"PERSISTE" is a VR educational game built on one premise: mental disorders are invisible until you know what to look for. The player enters a room inhabited by monsters, each a physical manifestation of a specific disorder. To progress, the player reads the environment: finds the clues, names the condition and chooses a way to intervene.
The goal was empathy through mechanics. The game gives players a reason to slow down, look carefully and recognize patterns they might otherwise walk past.
What if you could see what you usually miss?
Each monster corresponds to a specific disorder, and none of them is labeled. The player finds a room: objects arranged in particular ways, light falling at particular angles, sounds or silences in the space. The monster is present, but the player's first job is to read the room, and only then confront the creature.
When the player identifies the disorder and chooses the right intervention, the monster reveals itself fully and the encounter resolves. A wrong choice sends the player back into the room to look again.
"Nothing in the room is truly hidden. It just asks you to look carefully."
Environment as argument
The environment carried most of the communication. The team built each room in Blender around one disorder, as a spatial mood: the objects, where they sit, what condition they're in and how they relate to each other had to suggest something without stating it.
In Unity, the interaction layer is built around a tool-selection mechanic. Wrong answers redirect rather than punish. A monster can easily turn a condition into a caricature, so the design stays on the side of education, not judgment, and keeps the experience open enough for players to reflect rather than just react.
"PERSISTE" was completed as a functional prototype within an interdisciplinary university team. It is a working test of an idea: that environmental storytelling in VR can carry a sensitive topic through slow attention instead of shock.