Escape Room AR is a mobile escape room that uses a target image system to be able to set up a virtual escape room anywhere. We made this in Unity using Vuforia, drawing heavy inspiration from point and click style puzzle games to design the different systems and interactions. I work along side two of my closest colleagues in developing this project from the initial conceptualization to an early prototype, to a fully playable vertical slice that we demoed at Game On Expo and the Arizona Tech Council's Tech The Halls event. I was the lead programmer who developed all the core systems of this project, and lead a team of junior developers and interns multiple years in a row through the University of Advancing Technology's Game Production Studio.

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I am proud of the core systems and mechanics I created for this project. Augmented reality was completely new to me at the time for creating this project, and I wanted to make something that felt like playing a point and click adventure in real life. I quickly got to work on experimenting with what translated over well to AR and created a system that allowed you to click objects on you screen to add them to an inventory bar at the bottom of your screen, and then click those items to focus your view on them. While an item was active, you were able to drag the object around to see more details and look for clues to the puzzles. You can also move the item around the game simply by moving your phone around different printable target images as if the object was in your hand attached to your phone. All of the puzzles were based off this system, like one where I used playing cards that revealed hidden numbers when you held them into the matching color torch.

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One of the toughest challenges we had to overcome was working with newer technology, since there wasn't a lot of documentation and guides of common issues at the time. We ran into issues like AR content jittering and not staying centered on the target images, which lead us to constantly need to redesign and improve our target images to allow the phone camera to recognize them easier. We also had to redesign a lot of assets to be smaller, so that it was easier to fit the whole object on the phone screen without moving away from the target. A lot of trial and error went into discovering the best practices when working with Vuforia, and then rapidly iterating on what we had to fit that.

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This was my first major game project that I saw and lead from beginning to end. I self taught myself foundational knowledge on Vuforia and AR development, mobile development, Photon and multiplayer networking, and more. So much of this project was seeing what worked, and learning from what didn't. In addition to that, I also had to balance managing a team. I was responsible for overseeing the programmers on the project, making sure their needs were met and clearing up any obstacles preventing them from meeting their goals, and sitting side by side with them to help solve any issues they face in both code and issues with source control. Overall, this project taught the broader scope of goes into game development, and the importance of a clear and well documented code base and style conventions.