The game was released about a month ago and instantly became a hit. As a developer, I play as many VR games as I can in search of the best practices to implement in my project.

What I noticed was that Lone Echo actually differs a lot from other VR titles. You see, this game has one important thing other VR experiences still don’t. Keep reading to find out what it is.

A bit about the game

Lone Echo is a single-player narrative-driven VR adventure game developed by Ready at Dawn.

You play as Echo One or Jack, a smart robot designed to assist Olivia “Liv” Rhodes — captain of Kronos II, a mining facility on the rings of Saturn. She is the only human on the ship along with robots, so called Echo Units.

During her last days on Kronos an unknown anomaly appears in front of the ship. Your goal is to help Liv figure out the nature of this thing.

The secret sauce

From the first minutes, this game immerses you at an incomparable level. After playing a bit more, everything becomes clear.

Ready at Dawn succeeded in the following:

Attention to detail.

Turns out that it’s the details that take immersion to the next level. Frankly, I have not felt being in a game more than in Lone Echo.

In this post I’ll explain what those details are, how they affect immersion and how you can implement them in your game.

So, how did Ready at Dawn do it?

They definitely put a lot of work to fill in the details of these three main components of the game.

1. Olivia “Liv” Rhodes

At the moment you start playing, Liv and Jack already have a story. She treats you(as Jack) like a human being even though you are an artificial intelligence.

The game starts when you wake up at some kind of hibernation dock. After a quick tutorial, you can communicate and interact with Olivia.

From the start, you will notice that interacting with her is a more lifelike experience than in other games. With the details that developers added to her animation and communication system, Liv comes to life.

Olivia responds as a real human would

You know the things most people do when they first start a new VR experience? They test the boundaries: throwing things and obscene behavior are just a couple of them. If the game character is not responding properly to player’s actions, it may break the immersion completely.

Ready at Dawn solves this problem like a pro. If you throw an object at Olivia, she will dodge it. If you touch her anywhere below the hips, she will hit your hands away. If you give her a thumbs up, she will respond in kind.

These details create the “Aha” moment when you start believing the character is more than a dumb puppet. And as a result, you start behaving. Quite a good outcome for a dozen response animations.

The communication system makes you believe you can actually talk

How? Well, Lone Echo fulfills the need for communication with Liv anytime you want. They use a dialog system that can be activated near a point of interest. So, you can ask Liv a couple of questions.

The trick is that Ready at Dawn recorded a small conversation about every single thing you might be interested in. So, it seems that you can communicate with Liv anytime you want. This approach actually makes you forget that you are playing a scripted experience.

2. Player’s avatar

Jack is one of several robots maintaining the ship and helping Olivia. Although he is one of that Echo Units, he is different. He has a somehow better A.I system and five fingers instead of three.

Unlike most developers, Ready at Dawn created a so ridiculously detailed model of Jack’s — the player’s avatar — robotic body that it makes your brain perceive it as your own.

The effect is created by filling in details that the player sees the most — the hands. First, thanks to IK (Inverse Kinematics), Jack’s palms grip animation is completely natural(finally!). Second, when you stretch your hands, you see how all the wires and mechanisms stretch too.

Such tremendous work on details leads to unprecedented things. For example, you literally begin to fear virtual death.

Imagine that you play a couple of hours. Your brain has already gotten used to your new steel torso. Suddenly, you fall into the radiation zone.

After a few seconds your hands become rusty, the сolors fade. And if you die, after respawning, you find your dead crooked rusty robotic body at the place you died, floating in the cold space.

Will you worry more about your virtual life after this? Hell yeah! Such a feeling fully justifies the tremendous work on details.

3. The world

Besides the very detailed ship and dig sites there is one thing that drives immersion from the point of environment —game items. The environment is awash with interactive stuff floating in weightlessness and stuck to the walls that you can grab, throw and play with.

The truth is that this “garbage” makes the game’s environments realistic.

Developers made it possible to ask Liv about almost every item you meet in the game and she will tell a short story related to it. But it’s not the only purpose.

I’ve made a brief classification of all of the kinds of items you will meet during the game.