Eternal Colonies

Build colonies on planets, gather resources, and reset into parallel universes to collect Eternium and unlock research for ever greater expansion.

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Inspiration

Eternal Colonies was inspired by popular idle games but shaped by our love for space exploration worlds. We are also the creators of Exoplanet Journey, a featured VRChat world with over 9 million visits about exploring exoplanets across the galaxy. With Eternal Colonies, we wanted to bring a playful and gamified version of that concept into Horizon Worlds, combining our space-themed storytelling with the endless progression loop of an idle game.

What it does

Players command the Bridge of Eternity, travel to planets, and construct buildings to gather resources. From the Cargolab, they can shift into an identical parallel universe, leaving colonies behind but carrying forward Eternium, a rare essence that unlocks research and long-term progress.

How we built it

We built Eternal Colonies entirely from scratch in TypeScript, drawing on structures from previous projects but reworking all systems for the idle progression loop. The 3D model was crafted in Blender with an artistic approach to match the specific aesthetic of our new experience in Meta Horizon. We also built a fully custom user interface to handle the game’s mechanics and resource systems.
Generative AI supported us during concept structuring, assisted in parts of the coding process, and helped with texturing our models. Additionally, an in-world AI bot was developed to enhance immersion and provide context within the game world.

Challenges we ran into

Most of our challenges were related to the user interface. Frequent UI bugs required us to restart the editor often, as re-synchronizing sometimes failed to properly reload the UI. Creating a dynamic interface was difficult due to slow UI rendering times, which occasionally caused visual errors. The use of icons was also tricky because of issues loading them correctly into the system. Despite these setbacks, we managed to create a functional and stable experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have created a working and stable idle game with a framerate above 70. Eternal Colonies represents the gamification of one of our most popular world concepts, bringing interactive progression to a setting our community already loves. Even though it is only the beginning of a longer journey, we are happy to see this idea take shape as a playable experience.

What we learned

We learned how to merge idle game mechanics with immersive VR storytelling, how to manage UI-heavy systems under challenging editor conditions, and how crucial it is to balance performance, visual clarity, and player engagement in VR environments.

What's next for Eternal Colonies

We plan to expand Eternal Colonies with more star systems, additional planets, and a wider range of upgrades. Over time, the game will become more complex, introducing new midgame and endgame challenges to provide greater long-term motivation and deeper strategic gameplay.

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