Meta Spirit Sling

Project Overview

Spirit Sling is an exhilarating multiplayer tabletop Mixed Reality game built in Unity with the Meta SDK, designed for the Meta Quest 3 platform. Up to four players maneuver mystical creatures across a dynamic gameboard that appears right on your real-world table through Meta Quest's passthrough technology. Using their wit and strategically placed slingshots, players outsmart friends and claim victory in this captivating battle of skill and tactics. The mixed reality passthrough feature allows the game board to seamlessly blend with your physical environment, creating an experience that feels like a magical board game has come to life in your living room.

My Role & Contributions

As a gameplay developer on Spirit Sling, I contributed to several core systems that define the player experience. I worked on the slingshot mechanics — the primary interaction model where players grab, aim, and release mystical creatures across the game board. This required precise physics tuning to ensure that slingshot trajectories feel intuitive and satisfying while maintaining competitive balance across different table sizes and room configurations. I contributed to the mixed reality integration layer using the Meta SDK, implementing the spatial anchoring system that locks the game board to the player's real-world table surface and maintains visual consistency as players move around the physical space. I worked on the turn-based game flow system, managing player transitions, action validation, and state synchronization across multiplayer sessions. I also contributed to the creature ability system, where each mystical character possesses unique powers that interact with the board and other creatures in strategically meaningful ways. Collaborating with designers and artists, I helped ensure that the mixed reality presentation felt polished and magical — with virtual creatures casting shadows on real surfaces and game effects responding to the physical environment.

Technical Challenges

Mixed reality development on the Meta Quest 3 presented a unique set of technical challenges that differ significantly from traditional VR or screen-based game development. The spatial anchoring system needed to work reliably across diverse room setups — different table heights, surfaces, lighting conditions, and physical spaces — while maintaining millimeter-level accuracy to prevent the game board from drifting or misaligning during play sessions. The passthrough compositing required careful depth management to ensure virtual game elements appear correctly layered with the real-world environment, including proper occlusion where physical objects should appear in front of virtual ones. Network synchronization for multiplayer was particularly challenging in MR, as each player's game board position is relative to their own physical space, requiring spatial translation between different players' coordinate systems. The slingshot physics needed to feel consistent regardless of table size, requiring dynamic scaling of force calculations based on the detected play surface. Hand tracking integration for grabbing and aiming slingshots demanded robust gesture recognition that distinguishes intentional game interactions from casual hand movements, preventing accidental inputs during animated conversations around the table. Performance optimization was critical, as the Quest 3 must simultaneously render the passthrough camera feed, process spatial understanding, run physics simulations, and display game graphics — all while maintaining the rock-solid frame rate essential for comfortable MR experiences.

Results & Impact

Spirit Sling was published on the Meta Quest store and received recognition as one of the standout mixed reality titles for the Quest 3 platform. The game was praised for demonstrating how mixed reality can enhance social gaming experiences, bringing the tactile appeal of tabletop games into a new dimension without sacrificing the face-to-face interaction that makes board games special. Players highlighted the intuitive slingshot controls, the visual quality of the MR integration, and the strategic depth that keeps sessions competitive and engaging. The project was featured in Meta's MR showcase materials, contributing to the platform's growing library of mixed reality experiences. For me, working on Spirit Sling was an opportunity to push the boundaries of what mixed reality gaming can be, applying my years of VR experience to the emerging MR paradigm and gaining deep expertise in spatial computing, passthrough compositing, and the unique design considerations that mixed reality imposes on gameplay and interaction design.