observatory garden filled with thousands of roses. Find the rusty key hidden among the blooms — a poster gives the clue.
Final Scene
Outside the house. Discover the newspaper — all clues converge, the truth is revealed, and the loop closes.
How We Built It
Ideation & GDD
Built the concept around psychological horror and social commentary, establishing Jacobe's story as the narrative framework.
Storyboarding
Created detailed flow diagrams mapping scene interactions, sound design, and haptic feedback using a three-act structure per room.
Prototyping
Built early room prototypes in Unity — testing puzzle timing, lighting, spatial navigation, and object placement before adding narrative assets.
Testing/Iteration
Conducted in-headset user testing of the Garden scene. Refined key visibility, trigger zones, voice-over pacing, and rose animation based on feedback.
What I Built
What We Overcame
APK File Size
The build grew too large to transfer onto the Quest 3, requiring constant optimization without sacrificing quality.
Asset Compression
Reduced texture sizes, stripped unused assets, and compressed scenes iteratively until the APK reached a deployable size.
Scene Integration
Merging all rooms into one build caused repeated conflicts and transfer failures even after scenes were connected in Unity.
Sequential Merging
Merged scenes one at a time, testing each connection step-by-step with multiple rebuild attempts until the full experience transferred.
Testing Limitations
Deployment issues meant only the Garden scene could be tested in-headset with a small group before final submission.
Focused Testing
Ran structured sessions on the Garden scene, gathering feedback on key visibility, trigger zones, voice-over timing, and rose animation.
What We Delivered
Despite significant technical hurdles, the team delivered a complete, fully playable multi-room VR escape room — growing from rough prototypes into a polished, narrative-driven psychological horror experience built through daily collaboration and a deep commitment to meaningful storytelling.
Experience the Loop
Download the APK and sideload it onto your Meta Quest headset to play.