Smell like Home
Multisensory Virtual Reality Experience
“Smell like Home" is a multisensory virtual reality experience exploring concepts of home and belonging through the evocative power of scents embedded in memories, immersing viewers in recreated virtual environments that resonate with emotions and memories related to home. Using an innovative scent-releasing device designed specifically for this project, viewers will navigate through emotional responses to home, capturing 3 pivotal moments in the creator’s life marked by 3 distinctive scents.
Exhibitions
Technical Details
Abstract
"Smell Like Home" is a VR + scent exploration game that revolves around the concept of home and how to discover it through the power of scent. As I grew up and moved away from my childhood home and parents, I began to wonder what home really meant to me. This project offers a unique personal journey through the use of an Insta camera to capture images of objects that remind one of the scents of home, such as the lychee tree or coffee cup. The captured images trigger the scent camera to release the corresponding scent, thus evoking memories and emotions associated with home.
The entire game journey has a relatively linear structure, containing five levels, including an introductory level and an end level, both of which are within the camera, as well as three memory levels that tell the story of past occurrences in reverse chronological order. Within each level, there are multiple interactables that encourage players to explore and interact freely, in no particular order. However, there is a key object at each level. Players need to interact with that key object in order to move from one scene to the next.
Full Length Walkthrough Video
Journey & Levels
LEVEL 01
Introduction: Inside the Camera
Serving as the onboarding stage, this level introduces players to the core interaction mechanics within a stylized, macro-world inside the camera body. Players learn how to manipulate the camera device, look through the viewfinder, and grasp the core gameplay loop: framing key objects to trigger multisensory responses.
LEVEL 02
First Memory: The Dormitory & Nostalgia
Set in a lonely, contemporary student dormitory, this level captures the longing for one's hometown Shenzhen. By interacting with mundane surroundings, memories of the creator's upbringing start to surface, culminating in the release of a sweet, nostalgic lychee fragrance that bridges the geographical distance between the present and the past.
LEVEL 03
Second Memory: Split Reality & Interpersonal Dynamics
This level takes players back to a childhood home, where parental relationships deeply affect the atmosphere. The space acts as an externalized psychological landscape, fracturing and splitting continuously into left and right sides to reflect emotional tension. The heavy, anchoring scent of coffee is released here, grounding the player within this complex domestic memory.
LEVEL 04
Third Memory: The Polaroid Stage
Delving into the deepest layer of childhood recollections, this level frames early memories as a physical Polaroid photo stage. A flat, nostalgic image dynamically unfolds and expands into a tangible, three-dimensional pop-up environment, translating distant, flat past events into an immersive volumetric space for the player to touch and explore.
LEVEL 05
Outro: Returning to the Golden Hour
The journey concludes with a poetic retrospection. All the photos captured by the player throughout the experience gather, shatter, and dissolve. As players blend back into the present moment, they are greeted by a warm, radiant sunset—capturing the ephemeral yet eternal feeling of finally finding home within oneself.
Character & Animation
Motion Capture Production
Utilizing functional motion capture technologies to record human skeleton physics, translating authentic emotional occurrences into virtual memory sequences.
Physical Fabrication
Scent-Releasing Camera Prototype
Physical Scent Camera — Easily attachable to the VR controller
Iterations on the Mechanical Controller Attachment
End this journey with photos of the best memories
