Overview
The Homestead Invasion is an early access VR experiment. The VR hardware was provided by both Valve and Oculus. I was invited to, and participated in Steam Dev Days 2016 in Seattle Washington. This event was put on by Valve and was VR focused.
The Homestead Invasion was my first experience developing for virtual reality. I took some basic gameplay mechanics starting with a single room cabin (see video at the bottom of page), and grew the experience into a few levels where the player could run around, upgrade their weapons, interact with their environment in meaningful ways, and barricade themselves in to fight off the coming horde. The Homestead Invasion was played by many YoutTube personalities, and received mostly positive reviews even in its experimental state.
This project was, and still is an early access experiment and was sold as such (with full disclosure). Development is currently paused. The Homestead Invasion isn’t polished or completed, but represents a fun and exciting early access experiment on the cutting edge of VR at the time. I’ve learned so much from this project that I’ve taken forward into other projects. The Homestead Invasion is now free to play, in an “as is state” (with key request).
Here is a fun clip of a tester giving the game a playthrough. Once again, this version was not perfect but you can clearly see when it’s working, and is an enjoyable VR experience.
This is the original prototype created after receiving free dev kits from Oculus and Valve. It’s almost comical but the base concept had enough enjoyable moments to warrant further development.