Turtle bay

Turtle Bay is a fast-paced action shooter where players battle rival volunteers to collect rare turtle eggs from distant islands and return them safely to a struggling research center.

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Inspiration

Salmon Run in the Game Splatoon 2 & 3 inspired Turtle Bay, A game where players fight dangerous salmon and aim to collect the most eggs. Reimagining that gameplay, combined with my own love for turtles, served as the basis of this world!

What it does

Once a thriving sea-turtle research center, Turtle Bay has fallen into disrepair. Funding is gone, the scientists are stretched thin, and the fragile ecosystem is collapsing. You arrive as a volunteer—one of many hoping to save the turtles. But with supplies running low, cooperation quickly turns to competition.

Core Gameplay

Collect & Compete: Race other players to find eggs with different rarities.

Fight & Steal: Use Hammer (close-range burst) or Squirt Gun (mid-range pressure) to slow rivals and steal their haul.

Discover at the Hatchery: Bring eggs to the Hatchery station to identify species/ unlock new species entries and weapon upgrades.

Upgrade in the Shop: Spend earned XP on your chosen weapon skins.

Complete Quests around the island that support the conservation center

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How we built it

We used a lot of GenAI features to build, like the environment builder, to generate the terrain for the main world and the island sublevels players will be transported to. In addition to that, the creator assistant helped create basic scripts like AI NPC welcoming the player when they get enter into the shop or generating scripts to randomly spawn trash around the island. We also generated 3D meshes with the Gen AI tools, like clothing racks, mannequins, and beach gazebos and more.

Challenges we ran into

  • Numerous challenges with the desktop editor's stability and various bugs

  • This was my first time working with the Camera API and local scripting; setting up a camera manager took me longer than expected. After some trial and error and referencing the Camera tutorial, I managed to figure things out and transition the camera for when the player wants to pick a weapon.

  • Time is always a challenge; going from idea to a playable game in a month is one heck of a challenge for a single dev.

    • Attempts to use the creator assistant sometimes lead to more time wasted in dealing with hallucinations or the model getting sidetracked into tasks or resolving errors i didn't intend it to focus on. Thankfully, i could easily undo my changes with the help of git, but it still was a time sink compared to putting in time and energy into a hand-written script ## Accomplishments that we're proud of This is my second world on Horizon Worlds, and to be able to get so much done in less than 2 months is something I'm super proud of myself, regardless of the state of the world ## What we learned
    • Camera API usage
    • AI NPCs
    • Asset Pooling ## What's next for Turtle Bay
    • Bug fixes
    • More Unlockable areas to drive the narrative
    • Enhance the players' experience with AI NPC players so single players have something to do.
    • Rotating the items in the clothing store

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