We Alone is an epic first-person VR adventure, built for the Oculus Quest with the awesome team at Megaverse Studios.

Blurring the lines of immersive theatre and serious games, We Alone is a story-based game, taking place in a dystopian reimagining of rural England, 1985. Titanesque creatures, born from a collective loneliness, hunt the last remaining inhabitants.

We Alone VR was initially conceived from time spent at the TAG Research Centre in Montreal, Punchdrunk International and Megaverse Studios. This period of R&D has produced a fully playable 20 min VR demo with six degrees of motion. It will be playable in two versions, at home in a seated or standing capacity, and as a touring XR piece.

For more information about We Alone and other current digital works, contact sally@goatandmonkey.co.uk

Background

The early 1980’s were a time of national and global transition in Britain.

The government were starting to sell off national assets, and public discord had reached a critical level with riots, unemployment and poverty. Globally, the threat of nuclear war was on a knife edge and the impending threat exposed the country’s deepest fears. Isolation, collapse to almost medieval regression, with a failed health service, very little food being harvested , mass homelessness, and the pound and penny losing all value, national anxiety was high.

Protagonist

This is the world the player is immersed, a dystopian, apocalyptic rural England.

You are the protagonist, a child who wakes to find themselves abandoned. With your trusty radio in hand, and your mother’s words in your heart, you must brave the inhospitable landscape to save your siblings.

But you are not alone.

The Creatures

In the world of We Alone, there are titan-sized, monstrous creatures.

The creatures have always been present, but they used to be small, in the shadows, under the bed, behind the cupboard. They were little threat.

But something has changed, and these creatures have gained a critical mass fed by the nation's anxiety and loneliness, and become titanesque.

Humans first noticed the huge creatures as they started to appear in 1981, and then spawned in different places across the world. By 1983 the creatures were everywhere and the world went in to lockdown. It took two years for the economy to grind to a halt, and by 1985 it is as if the world had stopped.

The boy's mother explained it to him like this.

“When you’re born, somewhere else far away perhaps on another continent, your creature is also born. As you grow, your creature also grows, and yearns for you. It sings a song only for you, and waits patiently until you hear it. As it gets bolder, and bigger and more vicious, its song travels further, through wood and rock, crosses seas and passes mountains. You can’t hide and it will find you.

Once you hear it, you are marked. A physical black mark, that looks like a crawling man.Once you are marked, your creature has one furious intent- to find you, its master, and destroy you.”

Design

We Alone was created digitally from the ground up, using state of the art VR Digital practice. Particle text, hand tracking and motion capture performance have all been utilised to realise the world of We Alone.

Storyboard for Demo

For more information about We Alone and other current digital works, contact sally@goatandmonkey.co.uk