Mindfield is a narrative short VR project about PTSD. It opens in a menacing, striped red prison type cylinder with an animated man on a stage. Then the story transitions to the kitchen of a house where the same man hears a crying child. His partner calls down to him that the baby might need a toy. The man looks at the toy and it triggers a memory.

Now we are in the middle of war. The city we are in has been bombed already and continues to get bombed. The man runs onto the street where he sees this same stuffed toy from the kitchen scene. He is clearly traumatized as he breaks down in the middle of the street, sobbing.

The scene fades to black to transition us back to the kitchen where his partner comes down to comfort him. She asks him to tell her what is wrong, to open up to her, and to not keep things to himself.

The narrative is short, maybe five minutes and it ends with a PSA (public service announcement) about post-traumatic stress among Veterans.

I enjoy some of the animation in the home where it looks almost hand drawn in areas. A lot of times animation in VR projects strives for realism, but this animation has a less real quality. It isn’t as detailed as some projects but I didn’t mind that. It gives some of the scenes, like when you look out the slider door to their backyard, it gives it a childlike quality that does fit the story.

I didn’t connect with the emotional core of the story because I think that the performance lacks some nuance. The story is vague about the trauma though of course we gather that it is from his time at war. However, we know nothing about this man except that he experienced trauma. Him sobbing is the most obvious way to tell us that, but it also didn’t feel true. It felt like it would take more to get him sobbing like that, or that we should have known something else about him. What does work though is how they show the horrors in his headspace like in the opening and in the war sequence. 

I very much enjoyed the end credits where they showed videos of the crew waving to us and then behind the scenes of making the projects (such as the actors in their voice over studio). 

Overall, I enjoy seeing narratives in VR and this one is quick and worth the watch.

Technical Specs

3D Animation

3DoF – you are able to look around but not move through the space

360 Degrees – the environment is all around you

Not interactive – you cannot interact with any objects in the space