SkyRise Co-Op

Inspiration

Being new to Horizon Worlds I wanted to see what it could do, so I tried to use as many features as I could to deliver a simple but compelling user experience.

What it does

SkyRise Co-op is a short-loop, mobile-friendly game with lofty goals. This 4 player game has you play mini-games to earn blocks, which you then add to the infinite central monolith.

The mini-games last just 30 seconds and your performance earns you between 1 and 4 blocks. So the better you do, the quicker the monolith grows.You teleport to the top of the monolith to drop your blocks and watch the rewarding experience of them being added among sparkles, smoke, fireworks, confetti and sounds. The monolith can get crazy big, so jumping off will eventually feel like sky diving.

The more people you play with the quicker it grows so this encourages social engagement.

Short loop focus

The game is designed to play in short spells. Players can come and go at any time and make their contribution with no waiting for new sessions. As long as old and new players overlap the monolith will keep growing. The Top Builder leaderboard reflects your work across all games no matter how short.

The rapid mini-game gives rewards on every hit, then a star rating and blocks as a prize and then you get nice audio / visuals as a further bonus when you deliver the blocks. All that can occur within 40 seconds.

As the tower grows, jumping off the ever increasing height serves as another reward.

How we built it

Custom UI’s are used to access the mini games using attractive backgrounds, buttons and multiple pages to provide instructions and results. I animated the UI to scale in stars and play synched sounds as they appear in the rewards page.

Camera APIs are used extensively on the mobile phone. When you deliver blocks, a cinematic camera angle ensures you have a good view of the particle effects and the mini games use fixed cameras to make sure you have an optimum view to play.

Focussed Interactions are also used for the mini games. The “Whack it” mini game uses taps (swipes ignored) to knock down the emerging pegs, while the “Sorted” mini game uses drag and drop to move pieces into place.

VR differences are that you use your hands, striking down on the top of pegs in “Whack it” and dragging and dropping with your hands in “Sorted”. Both mobile and VR operations work in the way you would expect for each device.

Mobile considerations Leaderboards and UI’s are extra large to make them readable without needing to enter the interaction mode. The level is brightly lit. Customised mobile grab anchors are used together with the heavy carry avatar pose to carry blocks. Interaction clicks are minimised. When you click [Start] in the UI you auto exit the UI and enter focused mode for the gameplay and when the mini game ends you auto exit focus mode and have the prize blocks put in your hands without any interaction. UI’s also have Cancel buttons so the corner X is not required.

Audio / Visual The infinite monolith is the core feature. I use vertex shaded materials in my tri-mesh project (all custom models) to ensure we can scale without texture distortion. The rest of the level uses the same style for consistency, other than the instructions (textured) and monolith logo (transparent). Pleasant music can be heard around the monolith and this is replaced by lively music in the mini-games. Adding blocks and especially completing a layer on the monolith brings a festival of particles and sounds. On high monoliths the music falls out of range and you will instead hear increasingly strong winds to build the atmosphere of your height. Mini games also use sounds as audio cues for success and rewards.

Social Leaderboards are used to encourage visits together with a couple of quests (achievements) which I will expand on later. But the main intention to drive social is the fact that this is a co-op experience where you work together towards a common goal and you visit the same central monolith every minute to make your delivery so you will be seeing each other a lot and grateful for each others efforts.

Challenges we ran into

I had a last minute issue where my project wouldn't let me toggle the option to make it publicly visible. A friendly admin on the MHCP discord helped to set the property manually. So hopefully it should be fine now.

I developed a mini game for shooting where you rotated a mounted gun by focussed dragging. I had to remove this because when I came to test on mobile, rather than the desktop editor, I found my finger obscured the action too much. This taught me to test prototypes on the phone early in the development. The other mini-games are designed to overcome this issue.

Learning TypeScript at the same time as Horizon Worlds made it more challenging.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I love the fun feel to the game and the abundance of sounds and effects. I'm pleased it all works well and includes so many Horizon World features.

What we learned

Short-loop and mobile phone game design considerations, TypeScript. I now have a good understanding of the features available in Horizon Worlds.

What's next for SkyRise Co-Op

If people enjoy the game I would like to extend it to have more mini games and surprises as you grow the tower and bonus points for hitting targets as you free-fall from the high monolith. I have a twist in mind too, where players can vote to demolish very high monoliths in return for thousands of points.

Built With

• horizonworlds