XR Tabletop Arcade Game

Developing a novel MR tabletop arcade game experience through Meta Quest 2 & Unity Game Engine

Overview

Garden Pal is a mixed reality tabletop game offering a playful experience by juxtaposing a garden space in both the physical and virtual world. Players engage with our environment using a magnifying glass as the game controller. Your goal is to keep your garden pal (ladybug) alive as long as possible from the creepy crawlers roaming around her. Use the magnifying glass in your hand to start a fire in order to eliminate her predators! 

Role

UX/UI Designer

Skills

Product/Interaction Design

XR Prototyping

Rapid Prototyping

User Testing

C#

Team

Devin Lee-Jones

(Product Designer)

Skylar Lee

(Product Designer)

Tools

Meta Quest 2

Unity Game Engine

Visual Studio Code

Demo

The project goal is to emulate the feeling of playing in the garden with a magnifying glass as a kid. We aim to faciliate a synchronized mixed reality experience by bridging the gap between the virtual and physical worlds.

So we asked...

How might we explore physical objects as a controller in XR? What are novel ways of utilizing virtual reality and prototyping in mixed reality?

Exploring rapid prototyping and interaction design in Unity...

Through many rounds of iterations to define our physical controller, we learned which type of materials, forms, and gestures would work best in not only the physical world, but also the virtual world. Some objects proved to be wonderful in the physical world to use, but were not as effective in the virtual world, or vice versa. We needed to find an object that synergized well in both worlds.

User testing physical controller and harmony between the physical and digital world...

Developing our final controller based on testing...

Developing component based design through code in Unity...

For next steps...

I would like to add more functions to the game such as lives for the lady bug, game timer, more levels, and characters.

I would also want to do more heuristic/accessibility testing to ensure a equitable game experience for all.