Been grinding away on my Mixed Reality Asteroid game and finally made some solid progress! The goal this time around was to improve the visuals and tighten up the gameplay loop. I even got to put some of my newly learned Blender skills to use, thanks to some classes I took during the Horizon Worlds competition.
Upgrading the Asteroids
First on the list: ditching the basic cube asteroid. Yeah, it worked, but it wasn’t exactly selling the whole “asteroid in space” vibe. I found a quick Blender guide on modeling asteroids and followed it, tweaking the model to match the style I want for the game.
- Exported the model as FBX
- Imported it into the project
- Set it up as an asteroid prefab
- Swapped it into the spawner
And just like that—it worked! No hiccups, no weird scaling issues. Already feels like a big step up.
Bringing Space to Life
To make it feel like you’re actually floating in space, I added some twinkling stars in the background. It’s a small detail, but it really sells the effect, making it look like your room has opened up into space.
I also wanted to make the room itself feel more integrated with the game. I started building out some custom shader materials for the walls and barriers. The idea was to make them look like a forcefield or sensor grid instead of plain walls. I played around with a few designs—circles, hex grids, standard grids—and then refined it by adding color and adjusting how much of the effect shows.
But… that completely borked the passthrough. The transparency in the shaders isn’t playing nice, so for now, the game is locked to full VR until I figure out how to fix that. Definitely something I need to circle back on.
Building the Game Loop
On the gameplay side, I’ve been working on the main menu and the game over screen. Right now, the high scores don’t update yet, but the foundation is there.
I finally tied everything together into a working game loop:
- Start Game → Open the main menu
- Hit Play → Game begins
- Destroy Asteroids → Score goes up
- Lose Lives → Game ends
- Game Over Screen → Shows your score
- Play Again → Loops back to the start
It’s still pretty rough, but for a few hours of work, I’m happy with the progress!
What’s Next?
There’s still a lot I want to build out to make the game more interesting and dynamic. Here’s the current wishlist:
- 🎨 Shader and color swapping for more variety
- 🚀 New ship designs to choose from
- ☄️ Different asteroid types to mix things up
- 🔀 Asteroid sizes—big ones that split into smaller pieces when destroyed
- 👾 Alien ships for added challenge
- 🌐 Online leaderboards (way down the line, but it’s on the list)
Overall, the game’s finally starting to take shape. Can’t wait to see how much more I can push it!
