How Igloo helped deliver narrative gaming experiences at Sheffield DocFest

A trip to Sheffield Doc Fest Alternate Realities - with competition live from an Igloo immersive room

Sheffield DocFest Alternate Realities is the festival's dedicated strand for immersive and interactive non-fiction. It showcases pioneering digital artworks that push the boundaries of traditional documentary storytelling using Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), immersive installations, and multi-world gaming platforms. 

This year’s competition, which is designed in collaboration with Sheffield Hallam and the British Council, saw teams compete to build narrative-driven immersive gaming experiences, which were then showcased to judges from inside an Igloo immersive space. 

Five teams were selected from a global callout, with each travelling to Sheffield to build, test and deliver their gaming experiences over a 2.5-day period. Each experience was totally unique, ranging from an immersive journey of a child lost in the Yorkshire Peaks to a 1970s ice cream van simulator. 

The experiences, which were built using a variety of tools, including the Unity game engine, could then be easily dropped into Igloo Core Engine via its native software integrations. 

Igloo was chosen for this reason – compatibility. Because of Igloo Core Engine’s industry-leading list of external software integrations, it could be relied on to have each experience work natively within the space. 

Additionally, it’s True Perspective feature meant that content was automatically formatted to fit correctly in the space, with no distortion. This saved valuable time and resources that would otherwise have been spent on extremely technical adjustments to ensure correct proportionality. 

To learn more about Igloo and our software, click the button below to arrange a free demo. 

Book a demo

And you can see the Igloo space in action at DocFest Alternate Realities right here: 

Back