Arkantia

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  A vast world awaits you — explore freely and discover new Arkantes

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  Night transforms the world — stay alert, new Arkantes roam the dark.

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  When night falls, certain Arkantes awaken...

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  The night won’t last forever — savor the sunrise

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  You’ll never be alone — Pixi will stay by your side on every step of the adventure

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  Select the right trap for the right Arkante.

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  Catch Arkantes using traps — timing is everything.

Inspiration

A lifelong passion for creature-hunting games and VR sparked the idea of building a world where players physically track, lure and capture creatures in ways only VR can provide. The concept of blending natural environments with mysterious technology on a newly discovered continent felt like the perfect foundation for something original and immersive.

What it does

Arkantia lets players explore a wild new continent, track Arkantes using weather, sound cues, footprints and environmental clues, and capture them through a variety of VR-based traps, baits and tools. It also encourages deep exploration, as players must gather resources throughout the world to craft new traps, gadgets and upgrades. The project aims to create a creature-hunting experience that feels tactile, dynamic and reactive to the player’s actions.

How we built it

Developed in Unity with custom VR systems for grabbing, trapping, aiming and inventory use. Local storage keeps the project independent from external servers, while Meta Cloud enables optional persistent saves. The build uses optimized rendering, shaders and AI tailored for Quest 3 performance.

Challenges we ran into

Major challenges included optimizing large open maps to run smoothly on standalone VR hardware and designing a creature-hunting system that feels fresh and physically intuitive. Building traps, AI behavior, weather interactions and VR tool handling required continuous refinement to maintain performance

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Delivering a stable open world, three fully functioning Arkantes and a complete VR hunting loop in record time stands out as a major milestone. Achieving smooth performance while supporting dynamic weather, day/night cycles and physical interactions is also a key accomplishment.

What we learned

A key takeaway has been mastering optimization techniques for large-scale VR worlds, ensuring they remain smooth, readable and comfortable without compromising interaction quality.

What's next for Arkantia

Next steps include refining VR interactions and inventories, adding more traps, baits and Arkantes, expanding maps and biomes, deepening abilities and progression, and introducing new farming systems and crafting for weapons, traps and gadgets.

Built With

• cloud
• meta
• meta-xr-sdk
• openxr
• unity-(c#)
• urp