Tattoo Parlour VR Design Obstacles and Difficulties
Designing a video game always comes with its share of obstacles that have to be overcome, and I didn't fail in encountering many myself while designing Tattoo Parlour VR.
When I first came up with the idea for a virtual reality game where players can play as a tattoo artist, I was picturing a game with a realistic art style in order to immerse that player as much as possible. However, the deeper into the design process I got, the more I realised how difficult this first idea was, both technically and aesthetically.
The first and biggest issue I encountered was how to best create a surface for the player to tattoo. A realistic human arm, for example, is small and rounded, which would be very difficult to program. The player would have a hard time telling where the tip of the tattoo gun is and what part of the arm was going to get inked, and could look distorted. It is also a very small play space, meaning the player would have a tiny area to work on and would have to put their face very close to the surface to see what they are doing. In a VR game, that can take away the fun of the game and make it difficult to play.
Another issue I ran into was the issue of possible squeamishness of tattooing a realistic human. While those of us who have gotten real tattoos may be able to play a realistic tattooing game with no problems, this game is being made for anyone who has even the slightest artistic inclination.
My first fix for these two problems was to change the game's aesthetic. By making the humans who were being tattooed less realistic and more whimsical, I thought this would eliminate the issue of squeamishness and make the tattoo surface more easily accessible. I designed characters (left image) to be blocky, after games like Paint the Town Red or Minecraft.
While I feel like this did address the realism issue I was facing, I decided that it didn't fix the surface accessibility problem well enough. The players wouldn't be able to have full control of the artist space by moving the surface they were working on because it was attached to the rest of the NPC.
My final fix, and what is currently being developed, is the change the world of Tattoo Parlour VR completely and make the customers robots instead of humanoids. This then adds the mechanic of being able to detach the flat surfaced limb being tattooed and make it a bigger size, and thus create an easier to manipulate work space so players can be as artist as possible. This also creates a very unique world that is easily recognisable as belonging to Tattoo Parlour VR.
My design for one of the robots that will be tattooed can be seen above. While creating this robot, I realised these robots could have more of a function than just being NPCs with detachable limbs. In order to track progress while playing the game, players will be able to use the panels on the robot's face and chest to see how accurate their tattoo is and how much time they have left to finish the tattoo (respectively). Over 70% accuracy and the robot will have the green smiley face, 69%-40% will earn a player the yellow neutral face, and anything lower than 39% accuracy will result in the red angry face, and the player will know they failed that challenge. They will also be able to determine how much of a tip they will receive for their work based on the robot's facial 'expression'.
