Inspiration
Escort missions are usually the part of a game people dread: you babysit someone slow who can't look after themselves. We flipped it. In Glimo, you're the one being escorted. Pawl, your guide, is small, quick and not very patient. He goes where he wants and doesn't take orders, so your hands are free for the world instead.
We wanted a game made for where VR is heading: hands first, seated, no controllers. Just where you look and a pinch.
What it does
You wake up shrunk in a glowing, dangerous world. Pawl runs ahead and waits for you.
- Look at Pawl and pinch to hop to his side.
- Pinch on nothing when something strikes, and that's a shield. Block right on time and it goes back where it came from.
- Pinch and hold to clear what's in the way.
Every place throws its own take on the same hazards, and the longer you hang around, the faster they come. When it gets bad, Pawl hands you something to help, like a sentry that shoots for you. Each act ends with a warden fight and then a nest: sleep there, and what you found is saved. Take the headset off, and next time Pawl remembers where you left off. There's a different way to take every day.
How we built it
- Engine: Unity 6 (6000.6) with URP, OpenXR, the Meta XR SDK (v207) and Unity XR Hands, played on a Meta Quest Pro. Its eye tracking is the closest hardware we have to the eyes-and-hands input the competition is built around.
- Spec-first: the game's rules, hazards, tuning values and test assertions live in one text spec, and the game's systems and tests are generated from it.
- Replayed playtests: every playtest on the headset is recorded and replayed frame for frame in headless tests, so a change that alters how a real session plays gets caught before it ships.
- Performance: held at the Quest Pro's 72 Hz on device, with a cold start under 8 seconds.
- AI tools: generative AI helped make the art, Pawl's voice, the sound and the music. We picked, reviewed and tuned every asset that ships.
Challenges we ran into
- No hover. Gaze is private, so nothing in the world can light up just because you look at it. Every target has to read on its own, and every pinch answers with sound and sight within one frame. There's no haptic buzz under hand tracking.
- Seated, inside a two-foot radius. The game never moves your head. The world comes to you, and every danger arrives from in front.
- A guide who decides for himself. Pawl reads the whole world on his own: he waits, beckons, comes back for you, and darts through the moment a way opens. You never give him an order.
What's next
- Launch: Glimo on the Meta Horizon Store. Target launch date: spring 2027, to launch alongside Meta's new VR glasses.
- Glasses-ready: the game is designed inside the field of view of Meta's upcoming VR glasses, so it's ready to move over when they ship.
- More of the world: new places and wardens, plus polish drawn from playtests.
