The Premise
It started with a simple question!
What if a familiar place suddenly felt… Wrong?
That’s where Unit 313, our VR escape room, was born.
We set out to create a short but immersive experience where users would be pulled into a mystery, not through heavy dialogue or jump scares, but through environmental storytelling, emotional pacing, and spatial transformation.
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It is an immersive VR experience where the player becomes Rachel’s best friend, who travels to Montréal to find her friend after she mysteriously goes missing. Trapped inside Rachel’s abandoned apartment, the player must uncover hidden clues and escape before it’s too late.
The Story
It all begins with a headline.
Watching the TV, the best friend stumbles upon a news article:​
“Local Woman Missing: Police Investigating Apartment in Ongoing Case.”​
Her heart freezes. The missing woman is her friend.
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The article gives little away. No suspects, no signs of forced entry. Just silence. Desperate for answers, she decides to go to the apartment herself.
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The apartment feels oddly still when she arrives. The door slides open and inside, everything looks familiar. The pastel cushions on the couch. The photographs on the wall. The faint trace of perfume still in the air. It’s the same apartment she remembers, yet the weight in her chest grows heavier with every step.
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She walks deeper into the space - past the couch, past the memories - until her eyes land on something that makes her stop cold. A small gift box, resting neatly on the coffee table in the living room. Her breath catches. It’s the box she gave her friend months ago. So why is it here, so carefully placed, almost… waiting?
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As she approaches the box and opens it, the silence sharpens.
The door slams shut behind her. The lights flicker, the windows darken, and suddenly the familiar pastel world begins to decay before her eyes. The cozy apartment warps into its haunted reflection - paint peeling, furniture rotting, shadows twisting unnaturally. The safe space she once knew is gone.
Now, she realizes, this isn’t just about finding her friend.
It’s about surviving long enough to escape.
Crafting the Experience!
Crafting the Experience!
Before we built the 3D environment, we created two moodboards to define the emotional contrasts of the apartment. These helped us align visuals, lighting, and atmosphere with the story.
Cozy Apartment Moodboard
​The starting point of the experience needed to feel safe, personal, and lived-in - almost like stepping into someone’s memory.
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Color Palette: Hues of brown, grey and blue.
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Textures: Smooth fabrics, polished wood, clean walls and floral wallpapers.
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Lighting: Natural daylight, warm lamps, open windows
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Atmosphere: Calm, intimate, and minimal; a space that feels like home.
Haunted Apartment Moodboard
Once the gift box is approached, the space shifts into its dark reflection. We wanted the haunted version to feel unsettling while still recognizable.
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Color Palette: Muted greys, blacks, dark greens, faint red accents
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Textures: Cracked walls, aged wood, and peeling paint
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Lighting: Flickering bulbs, harsh shadows.
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Atmosphere: Eerie, cold, unwelcoming; the familiar made threatening
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Inspiration: Abandoned houses, psychological horror films, distorted realism in haunted spaces.
Mapping the Experience: Flow and Journey
To design an immersive VR escape room, we mapped both the logical flow of user interactions and the emotional journey throughout the experience.
The user flow outlines the sequence of actions a player takes inside the apartment - from entering the space, noticing familiar objects, approaching the gift box, triggering the transformation, to exploring the haunted apartment and searching for an escape. This structured flow ensured that the experience felt coherent and intuitive, guiding the player seamlessly through the story.
While the flow defines what happens, the journey map captures how the user feels at each stage. Emotions shift from comfort and curiosity in the cozy apartment to tension and fear as the apartment transforms. By mapping these emotional beats alongside interactions, we were able to strategically place visual cues, lighting changes, and sound design to heighten immersion and suspense.
Designing the Apartment!
We designed a studio apartment with a soft, feminine, lived-in feel. Built in SketchUp, it featured:
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A living room with clean, minimal furniture with the gift box
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A small kitchenette
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A bedroom with the bookshelves
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A bathroom (non-interactive)
When the transformation is triggered, the same layout remains, but everything feels different.
Building in VR
We developed the experience using Unreal Engine. The key features included:
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A portal transition system triggered by proximity to the gift box
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Basic interaction (opening the apartment door)
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Scene swapping without disorienting the player
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Use of lighting and textures to create an emotional shift
We kept the interaction minimal — just enough to engage, not overwhelm.
We created a short trailer to set the tone of the experience. It begins with the apartment in its warm, familiar state, then slowly shifts as the camera zooms into Rachel’s photo. The lights flicker, and the scene transforms — the wall appears cracked, the photo hangs askew. This simple transition captures the haunting turn of the story and conveys the dual nature of the space.
"Designing for VR is about designing for feeling"
The journey begins as the player steps into the apartment, where everything feels warm and familiar. Soft music drifts through the air, carrying the weight of memories, as they explore the space with ease. Their attention soon lingers on a small gift box, a detail that draws them closer. But the moment they approach, the air shifts. The door locks, the light flickers, and the apartment transforms. What once felt safe becomes haunting, layered with unease and urgency. From here, the player must search for a way out, uncovering hidden clues scattered within the altered environment.
To convey this duality, we created a full VR gameplay walkthrough that shows the experience from the player’s perspective.​