Inspiration

I've always wanted to build my own Death Run map, and I thought it would be fun to do one inspired by Death Stranding. I kept the references very loose, as the closest I get is with the name and the fact that runners are carrying boxes on their backs.

What it does

Brings the experience of Death Run to Horizon Worlds, which is part of what the title comes from. I've enjoyed all the VR / NonVR cross-platform games I've played, and Horizon has a pretty decent setup for that aspect.

How we built it

Blender + Horizon Worlds really. This put our speed-building skills to the test, and we were regularly redoing things as we discovered Horizon's capabilities. We wanted the full Horizon Worlds experience, so the logic side is a mixture of Visual Scripting and Typescript.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge was the dynamics budget for the world. We had gotten most of our traps tuned and in-place, but then physics, and the editor in general started getting really wonky. We had to re-evaluate the setups of our most common assets. Updating those was a challenge as well, as applying Asset Template changes often broke references that we needed to connect.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It came pretty close to what we envisioned, though we had to scale back a number of the traps to fit within performance budget constraints. We're proud of the map in general, as we tried to make the traversal of the Trappers look interesting to players that were paying attention. We also tried to provide places along the Trapper and Runner's paths where they could taunt each other.

What we learned

The advantages and limitations of Horizon, as well as the challenges with working via a real-time collaborative game engine.

What's next for Death on the Horizon

We'd like to optimize more and perhaps even have other worlds of similar nature. If we can optimize the dynamics enough, we may be able to make some traps more challenging, or even improve some of the fx for things like the railgun and grenades.

Known Issue

• Due to automatic team assignment, a solo player is unable to see what it is like from the Runner's perspective since they will be assigned as the single Trapper. Please play with others to be able to experience both sides.

Built With

• blender
• horizon
• typescript
• worlds