The Woman Who Gave You Journey Returns With a VR Fairy Tale

"Not everything that happens in your life is good," Robin Hunicke says. "But everything that happens is a part of your story." We're sitting in a small apartment across the street from the LA Convention Center the week of E3 2017, talking about her new game, Luna. It's quiet and heartfelt, which should come as no surprise: before founding studio Funomena in 2013 with fellow developer Martin Middleton, Hunicke was a producer on the incredibly personal and wildly expressive PlayStation 3 title Journey. Now, Funomena seeks out experimental technology, new ways to design and showcase interactive work—while the company has utilized AR-capable phones and Fitbits in its games, Luna is its first foray into virtual reality.

As I don the Oculus Rift and take the two Touch controllers into my hands, Hunicke explains the premise: a bird has been tricked into eating a part of the moon, a culinary transgression that knocks nature out of balance. After realizing the error of its ways, the bird discovers that other animals were tricked in the same way, and sets out to find its way home. Luna, then, is a game about learning to move forward and set things right. "It's important that we make fairytales, that we make legends about learning from your mistakes," Hunicke says. "About transformation through trauma, through disease, through unknowing. Because that's how life really works."