This is one of my favorite narratives in VR! It’s a zombie love story with fantastic animation. It is like entering a Henry Selick Nightmare Before Christmas fantasy with dazzling colors (mostly blue and pink, with gold light from the sun). 

Humans and zombies coexist in a world with no light after the sun decides to hide. We hear the story from a gravedigger’s perspective. He introduces us to Gloomy, a zombie he buried. Gloomy is different from other zombies, he has a light within. Still, Gloomy is not perfect and does occasionally eat people.

Nina is an adventurous human child. Her uncle hates zombies and is on a mission to kill every one of them. Gloomy falls for Nina and brings her a light that he made, a sun just for her. They go on fantastic adventures and fall deeply in love. But the world does not want them together. They need to hide away in darkness. I won’t tell you how it ends.

The story is broken up into three parts because even though it is one complete narrative, it is still difficult to watch more than 10 minutes of a narrative at a time when you are not a character making decisions in the story. With these chapters, you at least get to choose when to watch the next part, though they really should be watched all together.

Many narratives in VR use voice over narration to acknowledge your presence without breaking the 4th wall of the narrative or making you an actual character in the story. With voice over, it seems like the narrator is talking to you and this is an effective tool. It also works because it is strange when characters talk to each other, because then you are either looking in the wrong spot, or you assume there should be editing and editing doesn’t work the same way when you make use of a 360 degree space. 

Gloomy Eyes does allow the characters to speak sometimes, but the characters speak in a vaguely foreign sounding clown kind of speak, like minions. Again, this is a way to get around some of the limitations of narratives in 360 degrees and it completely works in this narrative.

The animation is gorgeous, the 3D makes it exciting and new feeling, and the story is moving. Please check this one out if you can.

Technical Specs

Animated

6DoF – can look around and move around the space, but you don’t really want to move around too much

3D 360 Degree video – the video is in 3-D and surrounds you, though many scenes take place in one area (not behind you)

No interactive elements

Voice over narration – By Colin Ferrell