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The robot you built walks through the gate in your real desk
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Building by hand: parts snap on with a preview at the socket
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Helping the robot along its course from your desk
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The goal ring at the end of a Delivery Run
Gatebots turns your desk into a mixed reality robot workshop. Build a robot with your bare hands, open a gate on your desk or wall, and help your creation reach the goal ring on the other side. Play seated on Meta Quest 3 or 3S using hand tracking.
Inspiration
I wanted my real room to become part of a game. A desk makes a natural workbench, and a portal gives the toy you build somewhere to go.
What it does
Pinch parts from a floating tray and bring them to a socket to preview the fit. Snap on legs to make a walker or add fans to make it fly. Poke the core’s switch to start a run, press a button to raise shutters, or steer and jump with the controls on your wrist. If your robot falls, pick it up and rebuild it. Three handcrafted Delivery Runs teach the basics. The Deep unlocks every part and generates tougher courses as you descend.
How I built it
I built Gatebots in Kotlin on Meta Spatial SDK 0.14. MRUK finds real desks and walls, and passthrough and hand tracking let you build in your room. Custom GLSL clips the virtual world to the gate. Jolt handles physics and contact filtering across the opening. I made the models, textures, sounds, and music with Blender and Python scripts.
Challenges
A robot can straddle the gate while it moves. Rendering, physics, and hand occlusion have to agree about what belongs on either side of the opening every frame.
What’s next
I’d like to add more parts, let friends share builds, and give The Deep daily courses.
Target launch date
Q2 2027 on the Meta Horizon Store.
