Reins of the Dragon

Inspiration

My main goal was to use hand tracking in a way that feels natural. I imagined your hand as the dragon itself: when you open your palm, it breathes fire. To avoid unreliable or complex gestures, I chose to automate player movement so you can focus entirely on controlling the dragon.

What it does

It is a third-person VR action adventure where you steer a young dragon and unleash attacks entirely with intuitive hand-tracking gestures. This small-scale prototype features a single level focused on demonstrating the core mechanics and core game loop.

How we built it

Using Unity Engine and Meta SDK.

Challenges we ran into

Because of other commitments I couldn’t postpone, the biggest challenge was having just one week to come up with the idea and build the entire prototype solo.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I’m really glad I managed to come up with an idea and bring it to life in this timeframe. At first I tried several concepts, including mixed reality, but none of them felt strong enough or realistic to build in a single week, so I even considered not participating rather than submitting something I wasn’t confident in. Then I had this idea, which I really liked and couldn’t find anything similar to on the store, and being able to tie together the art style, gameplay, and a short demonstration felt very rewarding.

What we learned

I learned a lot about working with the Meta SDK. In this project I used only hand tracking, but in my earlier concepts I also experimented with mixed reality tools like scene mesh. That experience will definitely be useful for future projects.

What's next for Reins of the Dragon

My next goal is to turn this into a full game and push hand tracking even further in a reliable way—for example, using microgestures to switch dragon abilities. The game is planned to feature a campaign mode, an endless mode with randomly generated levels where you try to get as far as possible, and a multiplayer mode. The target for Early Access is Q2 2026.