Every game is the result of thousands of choices. Some of these choices are creative, some technical, and some are about scope and budget. There is nothing more heartbreaking for a game developer than putting sweat and tears into a project only to realize that earlier choices made long ago were not the best choices from the end user’s perspective. In this guest article, VR developer Rein Zobel offers hard-won lessons in creating rich, immersive VR worlds.
Guest article by Rein Zobel
Rein Zobel is the creative director and co-founder of Maru VR, an Estonian studio specializing in immersive VR development. Since 2016, Maru VR has created over 40 location-based VR projects in the fields of education, entertainment, and training. Their debut premium title, “Bootstrap Island,” will be released in early access in 2024, with a full release scheduled for Q1 2026.
VR is a complex market, where successes are hard to come by and failures are all too common. Sadly, most of us don’t have the luxury of extensive prototyping or focus group testing, so we often have to rely on our intuition.
We were lucky in that respect. Before embarking on the development of Bootstrap Island, a hyper-realistic VR survival game inspired by Robinson Crusoe, we spent years creating projects for a variety of clients, from rescue training simulators to location-based tourism experiences. With over 40 projects completed, we had the opportunity to learn and test medium development cycles with short development cycles of 3-6 months.
When we founded the company in 2016, VR was new and our client profile was often vague. This gave us great creative and technical freedom. We experimented with different tools and techniques, such as drone photogrammetry and story branching, and learned a lot from the process. More importantly, we receive direct feedback from our users and observe them in real time as they play, often with live commentary. This became our VR education. Today we are happy to share some points that guide our design principles.
First, here’s an overview of what we’re building.
1. Meet player expectations
VR players come in with strong beliefs and very high expectations. They expect to be amazed from the moment they put on the headset. Unlike traditional games, where players gradually become accustomed to the game, VR requires maximum attention and instantaneous engagement. Wearing a headset is a source of excitement, especially when you put it on for the first time. It may even feel scary because you’re blocking out the real world and leaving yourself vulnerable to what’s about to happen in this strange virtual realm.
The player’s mind and body enter that world from the first second. The illusion quickly crumbles if those first moments don’t feel right, the movement feels off, the visuals break the immersion, or the onboarding drags on. Long non-interactive intros, logo screens, and text instructions may be acceptable in mobile or PC games, but they kill the excitement in VR.
The feedback loop in VR is also very honest. Players don’t write long forum posts to explain what went wrong. They wince, sigh, or take off their headsets.
From this experience, we learned to focus on onboarding first, that is, teach by demonstrating rather than teaching. Frontloading the experience creates a strong first impression that, once achieved, leaves players wanting more.
2. Make interactions real
Once players believe in the world that developers have created for them, they expect it to behave like the real thing. If you lift a stone, it should have weight. Drop the torch and the fire should react.
When something looks interactive but isn’t, it feels like a bug and it feels like reality is broken. Valve founder Gabe Newell once called this “narcissistic injury.” When the world ignores your actions, the player’s sense of agency in the game world is undermined.
This principle guided everything in Bootstrap Island. Avoided fake interactions and UI shortcuts. If an object exists, it must have a purpose or reaction. The more consistent the logic, the stronger the player’s belief in the world. The best moments in VR gaming are when you come up with an idea to try something non-trivial and it actually works. This kind of emergent gameplay gives the world a reactive feel, making players feel smart about figuring out the rules without the need for forced instructions.
3. Realism works
One of the biggest lessons we carried over from previous location-based VR projects is that visual realism amplifies emotional realism.
We’ve seen people laugh, cry, and scream in fear during high-fidelity VR experiences. Some people tried to run away with their headsets on, but fortunately there were no accidents. These types of reactions are rarely triggered by stylized, low-resolution, or abstract environments. That’s not to say that stylization doesn’t work, but when aiming for immersion, realism is a shortcut to the player’s subconscious.
High-quality textures, realistic lighting, correct scale, and natural perspective make a big difference. The human brain wants to believe, and once you believe, all emotions become more intense, including awe, fear, and victory. The promise that you can do anything you want in VR works best when it provides a believable world to interact with.
4. UI is the enemy of immersion
Menus, laser pointers, and floating buttons may be practical, but they don’t belong in VR fantasies. Reminds the player that they are wearing a headset.
Our approach with Bootstrap Island was to eliminate abstraction as much as possible. Need to start a fire? Gather the materials and make your own. Need to learn mechanics? Experiment. The act of discovery becomes part of the story.
This approach not only deepens immersion, but also makes learning the game fun. A feeling of mastery is gained when the player’s hands, rather than menus, drive the experience. Use the world itself as an interface, replacing floating arrows with true curiosity and intuition. It doesn’t prevent you from manually reloading your weapon instead of pressing a single button. That’s why players choose to play VR games in the first place.
5. Audio design is half the experience
It’s often said that 50% of a VR game is good sound design, and they mean it literally.
In VR, audio is not only aesthetically pleasing but also functional. Spatial sound helps players spot hazards, follow clues, and understand what’s happening outside of their field of vision. Every sound tells a story: the crack of a nearby branch, the rumble of thunder, the whisper of the wind through the leaves.
Sound design acts as an invisible hand guiding the player. When a player hits a ripe coconut against sand or a tree, only a dull thud is heard. But when a coconut hits a rock, it makes a juicy crackling sound. This feedback lets players know they are making progress.
We also integrated narration into the game mechanics so that it feels as if a narrator is telling the player’s story. This is a non-invasive way to teach gameplay while fitting naturally into the tone of an adventure book, as if a narrator were describing the events as they happened.
bring everything together
Five lessons became the core of Bootstrap Island: Managing Expectations, Realistic Interactions, Realism, Natural UI, and Sound Design. Together, these formed a systematic, reproducible, and emotionally grounded survival experience.
These principles may sound simple, but they were born out of years of iteration over dozens of projects. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution in VR, these lessons consistently improved both immersion and player satisfaction. The fact that we chose to create a survival game is also no coincidence. The shipwreck setting allows for complex interactions with life and death outcomes, giving a dramatic backdrop to every choice the player makes. Our love of survival stories and classic adventure novels also played a role.
We’ve learned that VR is a unique medium, not just a new platform for old design habits. Creativity, honesty, and boldness are valued, but shortsightedness is swiftly punished. Our goal was not only to create a game that works well in VR, but also to create a game that showcases what the medium is all about.
If you treat VR as an art form in its own right and respect the sensations it brings, you can build worlds that are not only entertaining but also compelling. As storytellers, there is little more we could ask for.
