Dunkirk WebVR
- Brand
- Warner Bros.
- Year
- 2017
- Objective
- Product Launch
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Adventure & Quest
- Platform
- AR & VR
- Agency
- The Zoo At Google
- With
- Plan8
- With
- Jam3
Objective
Warner Bros. built Dunkirk WebVR to build anticipation for Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk ahead of its July 21, 2017 theatrical release, giving audiences a way to feel the film's scale, suspense and stakes rather than just watch them in a trailer. Google used the tie-in as a proof point for WebVR, showing that a full cooperative VR experience could run straight in Chrome on a phone with nothing to install — and pushed for two strangers anywhere in the world to be able to play together, not just two people sharing a headset in one room.
Solution
Dunkirk WebVR pairs two players in the browser, either matched at random with someone online or invited by a friend over a shared link. Each person sees the siege of Dunkirk through one soldier's eyes and hears his private thoughts, steering everything just by looking around and tapping a single button. The first act strands the pair on the beach as planes strafe overhead; the second puts them on a dark sea under a hunting searchlight. Because the two soldiers' roles don't match, neither can make it out alone — one player has to watch and act at the right moment for the other to get through — so the acts only end in escape if both keep working together.
- 1
The player opens the game directly in a browser — desktop Chrome, mobile, or a WebVR headset like Cardboard or Daydream — with no install required.
- 2
A start screen prompts the player to hold gaze or cursor on a single "HOLD" element until it fills, which opens a menu offering online matchmaking with a random partner or a shareable invite link to play with a friend.
- 3
The game requires two players and will not proceed solo: after choosing a mode, the player waits for a partner to connect before the story begins.
- 4
Act I casts the two players as an officer and a wounded captain (a medic is an NPC), each seeing and hearing the scene through their own character, and opens with a briefing to listen for the partner's voice and avoid red danger zones while following waypoints off the beach.
- 5
One player's character runs automatically toward wherever they look, carrying the wounded partner; steering with gaze alone, they route around red zones marked on the sand and follow glowing waypoints toward the rescue ships.
- 6
The other player, riding piggyback and facing backward, scans the sky and holds their gaze on incoming bombers to trigger directional voice callouts that steer their partner clear of strafing runs; looking away for more than a couple of seconds draws an NPC warning, and prolonged inattention fades the audio to near-silence, ending the run in failure.
- 7
Act I ends when both players reach the final waypoint at the rescue ship, and a directed cinematic transition carries the story from the beach to the sea.
- 8
Act II swaps roles and setting: one player becomes a civilian fisherman sweeping a searchlight across a nearly black sea, while the other is a soldier adrift who must find and hold the beam in a call-and-response "Marco Polo" exchange relayed by two NPCs aboard the boat.
- 9
Guidance sharpens as the players' in-game distance closes — vague at 1500 meters, precise by 500 — with a stricter five-second inactivity limit than Act I, and the session ends when the boat reaches the ring markers and pulls the marked survivor aboard.
- 10
Throughout both acts, spatial 360-degree audio — partner's voice, NPC shouts, engine drone — responds to head movement and serves as the game's primary navigational cue.
