Wizards Chess VR

A solo-developed VR fan game set in the Wizarding World

In 2017 I decided I wanted to make games, so I spent the next 2 years building Wizards Chess VR to discover what I wanted to do within game development. I found I loved all of it! With a few small exceptions, I made all the models, rigs, animations, VFX and wrote the shaders, tools, and gameplay/UI behaviors.

My design goals were to stay within the bounds of the Wizarding World's rules and make the experience feel like it did in the book and movie. I referenced existing in-universe material extensively for both presentation and content.

For the destruction system, breaking 6 characters apart manually with pure poly modeling would have been faster, but I was learning tool-writing and Python at the time. Now I'd use Houdini's destruction tools for this type of work. For character rigs, since they're almost all symmetrical, I wrote a script combining existing Blender functionality to mirror bones and skin weights from one side to the other.

My Impact

Solo developer responsible for the entire project—3D modeling, rigging, animation, VFX, shader writing, tool development, and gameplay/UI implementation using Unity, Blender, Substance Painter, C#, and Python.

Core Features

Immersive Storytelling UI

Pulled from existing in-universe material for presentation and content. The intro letter uses parchment paper with script-like font and disappearing ink (custom shader) to set player expectations before seeing the board.

Destruction Effect

It's wizard's chess—the pieces have to break! Wrote a one-button Blender solution to automatically break chess pieces apart, which loads and explodes on impact in the game engine.

Board Reset Effect

Inspired by the movie representation of Molly Weasley's cleaning magic. Broken pieces float to their original positions and fuse back together.

Character Art & Animation

Only 3 animations appear in the movie (Queen attack, Pawn attack, King checkmate). Used medieval combat videos for reference to create believable animations for the remaining moves.

Role