Ban Trials Template

people's failures should help the community advance

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Ban Trials Template

"What if failure wasn't the end, but the beginning of community?"

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Inspiration

  • Unforgiving design that requires friends to come together to figure out how to solve puzzles, challenges, and more
  • Animes like Sword Art Online where stakes are real and cooperation is survival
  • The idea that shared struggle creates the strongest communities

What it does

  • A base template enabling creators to easily make world-based challenges primed for events where no single player can succeed alone
  • Flexible framework leveraging banning (world access management) to create meaningful consequences that transform spectators into strategists
  • Modular system where failure creates mentorship opportunities as banned players guide newcomers from the sidelines
  • Plug-and-play architecture allowing creators to focus on challenge design rather than infrastructure

How we built it

  • Studied Meta Horizon template worlds and open-sourced Meta scripts to understand how worlds are built in this cross-platform multiplayer ecosystem
  • Researched game designs that naturally steer people into playing together
  • Implemented Command Pattern architecture for robust event-driven systems
  • Created modular managers (Challenge, Game, World) that can be extracted and reused independently

Technical Highlights

  • Command Pattern implementation for event-driven architecture
  • Modular managers (ChallengeManager, GameManager, WorldManager) for easy remixing
  • Persistent data systems tracking both player and world progression
  • Performance-optimized for 100+ room challenges
  • TypeScript-based with clean interfaces between components

Challenges we ran into

  • First-time Horizon World creators learning the platform from scratch
  • Understanding platform limitations and quirks while figuring out solutions to achieve a truly remixable world
  • Working around TypeScript constraints (no direct entity manipulation) through creative architectural patterns
  • Balancing accessibility for remixers while maintaining sophisticated functionality

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a world with solid, reusable components that others can use to create unforgiving worlds requiring community collaboration
  • Created a template that's both immediately playable AND deeply customizable
  • Developed a framework where the "ban" mechanic can be reimagined as lives, energy, tickets, or any consumable resource
  • Established design patterns that work within Horizon Worlds' constraints while pushing creative boundaries

What we learned

  • Even though the ecosystem seems very young with missing features, these constraints actually provide the necessary limitations for creating something innovative
  • Apart from the usual quirks of new platforms, we experienced a lightning-fast tool for creating experiences that usually take a long time to build in traditional game development
  • The World Desktop Editor is blazingly fast for compilation and testing
  • Community-driven gameplay emerges naturally when individual failure has collective consequences

Why this works in Horizon Worlds

  • Proximity voice chat enables organic team formation and strategy discussions
  • Persistent variables track community progress across sessions
  • Cross-platform support lets streamers coordinate from desktop while viewers play in VR
  • Social presence in VR makes shared victories genuinely emotional
  • Platform constraints actually enhance the social dynamics by forcing creative solutions

What's next for Ban Trials Template

  • Building worlds for recurring weekly events that reset when conquered or on schedule
  • Creating challenges designed for 100+ concurrent players working together
  • Developing a "World Raid" system where streamers can mobilize their entire communities for epic collaborative victories
  • We have many ideas for worlds featuring recurrent events with puzzles and challenges that take a community to solve
  • We don't want to make something that anyone can beat—we want players to work for it by self-organizing into groups and communicating their failures so the community can learn how to complete the challenge

Remixable World Ideas

🏃 100 Maze Levels

Traverse various mazes where players must avoid hazards and hide from monsters while finding the exit. When they fail, they remain trapped until someone revives them. The deeper you go, the more you need scouts reporting back to those who fell behind.

🧠 100 Trivia Questions

Each room poses a trivia question with only seconds to answer. Get it wrong? You're banned from progressing but can still help others in previous rooms where you succeeded. Knowledge becomes currency as banned experts guide newcomers through their specialized sections.

⚔️ 100 Dungeon Floors

A roguelike version of 'Chop 'n' Pop template with escalating difficulty. New items between floors, but death requires revival by teammates. The bigger your party, the better your chances—but also the more people you might need to rescue.

🎯 100 Obby Courses

Fail the obstacle course? You're trapped in timeout until someone frees you. Add team dynamics where players can knock each other off—turning allies into temporary rivals. Weekly leaderboards for fastest completion times with full team survival.

The Ban Trials Template: Where failure brings us together, and success is shared by all.

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