Historical Mog

Inspiration

The "looksmaxxing" and "mogging" trend has taken over social media recently. Everyone wants to know how good they look. We thought: what if we took that concept and ran it through all of human history? Beauty standards have changed wildly across civilizations, so we built a lens that tells you which era you would've peaked in.

What it does

Historical Mog is a Snapchat lens that scans your face, rapidly cycles through 7 historical eras (Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Samurai Japan, Roman Empire, 1920s Gatsby, Viking Age, and Medieval), and lands on your "peak era", complete with a dramatic mog score that counts up from 0.0 to your final rating out of 10. Each era comes with a themed headpiece overlay and a funny caption like "The Senate approves this face" or "Bro you would get the plague."

How we built it

We built the lens in Snap's Lens Studio using JavaScript for the core game logic, which handles the four-phase flow: face scanning animation, slot-machine era cycling, mog score countdown, and final verdict. Headpiece overlays were generated as transparent PNGs using Python with SVG-to-PNG conversion. The slot machine uses an exponential slowdown curve to build suspense, and the mog counter ticks up in 0.1 increments with variable speed; fast at the start, dramatically slow for the final digits.

Challenges we ran into

Getting 2D overlays to properly track and scale on a 3D head binding was surprisingly tricky. Screen Transform and 3D Transform behave very differently in Lens Studio. We also had to debug issues with shared materials across multiple image components, and getting the scan line animation to work with Screen Transform anchors instead of positional transforms.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The slot machine cycling effect feels genuinely suspenseful — you actually want to see which era you land on. The mog score countdown with escalating hype text ("Hmm..." → "Mid..." → "Sheesh..." → "VIOLATION" → "ABSOLUTE UNIT") adds real entertainment value. The whole experience tells a story in under 15 seconds.

What we learned

Lens Studio has a steep learning curve, especially around the differences between Screen Transform and regular Transform systems. We also learned a lot about designing for shareability, the filter is built so the final verdict screen is a natural screenshot or screen-record moment.

What's next for Historical Mog

Adding more eras (Cleopatra's Egypt, 80s Synthwave, Cyberpunk 3000), implementing actual face analysis with Lens Studio's ML components to make the era selection feel personalized rather than random, adding sound effects for each phase transition, and multiplayer support so friends can compare their peak eras side by side.