DESCRIPTIONThe Kaiser Permanente BART Simulator (tm) was an interactive experience created as an installation for a Kaiser Permanente activation at the Super Bowl in 2026. The goal of the experience is to keep the train “on balance” by physically leaning on a custom balance board controller. Players must lean into turns to keep the train at top speed in order to get to SFO on time.
The game was created from zero in just under three weeks. The full world is roughly 6 by 6 kilometers. It includes custom input (the physical balance board) and websockets networking for an assistant to start and reset the experience.
For this project, I worked a freelancer for the creative technology studio Master of Shapes. They created the initial game design and mockups for the experience. I was responsible for the engineering, world/level design, art implementation, and audio implementation.
TECHNOLOGYUnreal Engine 5.7, Unreal PCG, Houdini, Blender
DEVELOPMENTBecause the experience is “on rails” we were able to design the world around a series of hero shots and build the world around these shots. This design methodology was very fruitful both because it made the experience very visually satisfying and because it provided a much-needed design constraint.
To create a world of this scale in such a short period of time, we iterated extremely rapidly from blockout to world creation. We leveraged as many procedural tools as we could: we used Houdini and Houdini Digital Assets for many of the buildings, while kitbashing others. We also used Unreal’s Procedural Content Generation (PCG) tools for things like roads and houses in the distance.