Developing a VR Game Featuring Optical Illusion Challenges to Support Cultural Heritage - A Progress Report

Abstract

This paper presents the development state of a Virtual Reality game to support cultural heritage through puzzle-based optical illusion gaming challenges. It is an immersive escape room type of game focusing on the cultural heritage of Cyprus, where players must complete a series of optical illusion challenges to progress, while learning historical information about key landmarks, monuments and objects of significant heritage to the Cypriot community. The main project objective is to bring together various archaeological artefacts in a virtual space and providing an immersive gaming experience to its users/visitors. The paper highlights the need for investigating the topic of VR gaming to support cultural heritage. It presents the development progress to date, including information on the digitisation process, environment design, and the mechanics of the VR game. Some of the future directions of the project are also presented.