For this unit, our team wants to explore avatar customization and the potential it has for revealing or obscuring identity. We have found inspiration in the game commonly played among friends under different names like “Werewolf” or “Murderer.” The basic structure of the game is as follows: first, each player is assigned a role. A crime has been committed, so one or two people are assigned the roles of criminals. These are the major roles, since the objective of the game is for the other players to find out who the real criminals are. Each round there is a vote and whoever is accused by the most people in the group is “killed” in the night (which means they can no longer speak). If the innocent people kill both criminals, they win. If the criminals remain with the same number of innocent people, they win. 

Different versions of this game have different roles. Some include detectives like in the murderer version, and some include villagers as in the werewolf version. We have decided to make the emotional core of the story one of lightheartednesses for friends to be able to socialize and be jovial. The narrative will be set on an island, and the friends will start out around a campfire. The roles will be as follows: a shaman, a spirit, a healer, and a seer. Each role has its own unique powers. The “crime” in this version will be a shapeshifting. During the night, the shaman in the friend-group has turned one of the other friends into an animal. 

After being assigned their roles, the players will be able to customize their avatars as to divert or attract attention to certain features and hide their identity. The shaman’s unique power is that he can customize the avatar of every player after the first round, but only once. The spirit player is unable to be shapeshifted by the shaman. The healer can speak with the shapeshifted animals, and the seer has clearer visions than the rest. 

Traditionally, after each vote, there is “night,” where every player sleeps and the “murderer” commits another crime, i.e. the person voted to be “killed” is taken care of in the night. For our version, we will be expanding on the avatar theme and include a dream sequence of the shapeshifting episode. This will be shown in 360 video. The avatar of the shaman player will be distorted in each “night” sequence, but will slowly become clearer as the game progresses. This is why the seer has the special gift of being able to see the avatar with more clarity (but the other players don’t know if they can trust them anyway). 

We want to include an MR app that will allow you to potentially place your vote, inviting users to take off their headsets and discuss. Beyond this, and perhaps more importantly, it will allow you to customize the scene. Whatever you place in the MR app will appear in the virtual scene. This can be done to incriminate people or just mess around with your friends. 

This will be a non-linear narrative since the roles will change in each game, but the backdrop for the main “crime” or shapeshifting will be the same, and done in 360 video. In the end, it is revealed who the shaman is and the players can explore the space, since there are a lot of world-building opportunities with this concept.