Beyond The Ridge Update!

A huge update for the game Beyond The Ridge—so massive, in fact, that we could consider it an entire rework!

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Inspiration & Category definition

Since some players seemed to enjoy the older version of the game, we decided to take it to a whole new level: creating lots of interactive actions designed specifically for mobile and elevating the experience into a complete, immersive cooperative game (up to 5 players!). It can be played solo, but it’s a way heavier experience.

As for the categories, we feel confident about some of them; we truly made this game from the heart and didn’t overthink the categories. Our goal was to bring a complete and fresh experience to all players. But when it comes to choosing the main category, we strongly feel that "Shareable" fits best as the primary one.

After this massive update, the game basically turns into a random situation generator. Players must cooperatively drive the submarine while shooting at dangers and simultaneously fixing water leaks that can appear around the sub due to collisions, explosions, or enemy turret hits. This creates a wide range of unpredictable and intense scenarios.

We also introduced an AI NPC Agent that acts as the submarine overseer (from now on referred to as SakuyaAI). This AI processes input from many in-game events and does its best to counsel and assist players. It adds another layer to the randomness, since sometimes even SakuyaAI is fully convinced the situation is under control—when in reality, disaster is just seconds away!

As for secondary categories, we strongly feel this game fits perfectly into the "Meme-y Award" thanks to the many humorous touches from the AI Agent’s assistance. It also suits the "Fun in 20 Seconds" category, since the voting counter speeds up infinitely when all players agree—meaning from joining the world to playing can take less than 10 seconds.

Since this is, at least for us, a one-of-a-kind game, we think it might fit into other categories depending on how you judge it—so we strongly encourage y’all to play it for yourselves! Stay dry!

What it does

The game puts players in control of a relatively huge submarine, operated using various levers—all optimized to be intuitive and fun on mobile devices! The goal is to survive while crossing the different areas the game generates.

The first area acts like a tutorial, though it can still be pretty dangerous, and it’s the only fixed one—called “The Ridge.” After completing this area, players face a choice between two randomly generated paths, each with different perks, lengths, and completely random names.

There are many dangers, some tied to specific types of areas (also referred to as biomes). These include:

Sea Mines: Explode on impact and can be shot and destroyed using the submarine’s turrets.

Ice Spikes: Cause damage on collision and can also be shot with the submarine’s turrets.

Volcanic Water Currents: Push the submarine in random directions when crossed—sometimes directly into danger!

High-Pressure Areas: The submarine starts taking damage from multiple points. Speed and coordination are crucial here to repair damage quickly and get through safely!

Enemy Water Turrets: Shoot at the submarine and can finally be destroyed by the submarine’s guns.

Besides that, there are less dangerous obstacles like colliding with rocks or algae, which slow down your progress by reducing your speed and making you more vulnerable to the more serious threats.

Every time the submarine takes damage, it starts leaking water in random spots. These leaks, while pretty easy to fix, can quickly become fatal if not addressed fast! Players need to use solder guns scattered around the submarine to shoot at the leaks and seal them. Some leaks take more shots than others, making cooperative teamwork crucial for the submarine crew.

If leaks are left unattended for too long, they start pushing the submarine downwards, forcing it toward the ocean floor. This almost guarantees collisions with rocks or other dangers below, halting your progress until you fix all the leaks—or you sink with the sub!

The longer players stay in an area, the more dangerous it gradually becomes. Some hazards increase their spawn rate with distance, so technically calmer, longer areas can end up being deadlier than shorter zones packed with dangers!

To help out, players can use a fully functional sonar that shows both the submarine and danger locations as dots. Combined with cooperative use of the periscope, this helps players navigate safely through the hazards.

Like we always say: social cooperation is key in this game. Being able to give and receive orders from your teammates not only makes gameplay way easier but also sparks tons of random interactions and unforgettable moments!

There are also some consumables in the shop that, despite being cheap, can save you in tough situations—like dramatically boosting the submarine’s speed or instantly fixing all ongoing water leaks...

How we built it

We basically started by polishing and refining the physics of the original submarine. Then we spent a good amount of time brainstorming intuitive and satisfying ways to control it.

Once the planning phase was done, my teammate Jus did an amazing job creating the 3D assets for the submarine’s interior and exterior using Blender. We wanted to homebrew the main assets to keep total polygon count under control and ensure a smooth, lightweight experience for all players.

After that, we refined the random generator (although we’d love to make even more improvements to accommodate an even greater variety of areas!) and focused on making the gameplay experience seamless and smooth. We worked on well-defined interactive interfaces and almost text-less HUDs so players can easily and intuitively check things like the submarine’s position, direction, how much water is leaking in, and more...

Once the main update was roughly defined and coded, we spent a good amount of time adding the AI Agent “SakuyaAI.” It constantly receives detailed info about the players’ gameplay status and acts as both a counselor and an alarm—sometimes guiding players on what to do in certain situations, other times sounding the alarm when things get serious. We’d love to improve this system even more because we truly believe it has huge potential for future updates and even other games!

We also spent a good chunk of time designing a smooth and intuitive way to operate the submarine’s turrets and periscopes. We didn’t want to overwhelm players with a bunch of buttons all at once, so we implemented a simple “drag to move, tap to shoot” system.

After that, we spent countless (but fun!) hours polishing transitions, HUDs, sound assets, and the overall experience to bring a fresh, polished update to our game.

Challenges we ran into

Honestly, the biggest challenge we faced was optimization. We pulled countless tricks to boost performance because this game runs some seriously intensive server-side math in places.

One major example is the sonar itself. Updating the sonar UI with dots was way too intensive and prone to failure, so we switched to spawning dots over the grid instead. But since the submarine naturally swings and the spawned dots couldn’t be set as children of the Sonar entity, we had to manually calculate their positions to make them move seamlessly as if they were connected.

Also, because the environment moves while the submarine stays static, we gained some big advantages but had to push extreme optimization and fine-tuning to keep everything smooth without any hiccups.

The next challenge was designing the water leaks system. We wanted to make sure players have a consistent and fair gameplay mechanic with it. Randomly placing leaks could sometimes put them in spots that are super hard to reach, ruining the experience. So instead, we pre-designed all the water leak positions around the submarine to keep things balanced and fun!

Another challenge was more mundane: time. We have so many ideas and ways to enhance gameplay, but just not enough hours in the day to put them all in. Plus, we didn’t want to rush anything—we preferred to ensure the features we added are solid and reliable. That said, apologies in advance if any glitches pop up... we’ll keep polishing the experience after the contest!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re super proud of the submarine’s interior designs. It’s tricky to create that enclosed, underwater vibe without making camera navigation tough or players feel claustrophobic. Since we plan to add full VR support soon, we paid special attention to the spaces and decorations. We’re really happy with how the submarine turned out—smooth, easy to understand, and a place where players can navigate around without any hassle.

One of the toughest challenges was making players feel the submarine’s movement—even when they’re not looking out a window. We’re super proud of the sound assets we used to nail this. We combined GenAI-generated sounds with public library assets to boost that sense of motion. There are even random metallic “creaks” that shift around the sub depending on its speed, making players really feel like they’re inside a massive metal box navigating under intense ocean pressure.

We’re proud of a lot of what we accomplished, especially the graphical interfaces. We aimed for a clean aesthetic that doesn’t overwhelm players with info. We also created HUDs for the levers to help players fully immerse themselves in their actions, keeping them standardized with the main HUDs so players can quickly glance and understand what’s going on.

Finally, we’re proud to have integrated cooperative and social game mechanics that don’t make the gameplay too hard but create a fun, engaging challenge players actually enjoy enduring.

What we learned

We don’t even know where to start with this one! We learned so much—from tons of tricks and techniques for 3D assets to solid coding best practices to keep everything organized. We also got deep into core functions and features of the Meta Horizon Worlds environment, which will help us develop faster and better games or updates in the future!

What's next for Beyond The Ridge

As we’ve said many times (including at the original game launch), we want to keep adding new areas, challenges, dangers, and mechanics. We even had a mini-puzzle planned for repairing certain things alongside the water leaks, but we definitely want to test that more before adding it to the final update. We believe this gaming experience can keep growing on both Mobile/Web and VR.

Speaking of VR… we added a small area at the rear of the submarine, accessible before the actual game starts. This space is meant to become a VR social hub—a fun little hideout with simple minigames where players can create an instance not just to play but to hang out and socialize with friends!

We absolutely plan to keep curating and improving the game, polishing existing features before adding new ones to make sure it always feels fresh and smooth like day one.

Extra note to whoever’s reading this...

We apologize in advance if you encounter any bugs or glitches. We worked tirelessly to make the experience as smooth as possible, but hey—we’re not perfect! So if you run into anything weird or unexpected, rest assured we’ll fix it ASAP!

We feel—but aren’t totally sure—that persistent variables (which we use to track many quests and leaderboards) aren’t 100% working for us right now. Since we wanted to publish the game and it’s not a game-breaking issue, we decided to push it anyway. But rest assured, we’re actively investigating what’s going on.

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  • metahorizonsdesktopeditor
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