The Golden Key

You're the Chosen One. Dive poisoned waters, nab moneybags, trade coins, and outpace Blinka for bringing the Golden Key to the Magic Temple. Captain Eric is waiting for you. Play on Mobile, PC & VR

Comment

Inspiration

The idea came from a desire to create a meaningful solo adventure inside Horizon Worlds — something more than a simple platformer or party game. I wanted players to feel like they were on a mission, with a sense of progress, discovery, and reward. I’m also passionate about neuroscience and puzzle-solving, and that sense of curiosity influenced the experience.

What it does

The Golden Key is a quest-based solo or multiplayer game where the player must collect hidden items, convert them into coins, and earn the mysterious Golden Key. Along the way, Captain Eric will guide you during the journey.

Your mission is to bring the Golden Key to the Magic Temple where Captain Eric is waiting for you. Don't trust Blinka; she's not your friend.

The game tracks every achievement in real time. It's a complete loop: immersive, interactive, and satisfying to complete, from the first item you find to the Magic Temple.

The world offers ways for people to connect and find shared moments together. Added:

  • photobooth to allow people to take selfie and share
  • leaderboards to show the best players
  • mirrors around the world

How we built it

The game is built entirely in Horizon Worlds using visual scripting, custom UI, and modular components:

A fully event-driven quest system with dataStore and LocalEvents

  • Reusable UI: EconomyUI, GamePopupUI, VictoryUI
  • NPCs avatars with NavMesh navigation, Avatar audio, behaviour states, and audio triggers.
  • VFX and audio when the player is walking in the poisoned waters
  • animations for the flying platforms
  • using the death and respawn state when the player is death
  • custom UI with images and 3D objects with unfocus UI
  • used public assets for the threes, money bags, spaceship and Blender 3D for the Red Road, golden key, lobby room building and doors,

A reset system that restarts everything, from quests to UI to NPCs

A scalable ResettableObjectController used to position and hide/show objects like moneybags or the Golden Key

A dynamic leaderboard tracking the fastest completion times

Challenges we ran into

  • Managing visibility and grab-logic for the Golden Key without breaking quest flow
  • Syncing multiple UI instances when states change
  • Handling NPC movement and audio without delays or bugs
  • Avoiding race conditions with game reset logic and state transitions

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a complete solo experience with quest tracking, reward systems, and polish
  • Created clean, scalable scripts that make future updates easy
  • Managed to bring emotion and immersion with simple mechanics and pacing
  • Balanced logic, UI, and user feedback effectively

What we learned

  • How to use Horizon’s systems in a modular, event-driven way
  • The power of dataStore for global syncing
  • How to manage UI across multiple components and players
  • How to debug complex behavior in real-time with logs and smart testing
  • That immersion comes from detail: sound design, transitions, pacing

What's next for The Golden Key

  • Adding multiple endings depending on performance or choices
  • Expanding to multiplayer with cooperative tasks
  • Deeper NPC interactions and dialogue trees
  • A larger world to explore with more easter eggs
  • A “new game plus” mode with harder quests and time challenges

Built With

Share this project:

Updates