Inspiration
We wanted to leverage MR in two specific ways:
We believe MR opens the door to social local experiences. Unlike being in VR, playing MR does not cut you off from your world or your family. We believe there are many headset users who would love to play experiences with their spouse, and we believe Meta would love more experiences on their platform that encourage households with one Quest 3 to consider buying a second one!
We wanted to leverage the difference in how VR and MR utilize the environment. It's very easy to create an MR experience that alters the world around you to the point that is could or even should be a VR experience. We want to fully embrace the home of the user and use the layout of their own home - kitchens, dining rooms, living rooms.
In the spirit of creating a social experience for couple we wanted to make an app that could improve their relationship. Games like It Takes Two and Overcooked do a great job of giving users an experience that builds cooperation and teamwork. We believe those ideas can be further leveraged in an intentional way to help couples learn communication and cooperation skills .
What it does
It gives 2 players a shared gamified exercise in which they must set up for a party being thrown at their house. Through chaotic surreal tasks they must work together to get everything ready.
Afterwards they debrief with conversation starters that encourage them to compliment each other and think about how they work together.
How we built it
Unity + Meta Pressence Platform + Mirror.
Challenges we ran into
Networking was the biggest issue, we ended up ussing our own workaround instead of using co-location. And getting up to speed on some of the Presence Platform tools took time, but was ultimately not too difficult.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We think the concept is very strong, we would love to play a full experience like this with our partners/spouses! We also think the app has a lot of love and charm that we are proud of. Also the gameplay is both fun and can be quite hilarious.
What we learned
We learned a lot about working together and that how well we work together under extreme crunch.
What's next for Pinata Yada Yada
We love this idea and are definitely going to consider it's possible future, and what a full experience with a whole collection of gamified exercises would look like. And with the oversight of a couples therapist we believe this experience could offer deep growth for couples.
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