Dear friends and fans of our games,
My name is Peter, and I work as the Creative Director and the Head of Development for The House of Da Vinci VR at Blue Brain Games. The idea of sharing a few lines of text with our fans came from the interest in devlogs that my colleagues Viktor, Honza, and Sari have been writing for our upcoming game, The House of Tesla. Six entries have been published so far, and if you’ve missed them, I highly recommend reading them. They provide many interesting insights into the development of this anticipated game.
So, welcome to the first devlog dedicated to the development of The House of Da Vinci VR!
How the Idea for VR Actually Came About
To begin, it’s good to look back at how the idea of creating our game for VR devices came about. For that, we need to dive into the past, specifically the year 2018. During that time, following the success of The House of Da Vinci, we were already intensely working on the second installment. One day, Richard, a programmer and our then-biggest VR expert came to me wanting to show me something. He handed me his first-generation Oculus Rift, one of the few VR headsets on the market, and I put it on.
I was immediately drawn into a magical, fantastic, and breathtaking world that I knew well. I found myself right in the middle of a scene we were completing for The House of Da Vinci 2. I was standing in a high vaulted hallway of a canal under the Castello Estense fortress, from which Giacomo was escaping to his freedom. It was absolutely stunning. I felt like I could touch everything; it all looked so real. I was there – in person!
The experience was so intense that I couldn’t get it out of my head. I was determined; we had to develop The House of Da Vinci for VR as soon as possible! I was so enthusiastic about the idea, I almost heard heavenly choirs. However, reality soon brought me back to earth.
At the time, the development of HDV2 was in full swing, but our team was not large. There were only seven of us, and that certainly did not allow for us to consider developing two games simultaneously. The only option would have been to choose between a classic PC game or VR, which was not possible given the advanced stage of HDV2 development. Additionally, we didn’t want to disappoint our fans who were eagerly awaiting the sequel. Another problem was the complexity of developing a VR game. We soon realized that it was a very specific process, and we still didn’t know all that we would have to deal with.
Ultimately, after weighing all the pros and cons, we agreed to temporarily shelve the idea of VR, but we definitely didn’t abandon it. We didn’t know then that it would be six long years before we returned to it.
During this period, we were fully occupied with completing HDV2 for mobiles, PC, and consoles. We also navigated the challenging period of COVID-19, then created HDV3 in all versions, and managed to expand our team to 30 people. With such a number of developers, future planning becomes much easier! Our ambition to work on two games simultaneously thus took on realistic contours. And so, at the Blue Brain Games, two development teams were formed.
The first team eagerly began working on a new game – The House of Tesla. The enthusiasm and passion of my colleagues for this theme brought fresh energy to the game, and it’s already evident that “Tesla” can stand proudly alongside our trilogy about Master Leonardo. Our second team, consisting of experienced developers who went through the development of the entire The House of Da Vinci series, finally began working on an unspecified VR game. And when I say “unspecified,” I really mean that at this point, it wasn’t certain at all that it would be The House of Da Vinci VR. Since our last flirtation with VR, a lot of water has passed under the bridge, and many interesting games have been released. Games that caught our attention inspired us but also became a warning about how not to do things. Equipped with the energy and the desire to create the best VR game we could, we first needed to clarify what we actually wanted to offer our players.
We knew we wanted to deliver a perfect VR experience, fully utilizing the potential of this platform. We aimed for an excellent story, high-resolution graphics, and interesting and well-designed locations. We wanted players to use both hands when interacting with the environment while minimizing glitches when applying physics. But what type of game would meet these criteria? We discussed strategy games, considered sci-fi themes, and pondered many other ideas, but in the end, the idea of bringing the entire The House of Da Vinci trilogy into the VR world appealed to us the most.
Someone might think that we took the easy route of converting the original game. After all, we had the game ready; it just needed a bit of polishing, some improvements here and there, and the VR version would be done. However, we didn’t want to go down this path. We started the conversion from the ground up, - meaning every single puzzle, mini-game, text, as well as all graphics in the whole game, were done from scratch. This concluded into something that we can proudly say will be a completely new and fresh gaming experience even for players who have played the original game multiple times.
And friends, that’s all for the introductory devlog. You can expect more interesting behind-the-scenes information in the upcoming devlogs. For example, our lead designer Honza will guide you through the intricacies of designing a VR game, and our art director Pavel will describe how creating graphics for VR differs from creating graphics for a classic PC game. In the next devlog, you can look forward to insights from our programmer Richard, who, along with his old Oculus Rift, was the original initiator of the VR game idea.
Peter Kubek
Creative Director
Blue Brain Games