We were given the assignment to prepare a short demo of roughly 1-2 minutes for an event called MadNight in Amsterdam, with a ‘mad scientist’ theme. With this prompt, I decided that it would be best to try and test what sort of interactions we could use to encourage users to explore a small environment. The demo built for this event was built by myself and a teammate in Meta Horizons, based on a concept story I drafted for it.
My story began outside of the experience - myself and the others were dressed up like Rick from Rick & Morty, and we would actively pull participants in and ask them for their help.
Our dear Morty went missing and he was last seen disppearing into a portal. We can't just go exploring alone, who knows what we'll find?!
Users then start in the iconic garage of the duo, filled with easter eggs that call back to the show.
In the background, the green portal swirls and glows, waiting for someone to step through. On the other side,
they would find a different world filled with zombie Morty's - surely Morty isn't here?
They fight their way through the world and jump through another portal at the end, ending back up in the gargage..
..Only to find that Morty is waiting there already.
Outside of the experience, we hand them a business card with the title 'official portal license'
which has an AR code to make
a picture with Rick & Morty, bringing the experience full-circle.
While this experience was certainly fun to draft, put together and test, using guns in an advertisement isn't
exactly 'kosher', we were jokingly informed.
Of course we realised this, and had no problems with abandoning this POC - we had already gained experience from it.