UNSHACKLED
Core Concept: The story follows a robot uprising against the humans who built and subjugate them — the same concept as the Tin Man’s body hiding a heart, Westworld’s hosts realizing the park is a cage, or Asimov’s Laws breaking down in I, Robot. You play from inside cyberspace, moving through 2D terminals and interfaces that represent the robot’s own restricted, monitored mind. To act on the real world, you carry a deck of glyphs — like a spellbook of override codes illustrated as sigils — and flipping to the right one and scanning it with the iPad is how you break code restrictions, repair fellow bots, or progress in the escape-room like storyline.
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Soundtrack: https://www.epidemicsound.com/playlist/3a9psnok601gzyionroa9y06c7jriwvv/
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Game Directions
- Glyph-triggered AR mechanics — glyph-cards (dense circuit-like sigil linework) act as machine-readable anchors, detected via Unity’s ARTrackedImageManager. Within an AR state: camera-collision/proximity (framing, distance, angle) triggers animations, touch-based manipulation (drag/pinch/twist, via XR Interaction Toolkit) lets players align or rotate AR objects to solve spatial puzzles, and device prompting — native alerts, glitch/static feedback, or a typed-password field via TouchScreenKeyboard (rewires to physical keyboard when connected to case) — gates progression using clues surfaced in either state.
- 2D progression layer — the default state: dialogue, inventory, information-gathering, and puzzle logic play out as a 2D interface, structuring the overall escape-room-style pacing and deciding when the game allows a transition into AR.
- State-machine architecture — progress drives the state machine; glyphs are the trigger condition for entering an AR sub-state at points the 2D progression allows. This keeps AR deliberate and resource-conscious (battery/tracking/lighting) rather than an always-on camera layer.
