TOPIA — Shilat Kikayon

TOPIA is a 15~ minute long, time travel, choice based VR adventure game where the future is literally in your hands - your choices impact the future you end up in.

This is a 4-months-long final project for Visual Communications diploma. It’s a real, start to end VR game that I created by myself, from concept, to script, to 3D design and Unity implementation.

Read more about TOPIA’s UX perspective.

TOPIA trailer / diploma final project

I started with deciding on what message I wanted to convey with my project.

For a long time, I felt that the world became hopeless for the future. People tend to give up to their fear and anxiety, thinking they can’t do anything about this sense of impending doom, and who can blame them? With the media making us scared of technology, war, corporations, people.

I believe that if we all remain silent and afraid, the worst will come true.

I decided I want to remind people that the power to change and to bring a better future is in our hands. So the concept would be: “A time travel adventure where the player’s decisions determine the future they end up in”.

Then I decided on the stages, still trying to get it as short and simple, so I can still complete in 4 months by myself:

Modern day classroom (for onboarding and exposition)
Futuristic restaurant (introducing the future, initial “wow” effect)
Futuristic tech market (to introduce the technology impact perspective)
Good / bad ending (the city from above, to reveal the impact of your actions)

TOPIA’s script & directing notes

Every Sci-Fi fan knows that the concept of traveling time and learning some lessons cannot be complete without companions.

So meet your companion in TOPIA - named after my favorite Doctor Who one - Rose! She is a highschooler, just like the protagonist - only 30 years in the future. She’s traveling for homework purposes, actually, using her unique “Timecap” - a sleek round hat capable of projecting UI and warping you around time.

Rose is smart, adventerous, kind, funny and a little awkward.

In your first conversation with Rose, she asks you what you think the future will look like. You can choose “Automatic hell” or “A better world”. This is the first action in the game that impacts the future you will get. The reason for this is that I believe that you can’t make the future better if you don’t believe it can be better, so what I’m really checking here is the player’s outlook and motivation.

Rose will then offer you to come with her to a time adventure and invite you to interact with the timecap UI and move to the next stage.

The player & Rose now arrive at “Roboz”, a furistic restaurant run by cute robot waiters. In this level, I want to see if the player will stand against injustice or stand by silently. After some small talk with Rose, a customer in the next table starts yelling profanities at a robot waiter, while the robot cries helplessly. The player can either ignore or stop the rude man.

The decision is time-based, so if the rude man is finished yelling, Rose will interfere, earning the player a bad point for staying silent. To make things more difficult, I designed a menu for the restaurant, with fun interactions and jokes in order to distract the player. As I watched many people play TOPIA, I would say about 30% of players fell for my “trap”, while the other 70% managed to protect the crying robot.