The Final Hour

Inspiration

The Final Hour is inspired by popular zombie tv shows and classic wave-based survival shooters emphasize physical weapon handling, short session design, and replayable combat loops.

What it does

The Final Hour is a fast-paced VR survival shooter designed for short, high-intensity play sessions with a strong focus on physical gunplay.

You are inside a barn that serves as your temporary base. Your car is located inside the barn and is being repaired. The car is required to leave the area. While you are repairing and starting the car, engine noise attracts waves of zombies toward the barn. You must defend the location until the repair process is completed.

The core gameplay is built around VR shooting with full ragdoll physics. Enemies react physically to every hit, ensuring consistent and readable feedback. Weapons use manual reloading, have individual magazines for each gun, and support silencer attachments, making weapon handling deliberate and skill-based.

The game features four zombie waves, with each wave increasing in difficulty, enemy count, and pressure on the player. After completing a wave, a new weapon becomes available in the weapon room. Each weapon provides a noticeable power increase, culminating in a high-damage sniper rifle designed for late-stage combat control.

Throughout the session, you remain in contact with a friend via radio. Radio messages deliver guidance, gameplay context, and light narrative support without interrupting the main gameplay loop.

The Final Hour follows the “fun in 5 minutes” design principle: quick onboarding, clear objectives, strong replayability, and visually readable combat interactions.

You must survive all waves, complete the car repair, and leave the area to finish the session.

Challenges we ran into

One of the primary challenges was optimizing the game specifically for VR, maintaining stable performance and visual clarity while combining physics-driven enemies, multiple weapons, and interactive environments, as VR development requires a very different approach compared to classic Unreal Engine workflows.

We spent some time on on wave difficulty tuning. The goal was to keep each of the four waves distinct, increase pressure in a controlled way, and still fit the experience into short play sessions without sudden difficulty spikes.

Finally, maintaining stable performance and visual clarity while combining physics-driven enemies, multiple weapons, and interactive environments in VR was a constant technical challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This project represents our first complete VR game, and delivering a polished, playable experience end-to-end is a major achievement for us.

We’re also proud of achieving a clear and scalable progression loop: four escalating waves, consistent weapon upgrades, and a final weapon that meaningfully changes how the last phase plays.

Most importantly, we delivered on the “fun in a few minutes” goal, creating a game that is easy to start, immediately engaging, and designed for strong replayability.