Hometown Heroes: Call to Action

Map + Console
The Drive Console
The Water Cannon - Astro Bot Inspired

Inspiration

Hometown Heroes: Call to Action started as a love letter to the people who quietly keep our world running and provide meaningful value to others. The core spark was that childhood feeling of sitting on a city playmat carpet, inventing emergency stories with toy vehicles. I wanted that imagination to become real: the playmat turns into a living town, and you step into the role of the hero who answers the call. As an Ex-Owlchemy Employee reimagining Job Simulator's success I wanted to focus on the joy of a highly physical and responsive virtual controller.

What it does

Players grab real VR controls to drive fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances through tight streets, respond to dispatch calls, and solve fast, skill-based rescue scenarios. It blends precise vehicle handling with hands-on tools (like a deployable water cannon) so every mission feels physical, playful, and high-stakes.

How we built it

I'm solo, but I was able to do work nights and weekends after starting late on the competition. I built nearly everything from scratch as a dual kick off for the Start Competition and the incorporation of my company XRCADIA. I didn't hear about the competition until 2 weeks into it, but I was able to build a MVP focusing on some of the fundamentals for interaction. This is my own interaction system built from the ground up using only raw hand data.

Challenges we ran into

Being solo I was required to split my time between both programming and modeling, which ended up meaning I didn't get to really finalize all of the game system/core player loop. On a technical front Unity's Physics System doesn't handle micro-scale physics so I did have to split the rendering from the simulation layer similar to how netcode projects are architected. This allowed me to calculate physics at much larger normal scales that a fire truck would expect while still rendering it to a table sized small playmat.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I did this solo in only 2 weeks building kicking off an entire core framework for interactions, attach point, sliders, buttons, etc. as well as enough content to really have fun with a totally physics based console and role play as a hero for my city.

What we learned

I'm surprised how quickly I was able to juggle the different responsibilities. I've been in XR since 2014 and have spent a long time preparing to start my own company. I wasn't sure if I was really able to be a Solo-Founder or if I needed to split equity with a co-founder. Despite the submission not accurately reflecting a month of work, I feel more confident then ever that I can do whatever it takes to publish content in this market and start validating MVPs quickly.

What's next for Hometown Heroes: Call to Action

I need to validate the product market fit and determine how big of an audience there is for this diorama style mixed reality arcade cabinet. Overall the project is designed to be a light pick up and play game inspired by a blend of Job Simulator, Astro Bot, and Crazy Taxi. I'll build out more vehicles for the user to drive, IAPs for collectables and overall expand on the Spacial SDK aspects of the Mixed Reality beyond the playmat.