Headz Up Horizons

Inspiration

When our team saw the competition posting, we knew we wanted to build a world that both engages players and teaches one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned in developing in-house MHW projects: how to properly set up multiplayer UI. Because our focus has been on mobile-first MHW experiences, our in-development games rely heavily on custom UI. More than once, we’ve had to rewrite systems after their first implementation, simply because we hadn’t set clear expectations around how multiplayer UI should be architected. With this project, we set out to solve the Venn diagram overlap of “a fun, easily remixable world” and “an excuse to share a practical multiplayer UI tutorial.”

Our team brought inspiration from the mobile hit Heads Up into the Meta Horizon Worlds ecosystem. Heads Up is a popular mobile game that blends trivia, charades, and social interaction into a simple yet endlessly replayable party experience. We saw an opportunity to create a remixable version that allows creators to easily build on the foundation-adding custom decks, new categories, or even using the existing framework to create entirely new party game variants.

Our vision was to create a plug-and-play party game template with a clean, modular codebase designed for maximum remixability and reusability. We prioritized an easy-to-understand architecture with clear separation of concerns so creators can customize gameplay, visuals, or content with minimal changes to the underlying core systems. This means someone could remix the world by simply adding a new deck of cards, adjusting difficulty settings, or redesigning the UI without needing to rewrite core logic.

How we built it

With future extensibility in mind, we focused on maintaining a highly organized codebase from the start. Every component was built with well-typed events, self-documenting method names, and lightweight comments where needed to keep things approachable for remixers while preserving technical clarity. The overall architecture follows a component-based structure. A central GameManager orchestrates player flow, round progression, and overall state transitions, while a dedicated RoundManager handles timing, strike system, etc. CardManager controls over 320 cards across eight categories with a smart shuffling system to prevent repeats, while a PlayerProgressManager tracks player stats like lifetime wins across sessions. All UI elements are fully modular, reacting dynamically to game state changes and optimized for mobile.

Technically, we implemented features such as a three-strike system to keep skilled players engaged longer, a multiple-choice system that generates challenging but fair options from the same category, and a head-tracking card display that stays aligned above the guesser’s head for better immersion. We also optimized performance by batching updates, reducing unnecessary network calls, and scaling down effects where appropriate.

Challenges we ran into

One of the challenges we faced was managing entity ownership transfers between players during fast-paced rounds. Switching UI ownership for things like the Heads Up or Guesser UI rather than having an instance per player was a technical decision to keep things lightweight and easy to understand. Introducing a delay pre-round and using the ownership transfer callback solved this problem.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The final result is a production-ready party game template that is both fun to play and easy to remix. Our architecture enables zero-code customization for creators-new categories can be added by editing a single data file without touching gameplay logic, and modular systems like the RoundManager can be reused in new projects as a framework for any round based game.

From a content perspective, the game ships with over 320 unique cards across eight categories, a three-strike scoring system that rewards player skill, and a persistent win-tracking system for replayability. A single-player testing mode was also included, allowing creators to prototype and iterate on their remixes without needing a full lobby of players.

On the technical side of things, the project is fully typed, with clean separation of UI, logic, and data management, and robust error handling for edge cases like random disconnections. Performance optimizations ensure consistent frame rates on mobile devices, while adaptive UI scaling and simplified effects create a polished, accessible experience for all players. A single player debug testing mode was added for testing, as well as player progression (wins) with a basic progression system changing scorecard backgrounds based on win count.

What's next for Headz Up Horizons

Looking ahead, a good first addition would be category selection, a bit like jeopardy .

Next we’d plan to select an assortment of SFX, celebratory effects, and other audio/visual feedback options as well as adding more detail and delight to the environment. An audio manager is already written with many of the hooks in place and ready for asset.