I Made a VR Game that Makes You Sick ON PURPOSE

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]VR is terrible to play. Not for me, but a lot of people experience terrible headaches and motion sickness when they strap one of these things onto their face. For example, my fiance here can't play any VR games that have a ton of stuff moving around without hot flashes, dizziness, all the motion sickness stuff. And after some research, it seems that the one solution to get rid of your motion sickness for good is just to play VR until your body eventually figures things out. But for some people, that could be literal weeks before it's gone.

[00:00:26]If only there was some sort of a one-and-done solution. You can see where I'm going with this. If I take all the things that cause motion sickness in VR and then crank it up like crazy, then after just a few minutes, the person will have taken in so much motion sickness that it'll either be cured or they'll feel so bad that the perception of what motion sickness is has been completely ruined and they'll never feel motion sick ever again. And to put this theory to the test, once I'm done, my fiance's going to play it and we're going to see if it cures her motion sickness forever.

[00:00:55]>> Oh my my head hurts.

[00:00:57]>> The only real flaw to my plan at this point is, yes, I'm a game developer, but I've never actually made a VR game. So, after hooking up my headset to my computer, enabling developer mode on my headset, and creating a new project, I'm officially in the metaverse. To get you started, Unreal Engine has this template project set up with some basic things already. Like I've got some hands here and then they have this motion sickness friendly teleport movement. We will be fixing that. And then if I come over to this table, we've got some basic interactions like I can pick up these blocks and then I can use these blasters. But if I'm going to make the most motion sickness-inducing game ever, we got a lot of work to do.

[00:01:32]>> Before I did anything too crazy, I wanted to start with something kind of simple. So, I decided to make a distance grab system. The classic VR force pull, if you will. First, I wrote some code that detects whether or not my hand is pointing at something and then if it is, it draws a sphere around it. Then I made it where when I close my hand, the object will actually come towards me and let me pick it up. This already felt pretty cool, but it felt a little bit rigid since I was just moving the object towards my hand over a set period of time. So, after doing a little bit of coding, I eventually got to work with actual physics, and this made it way cooler cuz it can actually bump into things when it's on its way to you, and it just felt more natural. Plus, now I can throw stuff around and then pull it back towards me like I was wielding Thor's hammer, which was just super satisfying. At this point, I was feeling pretty confident with how VR development works, and having a ton of fun just throwing things around and catching them, but none of this is going to cure motion sickness anytime soon. So, I decided it's time to tackle the movement system. When it comes to VR motion sickness, movement is usually the main culprit. Your body gets really confused when your eyes tell you that you're moving, but in reality, you're just standing completely [music] still. And so, if I want to do this right, I need to figure out how to have as much incorrect movement as possible. And after looking through some different options like joystick movement or Gorilla Tag movement, I remembered something that happened to me a few years ago. You know how I said I had never experienced VR motion sickness before? I lied. Because the first time I played Echo VR, I was very quickly humbled. Echo VR is basically just ultimate frisbee, but in space, so there's zero gravity. And though it feels really awesome to play, if you're not used to it, it's very disorienting.

[00:03:02]But, disorienting is what we want, so I decided to add a similar movement system to my game. First, I added a sphere to the player to act as their head collision, and since my character's camera is attached to that sphere, wherever the sphere goes, my camera goes as well, which means right now I just fall to the floor. To fix that, I just have to disable gravity on the sphere, and then add in some code that detects if there's anything near my hand when I hit the grab button, and then if there is, it lets me climb around and throw myself off of it. There was still one big problem, though. If I accidentally threw myself the wrong way, then I would just slowly fade away [music] into the abyss forever.

[00:03:36]Then I remembered I can just take the headset off, and so I did that and made a new map, but this time I made it a box so that I can't just go flying out of it. It still felt pretty empty, though, so I added in a ton of pillars that I could grab onto, and now I had a nice level that I could start playing around and experimenting with. Now that I had my movement set up, I needed some things to do. So, I ended up bringing back the distance grab from earlier and decided I wanted to make the game a zero-gravity first-person shooter. I really love the gunplay of Superhot and how you have to constantly switch out your weapons, and I want to add that to my game where once your gun was out of ammo, you had to figure out how to get a new one. And since the force pull grab is how you're going to get the majority of your weapons, I want to make it look a little bit better cuz right now it's just like debug stuff and that that looks bad. So, I replaced this debug sphere with a blue glow on the object that you're currently trying to grab. And then I added this particle effect that happens whenever you pull it towards you that looks like a sort of magnet force. So, now I can grab stuff, throw myself around, throw my pistol, pull it back to me and catch it, and then Yeah, it's it's really lame. The default Unreal Engine pistol shoots out these little Nerf bullets, which is fine, but we need something with a little more juice. So, really quickly I whipped up some VFX and sound design, and now you call that a gun?

[00:04:46]This is a gun.

[00:04:49]This was cool, but I wanted to take it a bit further to really amplify the motion sickness. And since you're literally just floating in space, I thought it would be fun to add some crazy knockback. This ended up being a really cool game design moment because I made it where if you hold onto a wall with your other hand, then you won't take any knockback, but if you're just floating and shoot the gun, then you're going to take a ton of knockback. Lastly, I made it where the gun explodes after shooting it five times to force the player to constantly find new ones and keep them moving and engaging with all the fun motion sickness systems. But as of now, that's still a big problem because they don't have anything to shoot at. The last thing I needed were some enemies to help apply some constant pressure. So, I opened up Blender and then I closed Blender and then I found this free one online because I didn't have time to make one [music] myself. Instead, of course, I spent all that time rigging and animating this guy from scratch instead of using free animations online because I I Listen, I put him in the level, he looked really cool. I It it it just happened. And so, after a little bit of animation programming to make his body point towards a specific point, some really advanced AI programming to let him know when a player is nearby, as well as a little bit of sound design for a final touch. Whenever you get close to him in game, this is what it looks like.

[00:05:54]And then lastly, to add to the motion sickness, I made it where you get a ton of screen shake and knockback whenever you get hit to hopefully incentivize not not getting hit. At this point, I had all the pieces I need for the game, but it still doesn't feel quite right. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot going on here that would give some people some crazy motion sickness, but some people getting crazy motion sick isn't enough.

[00:06:14]When Lea takes off his headset, I don't want her to feel nauseous. I want her to never have to worry about ever being motion sick ever again. And then, I remembered something from my earlier testing. While I was initially setting up the zero gravity movement, something happened which might change everything.

[00:06:28]I started tumbling around uncontrollably and got so dizzy that I nearly fell out of my chair. That's not a joke, that actually happened. This is a recording of me at 3:00 a.m. But this wasn't just a weird bug, this was physics. You see, when most VR games do zero gravity movement, they simulate physics on the player's locations so that they kind of bounce around, but there's also one important thing that they do. They lock the player's rotation so that they always stay upright. I did the same because that's how a lot of other games and tutorials I saw did it, and I needed attention to this video somehow. And so, it was time to do something that no developer has ever been willing to do before. I'm ItzRascal, and I'm about to enter the spin zone with zero gravity in one, two, three.

[00:07:12]This right here was so much worse than I could have ever imagined. Look at how awful this is to watch on your screen, and imagine it being less than an inch from both of your eyeballs. By the time I was done testing this thing, adding in all my sound design, making a new level, and fixing a ton of bugs, I have come to the conclusion that this is absolutely terrible. I genuinely think I might be immune to motion sickness after how many hours I spent tumbling around. It was so terrible, I got headaches, I felt so dizzy, I didn't know what way was up. I hurt my hand smacking things so many times. I have a small dent on my desk now from this controller. The fact I feel this bad and I'm not even one to get motion sick from VR is enough to tell me that giving this to other people is just an absolutely terrible idea.

[00:07:55]>> Leah, it's done.

[00:07:57]>> Just come in here.

[00:07:57]>> I want to go to bed.

[00:07:58]>> No, no, no, no. Okay, I just just sign sign here, okay? I I'm I figured out how we're going to cure your motion sickness.

[00:08:06]>> Okay.

[00:08:06]>> But before we do that, I need you to play a game that would normally make you motion sick to make sure that that we actually have some some benchmarks.

[00:08:14]Yeah, just put that on. Okay. How you feeling right now?

[00:08:20]>> Uh pretty okay. I'm going to go for the more challenging one.

[00:08:25]>> Cuz you're a pro gamer?

[00:08:26]>> Cuz I think that will be worse for motion sickness. Ooh.

[00:08:32]That's pretty tall.

[00:08:33]>> You got this.

[00:08:35]>> No.

[00:08:39]How do they do that? I think I'm a weak monkey. Yeah, it's getting pretty bad now.

[00:08:43]>> Okay. How bad How bad would you say?

[00:08:45]>> Um I feel like maybe a four.

[00:08:49]>> Four, okay.

[00:08:50]>> Okay, it's getting a little worse.

[00:08:51]>> [sighs] >> Oh, no.

[00:08:54]I have to fall?

[00:08:55]>> No, you just got to jump. Just jump down.

[00:08:57]>> Okay.

[00:08:57]>> And play around for a little bit and then I and I think you're good.

[00:09:04]>> Ooh.

[00:09:05]>> Ooh.

[00:09:05]>> Yeah, that was a little bit. Probably up to like a six now. Let me go down this slide.

[00:09:10]>> Okay, okay.

[00:09:11]>> It sucks cuz like I can see how I think I would have fun playing this game, but I don't think I could actually play it.

[00:09:17]>> Okay, are you ready to have your motion sickness cured?

[00:09:21]>> I'm a little scared, but if you think you can cure me >> I figured what better way to cure motion sickness than more motion sickness.

[00:09:32]>> What?

[00:09:32]>> You just need to survive I mean you just need to play the game for like five minutes. No, play the game for like 5 minutes.

[00:09:38]>> Oh my It's already going.

[00:09:41]Oh my I can't I can't even see where I'm going.

[00:09:46]>> How are you feeling?

[00:09:46]>> Wait, where's the ending to it?

[00:09:50]I I feel like the old people [music] that put on a VR for the first time.

[00:09:57]And I'm trying not to be like that. Oh no, I don't have a gun.

[00:10:02]>> There you go, nice.

[00:10:04]>> Oh >> Nice.

[00:10:11]Nice.

[00:10:11]>> Clean.

[00:10:15]>> [laughter] >> I do think Gorilla Tag would be nothing after this, though.

[00:10:21]Oh my Can they leave me alone for a second?

[00:10:27]Geez.

[00:10:29]>> Oh last I got >> Oh, that was cool.

[00:10:33]My head hurts.

[00:10:35]>> I'm not. You're doing good.

[00:10:37]>> I want to break.

[00:10:39]I think I'm done.

[00:10:40]>> You still have 3 minutes left, though.

[00:10:42]>> No.

[00:10:43]>> You Oh are you okay?

[00:10:45]>> I'm sorry.

[00:10:45]>> No, it's okay. It's okay. We we can stop. We can stop.

[00:10:48]Here, here, get get some water. I'm sorry.

[00:10:50]>> Thanks. I'm sorry. I didn't want to ruin your video.

[00:10:53]>> it's okay. I I don't know what I'm supposed to do there, though.

[00:10:56]>> I could try it again.

[00:10:57]>> No, no, no. Wait.

[00:10:59]I think I have a better idea.

[00:11:03]I think I'm starting to feel a lot better.

[00:11:05]>> But are you sure you don't have to do what you don't want to?

[00:11:08]>> I think it's going well. I think my motion sickness is getting better.

[00:11:10]>> Really?

[00:11:11]>> Yeah.

[00:11:11]>> My game worked?

[00:11:12]>> Yeah.

[00:11:14]Yeah.

[00:11:17]>> Woah.

[00:11:18]>> Oh my gosh.

[00:11:19]Wait.

[00:11:20]>> How'd you improve so fast?

[00:11:21]>> like I'm getting a lot better.

[00:11:24]>> And how's your motion sickness?

[00:11:25]>> It's actually a lot better, I think.

[00:11:28]Feels like I've taken in so much motion sickness that it's either being cured or my perception of what motion sickness is has been completely ruined, and so I'm never going to say I ever feel motion sick again.

[00:11:39]>> And if any of you at home want to get over your motion sickness, play my game. And that's how I solved VR motion sickness forever. If you want to see me work on this game more, be sure to subscribe, and let me know any ideas you have in the comments. Anywho, I hope you guys enjoyed, and I'll see you next [music] time. Bye-bye.

[00:12:01]>> [music]