Everift | Devpost

Everift Landscape
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Inspiration

Our inspiration for this new experience set in Gravi universe comes from the recently released extraciton shooter Arc Raiders. Our current movement system seemed feasible with the fast-paced and exciting game logic of an extraction shooter. From that point, we decided to shift the gameplay, core loop, and the lore of Gravi. Our community loved the identiy and the creativity behind the game. This encouraged us to keep some certain things and build something new over it. Thus, Everift was born.

What it does

How we built it

Everift is built on Gravi's exploration, social gameplay, and lore with a new core loop: prepare -> explore -> extract -> upgrade -> repeat. We developed modular biomes, dynamic world events such as meteor showers, gravitational anomalies, corruption leaks, and room for procedural variations in the future. Gravi's Nexus got a makeover to allow better social experiences between each run and to allow players to upgrade their Gravits through permanent skill trees, durability-based gadgets, and meaningful choices tied to Tokens, and Nano Credits. We redesigned the combat system, which Gravi didn't have much to begin with, except hand-to-hand boxing-like combat. Everift has responsive melee interactions, ranged weapons, and inventory-based ammo logic. We decided to switch to a more intuitive and easy-to-use inventory system which is simply a backpack. We also implemented a new leveling system with prestige tiers to give long-term goals while keeping the experience accessible for younger audiences.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was transitioning a light social game to a full extraction experience, optimizing physics-heavy traversal in VR, and ensuring combat remained readable and fun. In-game economy needed to be redesigned too. Creating dynamic biomes and events without overwhelming performance budgets also required multiple redesigns and optimization passes.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

Building a new experience over the foundations of an existing universe taught us how crucial player feedback is for shaping VR mechanics. Our target audience needs an intuitive design, simple yet interesting interactions, and fun gameplay. So, we learned the importance of designing systems that are interesting/cool in its core but intuitive, readable under pressure, and comfortable to use in room-scale environments. We also learned how to balance depth with accessibility. While Everift introduces faction-inspired upgrades, dynamic events, and biome-specific dangers, the experience still remains welcoming for newer players.

What's next for Everift

Future plans for Everift includes new biomes, procedural variations, faction-based upgrades, and cooperative missions. Our long-term goal is to build a living VR world that evolves continuously, constantly giving the player something to do within the game to ensure retention, and grows alongside its community.