Gunship: Quackdown

Inspiration

Gunship: Quackdown was inspired by my favorite Call of Duty campaign missions that put players in the gunner seat of an AC-130.

What it does

Players work through 6 missions (with more on the way) from the gunner seat of a gunship, eliminating enemies, vehicles, and buildings. When targets are hard to see, you can switch between White Hot and Black Hot thermal modes to spot them. You start with the 25mm cannon and can unlock the 40mm and 105mm cannons to tear through objectives.

How we built it

Gunship: Quackdown was built using GenAI, Copilot, Blender, and a frankly irresponsible amount of caffeine.

Challenges we ran into

The game relies on a lot of interconnected systems to function smoothly. Designing, building, and debugging those systems took serious effort. Scope creep was also a major factor, and several enemy variants and upgrade paths had to be cut to hit the deadline.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I’m really proud of the per-player audio settings that let players fine-tune sound effects, music volume, and haptics to their liking, making the experience more immersive.

The UI was a huge undertaking, but it feels responsive and provides constant feedback through sound and haptics. The menu uses custom camera angles for each section, visually reinforcing the currently selected option.

The thermal camera system feels great to use and is unlike anything else I’ve seen on Horizon Worlds.

Overall, I’m extremely proud of the project as a whole—especially since it’s the first time I’ve built something of this scope as a solo dev.

What we learned

Dialing in UI is hard, balancing upgrades is its own challenge, and pushing into territory that hasn’t been done on the platform before adds another layer of complexity.

What's next for Gunship: Quackdown

Next up: an arcade mode for longer sandbox sessions, more enemy variety, weapon mods, special weapons, and additional maps. With some major performance tweaks, the game will be able to support much more content to keep players coming back.