Run & Crush

Inspiration

• Run & Crush began with a simple “what if?”—as an overseas employee longing to return home for good, I wondered if I could build a game that might one day give me the freedom to go back. I am a solo-dev and this project is my small, hopeful step in that direction.

What it does

• Run & Crush blends the satisfying flow of a match-3 puzzle with the intensity of an endless runner. As you physically swap gems in VR, a runner is constantly dodging obstacles and collecting coins in real time, while you also have to be careful not to overfill the grid.

How we built it

I’m building Run & Crush in Unity 6 with the Meta XR SDK, targeting Quest hand tracking as the primary input. The experience is a forward-moving tropical trail with a floating gem grid in front of the player:

The runner is driven by a procedural-based path system. The gem grid is a 2D board rendered in 3D space, using custom scripts for swapping, matching, gravity, and special power-ups (color bombs, stripes, frenzy gems).

Hand interactions rely on Meta’s hand ray and pinch gestures to grab and swap gems. I focused on minimal friction: point, pinch, drag, release.

A shared HUD ties the two modes together: score, coins, and power-up states are synced so what you do on the grid always matters for the run.

Challenges we ran into

One big challenge was making the gem grid readable at arm’s length while not blocking the view of the trail. I iterated on depth, tilt, and opacity until it felt like a “window” into the puzzle rather than a flat UI panel.

Accomplishments that I am proud of

What we learned

Comfort vs. excitement: I had to tune camera motion, FOV boosts, and speed curves so sprinting feels thrilling but still comfortable over time.

Interaction clarity: it’s not enough that a pinch is detected; players need immediate visual and audio feedback so they trust that their hands “touch” the grid.

What's next for Run & Crush

More Worlds and Avatars

Add asynchronous multiplayer races, where other players’ ghost runners show up on your trail.

Explore adaptive difficulty, using player performance to tune spawn patterns and combo goals.

Integrate Meta avatars and shared lobbies, so friends can warm up together before runs.

Experiment with spatial anchoring, letting players pin the grid in their room while the trail unfolds around them.

Built With

• and-tools-inside-unity)-game-engine-&-frameworks-unity-6-(urp)-unity-input-system-(for-unified-xr-+-gamepad/keyboard-input)-meta-xr-sdk-/-interaction-sdk-(hand-tracking
• c#
• hand-rays
• meta
• systems
• unity
• xr