What Lurks in the Shadows VR - Sami Weinstein

Virtual Reality
10 minutes

WLITS allows the player to directly experience Sami’s day to day struggles with ADHD and executive dysfunction. This VR experience simulates everyday tasks that grow increasingly more difficult as the game progresses. WLITS involved coding, audio production, 3D modeling, and Unity development.

Sami Weinstein

Ìý

Sami Weinstein is an artist, animator, and game developer who finds inspiration primarily through animations, video games, and music. She incorporates her struggles regarding her ADHD into her work, and explores the many ways her experience can be depicted across various mediums. Her goal is to encourage creating conversations surrounding the topic. Her current focus involves working in various game engines to create small scale scenes and games, as well as 3D modeling, in addition to her traditional art pieces. She has significant experience with Unity which allowed her to subvert her minimal experience in coding regarding this project.Ìý


What Lurks in the ShadowsÌý

Ìý

What Lurks in the Shadows is a VR horror game that combines Sami’s love for video games and her personal struggles with ADHD into a singular cohesive experience, as well as spreads awareness about the many challenges that come with having ADHD. Despite the difficulties posed by the medium, Sami chose VR to fully immerse the participant and put them in her shoes. WLITS was developed in Unity, contains both custom made and free to use 3D and 2D assets, animations, custom audio assets, and required significant amounts of coding and Unity related skills. The gameplay loop is infinite, and the player must walk around an apartment completing and repeating simple tasks. These tasks get increasingly more difficult as the player progresses, while a shadowy figure slowly follows and stalks the player. The gameplay is representative of her struggles with executive dysfunction, anxiety, and her ADHD in general.

top down view of the environment and showcases many parts behind Unity scene. The darker blue is the area of the map that the enemy AI can navigate, while the lighter blue are obstacles it traverses around. There are various lighting icons that indicate different types of light sources, as well as audio sources, particle effects, and text boxes.
On the right side of the image, orange particles (they are blue in game) are seen coming out of a showerhead. On the far right, the inspector tab is shown, depicting some of the simpler aspects and properties of the particles created for this task. Additionally, this room is significantly more reflective, demonstrating the use of various materials and textures for different objects in the game.
the various pieces at play in the living room alone. Some of the audio files used for certain tasks as well as the ambient audio can be seen in the game folders. 3 individual lighting sources are depicted throughout the image, all of which are different types of lights as seen by the sun like icons. The Ai navigation mesh is visible, shown by an icon that looks like an orange compass overlapping a blue square. Additionally, various text boxes are seen overlapping on the whiteboard, as well as the direction
top down view of the environment and showcases many parts behind Unity scene. The darker blue is the area of the map that the enemy AI can navigate, while the lighter blue are obstacles it traverses around. There are various lighting icons that indicate different types of light sources, as well as audio sources, particle effects, and text boxes.