Branching live-action VR180 · social thriller · in pre-production
Prize Pool VR
A campus water-gun game. A mysterious million-dollar prize. Step into the life of Eli or Maya, where friendship, attraction and ambition collide—and every choice brings the stakes closer to home.
The premise
A familiar game. An unfamiliar price for winning.
For eleven years, a campus water-gun competition has been a tradition. Then an unknown donor puts a million dollars on the line. Suddenly, a game between friends offers the chance to change a life—and a reason to question everyone around you.
Get wet and you are out. The playing area shrinks as the day wears on, cameras watch the campus, and firing reveals your position to the competition. A moment of hesitation can be as dangerous as taking the shot.
Eli needs a way to stay in college. Maya wants a life she can call her own. As their paths cross, the competition becomes tangled with something harder to navigate: who deserves your trust, what you owe the people beside you, and how far you will go for a future that finally feels within reach.
Choose your perspective
Two strangers collide at sign-up. She goes left. He goes right. You decide whose story to enter, experiencing the game through their eyes. The choices that shape their relationships belong to you.
Eli: a future on hold
Eli faces an enrollment hold and a future he cannot afford to lose. His friends have a plan, plenty to say and his best interests at heart. Whether he values their loyalty as much as the prize is up to you.
Maya: room to be herself
Maya wants independence from a controlling boyfriend and a friend group that keeps deciding who she should be. Winning could give her a way out. A stranger offers a different possibility—and another reason to be careful.
Two perspectives on the same competition. Different pressures, relationships and reasons to win. Character names are subject to change before release.
Inside the experience
When they look at you, the decision is yours.
Real performers meet your gaze. A friend waits for an answer. A rival lowers their guard. Live-action VR puts you inside the conversation, where trust and tension feel personal.
A choice feels different when the person it affects is standing in front of you. Enter a story of shifting loyalties, unexpected connection and mounting pressure, where the route you take changes what you discover about the people around you—and about yourself.
One game. Many possibilities.
What will pull you into the game?
A branching thriller built around the people you meet and the decisions you make. The current draft includes eleven endings, with different paths through the same high-pressure day. Here is a glimpse of the experience, without giving the outcomes away.
- Ambition01A prize big enough to make tomorrow look completely different.
- Loyalty02Friends who have a plan for you. Decide what you owe them.
- Independence03The chance to make a choice nobody else gets to make for you.
- Attraction04Someone you should keep at a distance keeps drawing you closer.
- Suspicion05A camera, a phone, a glance. How much does anyone really know?
- Pressure06The playing area closes in, and room to hesitate disappears.
- Temptation07An opening appears. Taking it could change more than the game.
- Consequences08The people around you respond to what you choose to do.
- Perspective09Return as the other lead and discover a different side of the day.
Your first viewing is one version of the story. Another character or another choice can reveal a different side of someone you thought you understood.
More than the prize
What does winning mean to you?
The competition has rules. Relationships are harder to read. Prize Pool VR brings the choices of a thriller into the familiar pressures of friendship, money, independence and belonging.
Friendship
Who stands beside you when a game starts to matter?
Reputation
What will people believe about the choices you make?
Connection
Can a moment of honesty change how you see a rival?
Trust
When someone says they know what is best for you, do you believe them?
Belonging
How much of yourself will you give up to stay part of a group?
Generosity
What are you willing to offer when there is something to lose?
Responsibility
How far does “it is only a game” really go?
Freedom
Will winning give you the future you came here for?
The story explores financial pressure and difficult relationships through a fictional campus competition. Its emotional stakes are much closer to everyday life.
A larger creative ambition
A campus-wide contest. An intensely personal story.
From a crowded sign-up to tense encounters across campus, Prize Pool VR pairs the energy of an ensemble thriller with the intimacy of seeing through one person’s eyes. Friends, rivals and strangers each bring their own reasons to play.
Live action, new possibilities
The project brings performance, location filmmaking and interactive storytelling together on a larger scale than our first VR film. Every perspective asks the audience to take a more active role in the drama.
Made through collaboration
Filmmakers, performers and technical collaborators are working toward a shared ambition: a North Carolina production that shows how immersive cinema can tell stories with tension, personality and emotional consequence.
Innovation with a future
An experience to discover. A path for others to follow.
Building on Right Here Right Now!, Prize Pool VR explores how live-action interactive cinema can grow into more ambitious productions. The aim reaches beyond one release: help future creators bring their own immersive stories to life.
Creative research
Prize Pool VR has qualified for a UNCW CHSSA Research Grant. The project connects filmmaking and technical research to explore what audiences can experience when they become active participants in a story.
Technology serving the story
D.C Alacrity’s Pure Alacrity and Alacrity Player support our work to connect filmmaking with interactive experiences. Prize Pool VR is helping guide their development around the needs of a larger branching production.
Opportunity that continues
The goal is to share a clearer, more accessible process that future students and filmmakers can use independently—building skills, encouraging collaboration and expanding what can be created in North Carolina.
Choose a side. See what comes next.
Prize Pool VR is in pre-production. Get in touch to follow its progress, connect with the team or explore a collaboration. Until then, discover where our interactive filmmaking began with Right Here Right Now!
- Write to
- [email protected]
- Based in
- North Carolina
- The suite
- dcalacrity.com/pure