Stratford Wonderland

An horror immersive VR experience
Based on Local Research and Social Reflection

My Role

Game Designer
Team Leader
Programmer

Team

Aaron Wang
Uliana Sado(Modelling)
Nika Varga(Modelling)
Tim Sang(Animation)

Game Project
VR/AR Production
Interactive Media Design

Associated with UCL

Project Overview

Project Development Process

01

02 Game Mechanics
Level
NPC
Ambient

03 MoCap
3D Scan
Unreal Configuration
Material and VFX
VR Implement

04

Research

Stratford Wonderland combines psychological horror theories, environmental storytelling, and cutting-edge technology to create a deeply immersive VR experience. By exploring themes of urban decay, environmental collapse, and social disillusionment, the project uses game design as a medium for both narrative engagement and social commentary.

Thematic Foundations

01

The central theme of Prismia revolves around the idea of escaping reality into a utopian world encapsulated within a magical crystal ball. Inspired by utopian philosophy, the game explores:

Environmental Storytelling

Stratford Wonderland uses environmental storytelling to evoke unease and mystery. Derelict amusement park structures, overgrown vegetation, and decayed industrial settings build a narrative of abandonment and lost joy.
Inspired by real-world locations, such as closed theme parks and urban ruins, the project highlights the conflict between nostalgia and decay.

Psychological Horror Elements

Drawing from horror theory, the game leverages fear of the unknown, uncanny visual elements, and distorted reality to immerse players in psychological tension.
Horror techniques such as limited visibility, disorienting sound design, and environmental manipulation create a dynamic sense of dread.

Social Critique

The game comments on urban decay and environmental neglect, using the amusement park as a metaphor for failed societal promises.
The abandoned park reflects real-world issues like gentrification, environmental collapse, and social marginalization.

In-Situ Research and Archival Study

02

1

In-Situ Research

Site visits to urban ruins, abandoned theme parks, and neglected industrial spaces inspired level designs.
Observing real-world decay processes informed texture creation and environmental modeling.

Archival Study

Historical research on abandoned amusement parks, urban planning failures, and city redevelopment projects provided thematic depth.
Archival images, maps, and records were referenced to design historically resonant environments.

2

3

Community Research

Interviews with local residents and community members revealed personal stories linked to urban development and decay.
Community feedback helped shape narrative elements, ensuring an authentic representation of urban displacement and environmental neglect.

Design

The design of Stratford Wonderland centers on creating an immersive and unsettling experience through environmental storytelling, psychological horror elements, and interactive mechanics. The design process combined thematic, technical, and narrative considerations to ensure a cohesive and impactful VR experience.

00 Core Design Principles

Environmental Storytelling

Every visual detail conveys a piece of the story, from rust-covered carnival rides to broken signage and overgrown vegetation. Each element reveals the park's decay and forgotten past.

Psychological Immersion

A carefully orchestrated balance of visual dissonance, eerie soundscapes, and unpredictable events builds player suspense.

Interactive Exploration

Players actively uncover the park's secrets through exploration, object interaction, and environmental puzzles.

01 Game Mechanics Design

We considered making it an FPS/TPS game, but giving the player weapons would in itself ruin the game's shaping of the horror atmosphere. So in the end, we decided to make it an escape game and players haver to survive in game for 5 mins.

So NPCs were made in the scenario, and all NPCs in the scenario moved in set pathways and attacked the player. Any attack is fatal because the NPCs don't move very fast. The player needs to dodge the attacks. The NPCs in the scenario are controlled via Blueprint.

02 Level Design

As I wanted to highlight the fact that the project is based on the Stratford area, I decided to emphasise this by tying the real-life Stratford area's landforms to the game's map.
Therefore, the terrain of this project has been carefully designed to have a topography that corresponds exactly to the Stratford area of London, including natural landscapes such as rivers and hills.

Stratford Area Height Map

Stratford Area Map

Game Landscape

Game Level Map

03 NPC Design

Because of the decision to make a survival game, the game includes several NPCs in different poses and states that are driven by Blueprint, whose models are made by 3D Scan and animated by Motion Capure (see later.) The logic of the NPCs is as follows.

NPCs are created using 3D scanning and animated through motion capture to enhance realis
- Logic is driven by Unreal Engine’s Blueprint system to manage behavior and interactions:
  - NPCs are placed along predefined paths and patrol set areas.
  - Upon detecting the player, NPCs either engage in pursuit or attack behavior depending on proximity and player action.
  - If the player successfully evades, NPCs return to their paths. If the player is hit, the game progresses toward a failure state.

04 Ambient and Material

Lighting is very important to the horror atmosphere. Therefore in this project I made various attempts to set up the lighting.
The first time we thought we could consider putting it in daytime or dusk, but we realised that the horror atmosphere of the amusement park would not be well shaped this way, so we chose to use a darker scene and combine it with some emissive material to create the whole world.
Apart from the emissive material aforementioned, the project is lit through Environmental and World Setting, volumetric cloud, spot light and point light.

Light and Env Mixer, Volumetric Cloud and Water Shader

Extra Light Settings

The scene also includes a number of real-time rendered point lights, which receive Blueprint's control and include a flickering effect to further the horror atmosphere

Production

01 3D Scan

The game involves the creation of many NPC characters, and we realised the significant amount of work involved in designing and building mission models.
So, we chose to scan everyone on the team into 3D models through 3D scanning, which were then further optimised and textured by the art's group, and finally put into the Unreal Engine by me to be combined with the MoCap animations to create high quality and scary NPC characters in the game quickly.

Me and my colleagues’ Original 3D Scan Model

Final NPC in game

02 Motion Capture

The game requires zombie movements which consist of many details and therefore difficult to create directly in blender, so we used motion capture to create the animation part of the game.
Two actor crew members played and acted as zombies, and then the animator did the post-production, and then I put it into the Unreal engine.

03 Unreal Implementation

Relatively speaking, the logic of this game is simple and straightforward. The main setup difficulty of the game is in the scripting of the NPCs, which is driven by Character Blueprint and the core logic of the game.

Problem: How to connect NPC with Weapon
Solution- Socket in Animation Blueprint

In this project, the animation effects of the characters are also realised through blueprints.
One of the difficulties in implementing character animation is to make the character's weapon move naturally with the character's movements. I used the socket function to achieve this effect . The character animation is imported from Blender by using root motion, then the Animation blueprint is created, and finally, the Character blueprint is created, and the loop animation is used to visualise the NPC's settings in the project.

NPC Character Blueprint

Other Blueprint Logic

This project uses blueprints to drive all content, and it includes an animation BP, character BP, pawn BP, actor BP, player controller BP, and game mode BP made specifically for this game and using this BP to connect game with Meta VR headset.

04 Materials and VFX

This project utilises a number of particle systems, including the Clouds effect in the introductory section of the title and the Fly effect in the main project.

Enhance Material With Normal Map

Many image materials are used when creating models, so many image materials are in the Unreal engine. However, we realised the pictures looked too flat and could produce
reflections. We solved these problems by increasing the roughness and creating a normal map to make the image material look more realistic and detailed.

Emissive Material

Enhanced Wood Material

VR Implementation

05

At the beginning of the game's design, we thought that horror games would have a very good presentation in VR, which is why Stratford Wonderland has a horror atmosphere.

The player can view all the content in Stratford Wonderland from all sides and roam around in it after wearing the VR glasses correctly.

All buildings in the game are set up with collision bodies and triggers; the player does not walk through walls or fly, but can trigger the music.