Hotel Infinity Started As Manifold Garden In VR

If you’re looking for a wow-inducing VR experience, Hotel Infinity from the makers of Manifold Garden is one to make space for.

UploadVR’s reviewer declared the new room-scale VR title “a must-own for anyone interested in understanding the potential of this medium”. Thomas Van Bouwel, the creator of the essential mixed reality game Laser Dance echoed the sentiment by writing he “played through it in one sitting. Highly recommended!”

The creative team behind this “MC Escher-like hotel” in VR is Studio Chyr, a small independent group headquartered in Chicago headed by William Chyr. They previously made Manifold Garden, which launched in 2019 with puzzles set across its “Escher-esque world of impossible architecture”. Carrying an “overwhelmingly positive” rating across its lifetime with a strong fan base behind Manifold Garden, one would understand why the developers started there when attempting to make a VR game.

They quickly realized, however, the gameplay “didn’t translate in a meaningful or innovative way” to VR. So “we went back to the original inspiration: the desire to experience space that’s impossible in the real world. What would experiencing impossible space in VR be like?”

As Hotel Infinity opens minds to VR’s potential, we reached out to Studio Chyr with a few questions to contextualize the achievement.

William Chyr responded over email.

Who made this?

“Hotel Infinity is made by Studio Chyr, a small independent studio headquartered in Chicago. Previously, we made Manifold Garden, which launched in 2019.

At our core, we’re a team of 7, but throughout development we regularly collaborated with specialists during different phases of the project. At peak production we had around 20 people working on the game. And if you include everyone from platform partners, external QA, interns, and consultants who helped us get across the finish line, the total number of contributors is closer to 70.

We did early prototyping and pre-production while we were still porting Manifold Garden to new platforms back in 2021. I would say full production really began in early 2023, when we scaled up the team, so it took about 3 years of development.”

Why did you focus on room-scale VR?

“We originally set out to make Manifold Garden in VR, but it quickly became clear that the game didn’t translate in a meaningful or innovative way. For example, we implemented gravity-changing in VR with teleportation, but it didn’t feel that special or interesting. Likewise, falling through space repeatedly is a big part of Manifold Garden, but that just wasn’t as comfortable in VR.

Instead of adapting Manifold Garden for VR, we went back to the original inspiration: the desire to experience space that’s impossible in the real world. What would experiencing impossible space in VR be like?

The project evolved into its own thing and became Hotel Infinity. We chose to embrace VR completely and design around what makes it unique, which is its ability to immerse the player and create a sense of presence. Natural locomotion became a central pillar of the design, because it allows you to experience impossible spaces in a way that you simply can’t in any other medium.”

What was the single biggest challenge in design?

“Definitely level design and movement. Specifically, making the world feel large and coherent while keeping players inside a 2m x 2m space.

To do that, we had to design environments that loop and fold. We have hallways that bend back on themselves in ways that would be impossible in real life, but VR lets you experience that. There were a lot of technical hurdles that we had to overcome just to be able to pull this off. The game requires a robust portal system, and we also had to get lighting to blend across portals. I’m very proud of what the team accomplished.

We also had to think a lot about physical comfort. Too many turns in the same direction can make players motion sick, so we had to constantly balance how the player moves. You don’t actually need to walk a lot, but you have to see a lot. A huge amount of our work went into crafting the illusion of large, continuous spaces while using subtle cues like furniture placement and railings to show where you can and can’t walk without breaking immersion.

We had to completely rethink the perception of space. The opening lobby is a good example. It went through many iterations to get the flow right. We had to pay attention to the sequence of left turns and right turns, the size of the turns, and making sure that the next area is always foreshadowed, so that the movement through the space feels cohesive.”

What is the team working on now?

“Right now, we are focusing on releasing patches to address some of the key issues that players have identified. We added a visual indicator so that you can see if your playspace guardian is too small, and how much bigger you need to make it. We’ve also made some improvements to reduce flicking and fix bugs. We did also release a game Strata for a new console called Board, that was just announced a few weeks ago. It’s a very different title, where you play with physical pieces on a digital surface.”

Do you plan to add controller-free hand tracking?

“At the moment, we do not have plans to add controller-free hand tracking.”

Hotel Infinity Review: A Standout Example Of True Room-Scale VR

Hotel Infinity is a standout example of true room-scale VR, and a must-own for anyone interested in understanding the potential of this medium.