A single-player fantasy RPG, where players solve puzzles in a virtual reality environment, and follow the story of Ruby, a magical marble given life, as she solves the mystery of the world hidden inside a Rube Goldberg machine.

A Rube Goldberg machine is a contraption that is deliberately over-engineered with many parts to perform a simple task in a complicated fashion, generally including a chain reaction.

'Ruby and the Goldberg Machine' takes the playful spirit of these engineering marvels, to create a game with a fantasy narrative, sculpted around a central character. The premise of the game follows Ruby as she finds herself inside a broken world made of mechanical parts and contraptions, which she must fix in order to escape.

You play as a helper to Ruby. From a third-person perspective you use VR to navigate around each level, fixing and solving mechanical parts so they can work as a Rube Goldberg Machine, allowing Ruby to travel through on the path you created.

Each level is designed in a reflecting a steam punk styled universe. Beginning fairly simple, it gradually introduces to the player the dynamics and concepts of how the game works. As the player becomes accustomed to more complicated controls and dynamics, more challenging and larger levels are opened up - which include multiple doors and pathways being revealed, requiring the player to use their puzzle solving skills in order to get Ruby to unlock them.

At the start of each level you are shown where Ruby is (the beginning), and where she wants to go (the destination). You are then free to interact, move, turn and adjust certain objects in order to make a working path for Ruby to get through and clear the level.

When you are ready to give it a trail run, if the contraption fails, Ruby dies, and you are given the option to continue, which re-spawns Ruby back to where she last started. Along the way Ruby collects Gold laid on the paths she travels - this is a measure of your game completion, and as the game progresses, so does the string of pearls narrative.

Platform: HTC Vive on PC/Mac.
Target Audience: General audiences.

Reference Images:
http://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-tiniest-rube-goldber...