Puzzle Rush: BETA!

[atlantika_ryan]

Hey all,

My first world is ready for people to start beta testing it!

Puzzle Rush: Play solo or up to a group of 4!

It's called PUZZLE RUSH and its a cooperative puzzle solving game that scores you based on how many puzzles you can complete (and pieces you can place correctly) in a set period of time. Here is a link:

https://horizon.meta.com/world/633542662967688

I've been able to check that a lot of the functionality works when I'm playing solo, but I could really use some help testing out how things run in multiplayer. So if anyone can hop in and try it out I'd really appreciate it!

And, of course, let me know if you have any feedback or run into any bugs or other problems.

Thanks!

-Ryan

[PigeonNo12]

Amazing job! I really like how smooth this mechanic is. I didn't have the chance to play it with others, but the solo player is looking really good.

Feedback:
- The selected piece might appear partially out of frame at times, in particular in small screen. I'd recommend using the Camera FOV settings to increase the field of view.
- I couldn't read the pop-up messages because they seem to appear partially outside of the screen. You can modify the pop-up options to adjust the size and placement.

Looking forward to trying the final version!

[PigeonNo12]

Out of curiosity, what resources did you use to learn Horizon Worlds development?

[atlantika_ryan]

Great feedback on the Camera FOV and pop-up messages! Thanks!

I've since increased each players FOV when they enter a match (and reset it when they leave), and I've improved the formatting and positioning of the pop-ups.

I'm also experimenting with using Focused Interactions on mobile. That's a bit of a bigger task, but tapping on the pieces is something I instinctively wanted to do on a phone, so I think its at least worth investigating.

[atlantika_ryan]

With just getting started, the first 2 Creator Challenges I participated in were really helpful.

The first by @SeeingBlue focused on simply modifying and publishing a largely pre-existing world was a great introduction to Desktop Editor. It really highlighted what (in my opinion) is the true strength of the platform: the ability to quickly and easily publish to desktop / mobile / and VR.

The second one by @SpaceGlitterUnicorn was really helpful for understanding the workflow, requirements, and limitations of importing assets from Blender. The example assets that were provided made the process much easier to get through; and once I had gone through it once it was way easier to plan what I needed to do for future assets.

While working through those Challenges I also started to download and dissect all of the Example Worlds. These were super helpful for being able to understand how to work with Typescript, and to learn the patterns for how to organize objects within projects.

As I found parts of the Example Worlds I was considering doing something with, I began to bring them back into the World I had created for the first Challenge. This ultimately turned that world into one giant sandbox of unrelated stuff, but my driving principle was: If I could get a mechanic working there I’d be able to use that mechanic in any other World I create in the future.

At this point in my ramp up I was spending a lot of time on the “Learn” and “API reference” tabs of https://developers.meta.com/horizon-worlds.

One of the other benefits of taking this approach was that it started to give me a better sense of what the limitations of the platform were. Those would be the things that I would need to develop a custom solution for (like the grabbing mechanic in Puzzle Rush), or would outright simply avoid doing entirely.

From that point on I built a new World that would serve as the preproduction for Puzzle Rush, where I would mostly implement (and re-implement!) the core mechanics of the game until they started to feel good.

Then I cloned that World into the current version of Puzzle Rush that exists today; cleaned up the scripts; did one final reorganization of how they were structured; and then started adding in all of the features. All while consistently playtesting and polishing along the way.

[PigeonNo12]

Fascinating! Thanks so much for taking the time to describe your journey on this platform. Looking forward to seeing the final version of your world and any other novel mechanic that you create in the future!

[MisterOsiris]

We have lots of puzzle lovers on our team! I'll share it around and see if we can't get some Meta SME feedback for you! Awesome work, atlantika_ryan!

[atlantika_ryan]

I've just released BETA: Update 1 for Puzzle Rush. The major additions are:

• Focused Interaction Mode for PC & Mobile
• 8 new puzzles and puzzle randomization
• Wild Card pieces that auto-fill whatever spot you fire them at
• In-world feedback for building higher and higher streaks; starts at 3 in-a-row and ends at 50 in-a-row
• And general polish and bugfixes

Feel free to give it a go if you'd like!

https://horizon.meta.com/world/633542662967688