XREIL Wins First Place for VR Game

XR Education & Innovation Labs (XREIL) won first place at the Computer Simulation & Gaming Conference for their virtual reality (VR) education-based escape room, Unlock. Unlock won for the category “Digital Games (VR): Indie Professional.” This win has been a great motivator for the team as they continue to develop the game.

XREIL is a cutting-edge development group at the College that creates engaging and immersive educational experiences. Unlock has been in progress since last fall, and the competition, hosted by the University of Tulsa, gave XREIL members the motivation they needed to complete a level of the game and share their work with others. That motivation, hard work and teamwork led to a first-place win. For their submission, they created a fully functional game with one level, along with an intro video explaining the concept of the game, clips of the game experience, and credits. The competition was open to creators from various levels of expertise and backgrounds, and had different categories, such as k-12, college level, asset creation, and virtual reality.

The winning team members for the competition included Assistant Vice President for Academic Student Engagement and Professor of Mathematics Dr. German Vargas, Assistant Vice President for Faculty Affairs and Professor of Mathematics Dr. Laura Lynch, Director of Enterprise Services Dr. Diana Leal, Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students Dr. Michael Butcher, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Student Success Coordinator Dr. Aurora Ramos Nuñez, Coastal Georgia students Joseph Nyamadi, Wes Baird, and alums Jedidiah Lindborg and Austin Benton.

Unlock is a VR escape room, targeting high school and early college students. It features math puzzles that make understanding and learning math fun. The first level explores the concept of conic sections. The intro video for the game features a 3D capture of the “unlock” sculpture by artist Jim Jones located in the Correll Center for Teacher Education and Learning. The team took inspiration from the sculpture and how it represents unlocking knowledge through education. The game’s logo features a key with teeth in the shape of the letter E for education, just like the sculpture, with the key bow in the shape of a VR headset.

Lynch and Vargas, founders of XREIL, talked about their experience in preparing the game for submission, its purpose, and plans for future development.

“This was one of the levels we were already working on, and we decided to polish it. That was a great level because it really captured the essence of the game. It had all the great features, and we ended up submitting it,” Vargas said.

After submitting the game, the team waited in anticipation for the results. Two weeks later they were celebrating as they read, “…judges were quite impressed with your submission…we congratulate you on your win.”

“We were so excited,” Vargas said. “The last day to get everything done was really intense, but we kept it cool and were really focused.”

XREIL members are continuing to create more levels for Unlock.

“Phase one was getting a fully functional game with one level, and we finished that. Phase two is to create four more levels. That will give us a five-level game that we’ll publish. Phase three is to create four more additional math levels,” Lynch said.

Each level will take approximately an hour to complete, with the opportunity to stop and save the game. They plan to publish and sell the game globally, with the proceeds going to support XREIL initiatives and equipment for students.

“We want to create opportunities for teaching and learning, enhance concepts, and deliver them in a way that is more engaging for students,” Vargas said. “When we created this, we were thinking that it could be used in high schools and colleges as a classroom experience or at an after-school program, where students will play the game. We would also provide curriculum for the high school teachers. Students can play and go more in-depth with the curriculum. Each room has as theme, and there is plenty of content that we can deliver for each of those rooms.”

XREIL plans to do more VR games focusing on other disciplines, including political science and the process of creating a federal bill.

Completing the first level of Unlock was a team effort, and it will continue to be so for subsequent phases. XREIL has collaborated with the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation Summer Internship program housed at Georgia Tech to host two summer interns who are helping to develop more levels for Unlock. Interns, Marybeth Dodgen, who attends Georgia State University, and Coastal Georgia student Justin Von Gartzen are spending the summer learning about coding and building elements for the game using 3D modeling and animation. Also, Baird is doing an independent study course led by Vargas. To showcase what he’s learned during the first part of the course, Baird was assigned with creating a VR puzzle. He created a full scale 15-puzzle, where the player steps on a tile and it moves to an empty space.

“It was such an interesting puzzle that we’re thinking of how to integrate what he did into Unlock,” Vargas said.

Unlock isn’t the College’s first foray into VR game development. In 2016, Lindborg and Benton helped create a VR graphing calculator game that was published in the Oculus store, which can still be accessed via product key. Vargas and Lynch also plan to incorporate the VR graphing calculator, with some updates, into Unlock as well.

Although they don’t consider themselves to be professional game developers, they have embraced being indie game developers. This gives XREIL the opportunity to be innovative and experimental with gameplay. Lynch and Vargas continue to keep their eyes open for any future competitions, and are excited about the endless possibilities of making learning more engaging and fun.

The first level of Unlock can be downloaded to play here.

To learn more about XREIL contact, Dr. German Vargas at gvargas@ccga.edu or Dr. Laura Lynch at llynch@ccga.edu.