Blog - Resolution Games

A Love Letter to the Games Industry

Tommy Palm — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 14:59:47 GMT

Dear ‘Retro’ Games,

You’ve been with us for as long as we can remember. And we owe you. Big time.

You were there for the long nights, glowing screens, worn buttons, and that unmistakable feeling of just one more try. And the quarters… So. Many. Quarters.

There’s a purity in classics like Galaga, Centipede, Frogger, Pac-Man, Asteroids and others. They didn’t need spectacle to be unforgettable. And decades later, they still inspire developers, still challenge players, and still spark joy.

As a thank you, we at Resolution Games have created a love letter to the classics, to the industry, and to everyone who has ever felt that spark when you drop a quarter into the machine and a game simply clicks, which we launched today, called Retrocade. Now available in one app on Apple Arcade, you can play 10 iconic arcade games from the 80’s - ASTEROIDS®, BREAKOUT®, BUBBLE BOBBLE™, CENTIPEDE®, FROGGER, GALAGA™, HAUNTED CASTLE, PAC-MAN™, SPACE INVADERS™, and TRACK & FIELD.

Retro games are having a real moment again, and I couldn’t be happier. Not just because they’re fun), but because they remind us of what made games magical in the first place: simple rules, tight controls, and gameplay so good it pulls you back in without ever asking too much. But Retrocade isn’t only about playing old games again. It’s about something we’ve never fully been able to recreate before. Until now, games have mostly lived as software—code and pixels separated from their physical soul. With Retrocade, we can finally celebrate the whole experience: the art, the cabinets, the atmosphere, the environments that once surrounded these games and made them feel alive. You don’t just play them—you visit them.

We love games. Always have. Always will.

See you in the arcade,

Tommy Palm
CEO, Resolution Games

What’s The Difference Between Demeo, Demeo Battles and Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked?

Team Resolution — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 21:06:02 GMT

At Resolution Games, we believe game night can happen anywhere and with anyone. Since we first introduced Demeo, our goal has been to bring people together around thrilling, strategic, and social experiences. Whether you’re adventuring with your friends in Demeo, outwitting rivals in Demeo Battles, or diving into legendary D&D lore in our upcoming title, Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked, we’ve got a seat at the table for every kind of player.

Demeo: RPG Dungeon Crawler

Demeo started as a love letter to classic tabletop nights - the kind with miniatures, snacks, laughs… and just the right amount of dice-induced chaos. Built from the ground up to be played with friends (whether across a table or across the world), it blends tactical combat with co-operative play.

Highlights:

Strategic, turn-based dungeon crawling for up to four players
Card-based abilities and randomized challenges
Built for social fun
A game-night experience made for adventurers of all levels

Demeo Battles: PvP Turn-Based Strategy

What happens when you take the fast-paced combat of Demeo and turn the dial up to competitive? Enter Demeo Battles. Built for quick, head-to-head skirmishes (1v1 or 2v2), it’s all about reading your opponent, adapting on the fly, and claiming victory in compact, adrenaline-pumping arenas.

Highlights:

Competitive tactical combat
Speedy strategy with matches lasting under 20 minutes
Choose your champions and army to outplay your opponents

Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked: Fantasy Tabletop Adventure

A whole new journey into the Dungeons & Dragons universe, powered by the Demeo Action Roleplaying System. Battlemarked blends the lore, legends, and locations of D&D with the streamlined, card-driven combat Demeo is known for, making it fast, fun, and endlessly replayable. No need to roll up a character sheet or study a rulebook. Just jump in, gather your party, and start your story.

Highlights:

Set in the D&D universe, featuring familiar spells, classes, and locations
Quick, pick-up-and-play tactical adventures
Full story-driven campaigns built for co-op (or solo)

So Which Game Should You Choose?

Love classic co-op strategy with friends? Demeo is your go-to.
Crave competitive duels and clever combos? Demeo Battles delivers.
Want to jump into epic D&D quests with instant Demeo Adventure? Battlemarked is made for you. Wishlist today on Steam (PC or VR), PlayStation or Meta Quest.

Three Studios, Thirty Days, One Sweaty Challenge

Team Resolution — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 12:00:00 GMT

What do you get when three of the biggest names in VR fitness team up? A sweaty headset and a new excuse to skip leg day.

Launching June 20, the “Triple Sweat 30 Day Challenge”, hosted by Resolution Games, Cloudhead Games, and Kluge Interactive, invites players to ditch the treadmill in favor of rhythm-shooters, racket showdowns, and neon-drenched dance floors. Running through July 19, it’s a month-long push to prove that VR makes fitness fun, accessible, and unforgettable!

Triple Sweat 30 Day Challenge | Racket Club, Synth Riders & Pistol Whip

What’s the Challenge?

The “Triple Sweat” challenge isn’t your typical fitness program — and that’s exactly the point. It’s 30 days of community-driven play, daily movement goals, and surprise giveaways, all tied together by a trio of VR games:

Racket Club (Resolution Games) – a social sports game that blends racket mechanics with VR intensity.
Pistol Whip (Cloudhead Games) – a rhythm-shooter experience that gets your heart racing as you blast your way through stylized scenes.
Synth Riders (Kluge Interactive) – a freestyle dance and rhythm ride where fitness meets flow.

Throughout the challenge, expect merch drops, game key contests, and opportunities to be featured across social media. Just don’t expect a personal trainer yelling at you to push harder.

To stay up to the date on the latest challenges and giveaways, follow Racket Club, Synth Riders and Pistol Whip on social media.

The Triple Sweat Bundle

To kick things off, we’re offering all three games as a discounted bundle (50% off) from June 20–29 via Meta Horizon, Steam and Pico. That’s $39.99 for the full set!

Will you rise to the challenge? Play today!

S-CAB, Planar Arcade Game Exploration on Snap Specs

Aamir, Mathieu & Stuart — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 21:06:34 GMT

Time to ride your S-CAB!

Last month, we inaugurated our pinch-joystick input method with Snak, available for the Snap Specs. With our new game, S-CAB, we wanted to explore how it felt for a planar game, so voilà, a car game was born.

Relative Pinch Joystick

Initially, we went with relative driving, like the good old top down car games where left meant turning the car's steering wheel to the left.

But, since our joystick is virtual, it contains no information about the user and we had to define a reference vector (as opposed to a physical joystick where left is defined by the hardware implicit position in the user’s hand).

We initially used the orientation of the Specs themselves, but the user's hand can be anywhere around the elbow, and the left-right movement may end up being aligned with the Specs' orientation making their orientation unusable for determining left/right.

So we then used the wrist to 'pinch position at start of input' as reference, and that works great in any hand position.

We thought we had it! Then actual players showed up, and we realized how much players struggle with relative controls… in the end, we threw all that out and switched back to absolute direction input as we had in Snak. You win some, you lose some.

Particles

We used particles for the first time for the tire tracks to enhance the cab drift but also for the arena border and drop off location.

Generally, they're already quite capable! Lens studio VFX/shader graph is a very good foundation. It's a combination of VFX and shader graphs where every module code is viewable.

These were the sorest points:

The viewport is lacking as it doesn't have effects. You have to look at the effects in the preview, which is hard to navigate. It feels like doing surgery with a drone.
Every small parameter change in the lens involves saving and waiting for the preview to update - a killjoy when you make and view hundreds of little visual parameter changes.
The VFX/ Shader graph should really allow multiple particle emitters and outputs per graph.
Having a trail renderer would be nice.

Code

This second Specs project was entirely in Typescript, which felt much better with full autocompletion and other benefits discussed in the previous post.

Our biggest issues still were cache folder issues.

Status of our wish list:

Fixed update, or maybe fixed delta time, to be able to do frame-independent logic
Nested prefabs
Physics component having kinematic and constraint position/rotation options
Scriptable object asset to store values in (game settings, dialogues ,etc.)
Way to save/load editor layout
Dragging a component in the inspector field to assign it (instead of SceneObject)

Some nitpicky but essential QOL stuff

Shortcuts for enabling and disabling SceneObjects
Unpinning the inspector should display the scene object that is currently selected in the inspector
Pressing highlight should clear the asset browser filter and show the asset

Design

Thanks to Drift Demon by hi rohun, and Crazy Taxi for inspiration.

Initially, the arena had a floor, but a large occluding flat surface did not feel good. So, we tried without: a nice learning is that if you have enough elements that define a surface by being on it you don't actually need to show the surface.

We started with Pinch-length controlling acceleration. However, depending on how you tune it, that either invites players to large gestures or makes the input too sensitive to hand movement. We then agreed that we should instead empower minimal movement for comfort and ability to play during a meeting without revealing yourself, therefore the auto perma acceleration.

Which then brought the nice secondary mechanic of having to drift to brake, putting even more emphasis on the drift.

Our initial two word pitch was: Car Sumo, some of it made it to the game with the enemies bumping you off platform. If there's any regret, it is not having given the cab a way to fight back. Especially since the 'carrying passenger' gives a nice on/off state that could be used for alternating chased and chasing. We even tried rear bumping as a skill move to knock off enemies by sliding into them rear first. But it was hard to tune, and the one month that we gave ourselves meant that this idea will have to hitch another game.

Finally, while the game gets more plays here than Snak, with a more addictive 'one more run' replay vibe, alas, it's clear that gameplay captures aren't nearly as interesting with planar games. And so for our next game, we'll go back to volumic scenes.

One S-CAB tip: learn to unpinch. When the car is going in the right direction, stop pinching, focus instead of planning your next drift. Learn to let go to go further. S-CAB poetry for you. And now on to a new lens game!

Diving into Spatial Gaming with Snak on Snap Specs

Aamir, Mathieu & Stuart — Mon, 12 May 2025 15:21:31 GMT

Hey everyone! We're thrilled to share our exciting journey developing "Snak", our first shipped game for the Snap Specs and also our first shipped AR glasses game! This fast-paced project took us from concept to launch in just one month, and we learned so much along the way.

Smooth Sailing with Specs

We were impressed by the Snap Specs' form factor. They're sleek, lightweight, and easy to share, which made collaboration within our team smooth. Passing them around and getting quick feedback felt just like the old days of handing out a pad to a friend. We want to insist how refreshing that felt for us XR veterans, snappy, reliable hand-overs…bliss.

Intuitive Hand Tracking & Controls

Implementing hand tracking for "Snak's 3D movement was surprisingly simple. We invented an innovative pinch-drag control scheme that feels natural and precise, and new players grasped it almost instantly. We call it the Pinch-Pull Joystick. You heard it here first!

Streamlined Development in Lens Studio

Migrating to Lens Studio was much smoother than we anticipated as we feared new language, new engine, new everything. And yet the platform's Unity-like interface and clear documentation along with its assistant AI made it easy to get up to speed quickly. We were impressed by the rapid iterations – pushing builds to the device and testing in real-time was efficient. Integrating assets like models, textures, and audio was also smooth, and the built-in physics system worked fine for our interactions.

Snak

Here’s the gameplay video.

The Specs' field of view is a challenge so we opted for a game with scrolling where the player’s attention is always centered. That’s key for the players’ hand to stay in view without them having to be conscious about it.

Quickly our spatial snake felt hypnotic and our musician wouldn’t sleep on the occasion for ambient music.

As Hollow Knight fans (come on Silk Song, come out already) we thought of brambles as a good solution for a super low poly natural decor that we could morph into any shape quickly and which would evoke its gameplay role: get stung and you lose but feel slithery and you gob food by coiling around a gnarly nest mesh of them!

Positive Learnings & Future Excitement

Overall, our experience with Lens Studio and the Snap Specs was very positive. The familiar design of Lens Studio helped us onboard quickly, and its tools enabled us to build "Snak" in record time, a game we're honestly quite proud of already.

Code and project

You can check the beauty or horror of our code yourself at this Github repo.
If you're a lucky user of Specs, you can find Snak here: Snak on Spectacles.

Conclusion

A month into our collaboration with Snap, we're hyped and we're eager to stop cleaning our code for that github and writing this blog post and dive into our second Pinch-Pull Joystick game for the Specs.

The 411 on Demeo’s Technical Update

Team Resolution — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 14:42:00 GMT

Hi Adventurers,

Today we’ve released a technical update (1.37) for Demeo that the team is very excited about. From the outside looking in, it might not appear flashy or exciting, but in fact, it’s the result of a lot of heavy lifting by the team over the course of 10 months. It’s a big project because it strengthens the foundation of the game and lays the groundwork for potential updates in the future.

Why did we do this? We started development of Demeo in 2017, and a lot of pretty huge leaps in immersive entertainment and game engines have taken place since then. As a result, part of “the engine” that we used to create Demeo became outdated. Until now, this has made it difficult for us to bring new content to the game and proved to be restrictive in terms of continuing to support new hardware and platforms in the future.

Our team has been working to improve this tech for a very long time and are definitely the unsung heroes behind the scene. Many of the improvements they brought to the game are, quite frankly, ones that are important to the engine but not visible to players; however some you can easily see including faster loading times, better performance and higher fidelity. We also added new ranks.

Before

After - key changes include upgraded metallic materials and water shader

With today’s update, “the engine” of the game is now up-to-date! This updated foundation gives us the opportunity to add more content to the game if demand supports it. We’re also working on an all-new game in the Demeo franchise - Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked - that brings you and your party on an epic journey in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. Find out more here: the Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked website.

Check out the new update on the following stores: Steam, Apple’s App Store, Meta Horizon Store, PlayStation Store, Pico and the Epic Game Store.

Before

After - height definition level with more props and the character reacts better to environmental lights

Patch notes:

KEY CHANGES

New Ranks Available

Performance & Loading Improvements

The game’s loading system has been reworked to provide greater control over asset loading and unloading
These changes reduce the memory footprint and improve performance across all platforms
Loading times have been optimized to make the game feel snappier and responsive

Graphics & Rendering Overhaul

Demeo has been updated to Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline (URP) to enhance visual quality and enable new rendering technologies such as eye tracked foveation on supported devices
The previous lighting system has been replaced with the new lighting system provided by Unity 6, enabling beautiful gradients on the environments
Nearly all materials have been reworked to be compatible with URP and the lighting system

So WTF is Twenty Guys?

Team Resolution — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:36:25 GMT

We’re here to answer that.

As you may have noticed throughout our decade of making games, we’re always looking for ways to push the boundaries of the latest technology and trends taking place in the industry.

In January, we held a company-wide Game Jam where participants were challenged to create a MR prototype that included a social component. Our teammates made many fun games, but there was one that made everyone laugh and kept coming up in conversations, and that game was Twenty Guys.

Game Jam prototype

We knew instantly that there was something there with this game and decided to pursue it further. Twenty Guys is a perfect mix of using really complex technology (mixed reality/passthrough camera) while also illustrating a lot of what we see a large group of consumers currently seeking in terms of fast, free, fun… we dare you to play it and not laugh!

We recognize that it’s quite different from most of our other games. Give it a try on the Meta Horizon Store in Early Access, and let us know what you like, don’t like, wish was in it, etc. on Discord. Our goal is to develop this game with the community to make it what YOU want.

Twenty Guys | Early Access Trailer

Behind the Scenes of Spatial Ops: Building a Seamless MR Experience

Team Resolution — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 08:00:00 GMT

Have you ever wondered how a MR game that seamlessly blends the physical and virtual spaces is created? We sat down with Spatial Ops’ Creative Lead Niklas and Code Lead Dhimas to dive into this topic.

General Development Process

Starting Off: What was the initial vision behind Spatial Ops, and how did it evolve throughout development?

The initial vision for Spatial Ops was that of a simple one-room shooter which evolved to a full-blown laser tag at-home experience with an ambitious map editor that allows people to map out any physical space and play anywhere.

We also decided to add an entire new single-player campaign experience akin to Time Crisis on steroids to enable people with limited space to enjoy the fast-paced arcade shooter known today as Spatial Ops.

Unique Challenges: What were the biggest challenges you faced in creating a game that blends physical and virtual spaces seamlessly?

There were many technical challenges that needed to be overcome when blending the physical and virtual space. How do you make sure players are correctly positioned relative to each other and the physical space? How do we maintain integrity in syncing players through extended play sessions? How can we allow people to play in small spaces and huge ones up to 5,000 square feet and still have an enjoyable experience? How do we encourage people into moving and adapt the weapons to allow for a simple and seamless pickup-and-play experience that requires zero former experience? All of these and many more questions had to be answered and resolved and we believe the final product speaks for itself.

Co-Location in Spatial Ops

Concept of Co-location: For those unfamiliar, can you explain what co-location means in Spatial Ops and why it’s a critical feature?

Co-location means being able to be part of the same physical space in the game, allowing for interactions between players and the virtual world.

Technical Challenges: What were the main technical hurdles in ensuring multiple players could share the same physical space without latency issues or misalignment?

We had to address edge cases with Meta's shared anchors, informing players about potential alignment issues and providing clear instructions on how to proceed if problems arose.

Optimizing data packets sent from the client to host during gameplay was also crucial. VR headset input is inherently noisy, unlike console or PC input, which typically consists of simple binary values (pressed or not pressed). VR input includes a wider range of data, such as hand and head tracking, finger positions, and more. The Fusion Stats Debug tool proved invaluable in diagnosing data traffic issues.

Photon Fusion stat

Design Innovations: Were there any specific tools or systems you created to test and iterate on co-location during development?

We primarily utilized the standard Unity tools provided. The ability to playtest within the Unity Editor, eliminating the need to wear a Meta Quest headset for every test iteration was helpful. It didn't fully replace headset testing, especially for features reliant on Meta's shared anchor API. However, the ability to test core gameplay mechanics within the editor still significantly improved our overall development velocity.

Editor view

Tools to Speed Up Campaign Level Design

The Need for Speed: Why was it important to develop tools to accelerate campaign level design? Were there bottlenecks you were looking to solve?

Almost all of the levels require finetuning and timing to be executed with the precision we require to give the players an amazing, fast-paced, and coordinated experience. As the levels are handcrafted, we needed some great tools to achieve this in the timeframe allowed. With a small team and many designs to be fed, we needed to make some tough decisions about what things we needed to prioritize and what things had to take a back seat.

Tool Overview: Can you walk us through the tools you built to streamline the creation of campaign levels?

For campaign level creation, we developed two primary tools. The first, our Wave Container, manages the sequenced execution of events within each level. For managing level events, we created the Wave Container. This tool allows designers to sequence predefined "wave events"—C# classes containing encapsulated start and end logic. Each event manages its own execution, signaling when it has finished so the Wave Container can trigger the next event in the sequence. Designers can select these events from a custom dropdown, input any necessary parameters, and arrange them in the desired order.

Wave Container inspector view

Our second tool is a Bot State State Machine built using Unity's Animator. After evaluating various asset store options, we found them either unoptimized or overly complex. Unity's Animator proved to be a surprisingly effective solution. It offers excellent performance, is easy to debug, and has a low learning curve for new team members. While complex bot behaviors require more rules within the Animator, the ability to use layers, sub-state machines, and switch animators with minimal performance overhead made it the ideal choice for our needs.

Bot state machine designer (built on top of Unity Animator Tool)

Level Design Iteration: How do these tools help your designers quickly prototype, test, and iterate on levels?

Our Wave Container and Bot State Machine tools significantly accelerate level design iteration. The Wave Container's drag-and-drop interface and custom event dropdown allow designers to quickly assemble and reconfigure level sequences without requiring code changes. They can easily experiment with different enemy combinations, event timings, and environmental triggers.

The Bot State Machine, leveraging Unity's Animator, enables rapid prototyping and tweaking of bot behaviors. Designers can adjust bot AI, movement patterns, and reactions within a visual interface, allowing for quick testing and refinement of enemy encounters and level challenges.

For our designers, the tools are invaluable as they can make or break the design and vision. Without spending time on the creation of proper tools, we would not have been able to deliver some of the magic moments that the game has managed to capture in our audience.

Real-World Interaction: How did designing campaign levels account for real-world environments and player movement in physical spaces?

Designing campaign levels for real-world interaction required establishing clear guidelines for physical space and player movement. We defined standard dimensions for key elements like hallways and rooms to ensure consistent bot navigation and to prevent them from wandering too far. Verticality was also a crucial consideration. We determined appropriate story heights to allow bots to effectively engage players positioned within portal cages, ensuring that bots could shoot down at players and that players could visually track the bots within their limited movement space.

Portal cage placement was carefully planned, not only for bot navigation but also to prevent visual clipping between virtual objects and the real-world passthrough view. This attention to detail ensured a seamless and immersive experience for players interacting with both the virtual and physical environments.

Adaptive Bots for Campaign and Arena Modes

The Role of Bots: What role do bots play in Spatial Ops, and how do they enhance the player experience in both Campaign and Arena modes?

Bots are integral to the Spatial Ops experience, enhancing gameplay in both Campaign and Arena modes.

In Campaign, bots serve a dual purpose. They provide combat challenges, of course, but they also contribute to the narrative and establish the atmosphere of certain levels. For example, in the initial lab rat encounter, the bots are strategically placed near the lab rat gate to subtly convey the agents' lack of preparedness, enriching the storytelling.

In Arena mode, bots are crucial for solo players. Because co-located multiplayer requires at least two participants, bots offer a compelling alternative for those playing alone. They can act as opponents, providing a challenging AI to test skills against, or as allies, allowing players to team up and tackle the Arena challenges together. This ensures that players can always enjoy the Arena mode, regardless of whether they have a second player available.

First test on Bot walking and navigating through multiple floor and walking on stairs or slope.

Adaptability: How did you design bots to adapt seamlessly to both structured Campaign levels and the more dynamic Arena environments?

Our bot design prioritized adaptability to diverse environments, a key challenge shared by both Campaign and Arena modes. In Campaign, we had multiple designers creating levels with varied layouts, requiring bots to seamlessly navigate, find targets, and act appropriately in any environment. The dynamic nature of Arena, where players exhibit even greater creativity in map design, presented a similar challenge. We couldn't provide pre-set instructions for every possible Arena configuration. Instead, we engineered our bots to dynamically analyze their surroundings and make informed decisions.

We leveraged Unity's NavMesh and extensive use of raycasting for runtime environment analysis. To mitigate the performance cost of these raycast checks, we implemented the Unity Jobs System for parallel processing, significantly optimizing performance.

Campaign Level Navmesh

A key challenge was teaching bots to identify suitable cover. Our solution involves a multi-step process. When a bot seeks cover, it samples points around its current location in a clockwise fashion. From each point, it performs a raycast towards its target. If the raycast is obstructed by an object, that object is added to a collection of potential cover locations. The bot then evaluates these potential cover points, selecting the best option based on criteria such as distance to the target, distance to the bot itself, and the size of the cover object. This dynamic cover selection process allows bots to intelligently adapt to a wide range of level designs and player-created Arena maps.

Testing Adaptability: How did you ensure bots perform consistently across different player setups, levels, and real-world spaces?

We ensured consistent bot performance across diverse player setups, levels, and real-world spaces by using a unified logic core. While bot behavior varies between game modes and bot types through parameter adjustments and different state flows, the underlying decision-making process remains consistent. This foundational consistency was key.

Our testing process was rigorous. We extensively tested bots within a dedicated test scene containing a variety of obstacles: barriers, crates, slopes, stairs, and walls. We observed bot behavior in combat simulations and general navigation scenarios.

Debugging tools, like debug logs and visualized raycasts, were invaluable. We meticulously monitored bot states, particularly the environment checks that drive their decision-making. Accurate environment analysis is crucial; a failed check can lead to incorrect state transitions and undesirable behaviors, such as bots shooting at walls, teammates, or becoming stuck. By carefully observing these checks, we could quickly identify and address any anomalies.

Visualizing raycast for debugging

Closing Thoughts

Key Learnings: What were the most valuable lessons you learned while creating Spatial Ops?

The most valuable lesson we learned while creating Spatial Ops was the critical importance of the user experience. Meticulously addressing edge cases to ensure players don't become lost or confused proved absolutely essential.

Player Feedback: Has any early feedback from players surprised or influenced how you think about the game moving forward?

The most surprising and influential feedback we received was the enthusiasm players showed for the map editor. We were genuinely surprised by how much people enjoyed creating their own arenas. This positive response has definitely shaped our thinking about future development and potential expansions of the creative tools.

Other than that, we have seen a rising trend of players wanting to play together against the bots which is key to our next step in the evolution of the game. We have some amazing things waiting in the pipeline and we strongly believe our players will have an even greater time experiencing the things planned for them!

Spatial Ops is available on the Meta Horizon Store and Pico (Campaign Edition).

Striking an Artful Balance in Mixed Reality - Spatial Ops

Team Resolution — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 18:15:09 GMT

Spatial Ops - the ultimate mixed reality FPS game that turns your own space into a battlefield - is a game that was several years in the making. In addition to literally breaking boundaries of some of the latest technologies in order to make the game work as well as it does, another important aspect of the game is the art behind it.

Balancing realism and stylization was key in crafting the unique art style of Spatial Ops. In the world of mixed reality (MR), where virtual elements merge seamlessly with your real surroundings, creating an experience that’s both immersive and engaging is no small feat. This blog post explores some tips and learnings from our extremely talented art team.

How did you approach the balance between realism and stylization in Spatial Ops’ art style? What were the main challenges?

We approached this from a couple of different angles:

Realism for Immersion: To make virtual elements feel like they belong in your space, we focused on semi-realistic textures, physics, and lighting. This anchored the game in reality, ensuring players felt like the action was truly unfolding in their environment.

Stylization for Fun: While realism draws you in, too much can feel heavy or even overwhelming. That’s where playful stylized touches come in! Vibrant effects, exaggerated colors, and bold designs add energy, excitement, and clarity to the gameplay.

Creating Positive Reactions: The semi-realistic approach sparks joy and encourages a sense of wonder. Explosive effects, vibrant UI elements, and approachable visuals are crafted to make every moment memorable and fun.

The result? A balance of immersive realism and stylized creativity that makes Spatial Ops a groundbreaking MR experience—designed to keep you fully engaged while having a blast!

Were there specific aspects of the game world that the team felt needed more realism? How did you decide where to draw the line?

When creating the immersive world of Spatial Ops, the team made a clear choice: the environments had to feel real. Why? Because in mixed reality, the game world merges with your physical space. For the experience to feel seamless, the surroundings needed to look and behave like they truly belong in your environment.

To strike a balance, the team carefully drew the line between realism and stylization by asking, "Does this enhance immersion or player enjoyment?" The result? A game world that’s as exciting as it is believable—and visually cohesive.

Realistic Environments with Cohesive Design: Beyond lifelike textures and lighting, every element was crafted to follow a cohesive design style. From in-game signage and interface languages to the shapes and forms of objects, everything works together to build a world that feels consistent and authentic.
Stylized Gameplay Elements: While the environments embrace realism, we kept some gameplay elements—like visual effects, characters, and UI—stylized and fun. This balance keeps the action clear, engaging, and exciting without losing the immersive connection.

Did the game’s mechanics or narrative influence how realistic or stylized certain assets needed to be?

Yes, in Spatial Ops, mechanics and narrative were key factors in deciding how realistic or stylized certain assets needed to be. Every design choice was influenced by how players interact with the game and the story being told. Here are some examples:

Mechanics Dictate Clarity: For the fast-paced, action-packed gameplay, we found that critical assets like weapons, power-ups, and enemies needed to be more stylized. To achieve this, we used vibrant designs and bold effects to ensure these elements stood out in mixed-reality environments, keeping the action clear and intuitive.
Narrative Grounds Realism: The story within the game demanded environments and world-building elements that feel immersive and believable. From realistic architecture to cohesive signage and environmental storytelling, these assets helped create a world that players could feel truly a part of.
The Perfect Balance: By combining realistic environments with stylized, action-oriented gameplay elements, Spatial Ops creates a dynamic experience. You’re not just playing a game—you’re living in a world where enemies invade your reality, forcing you to fight back while hacking and interacting with devices to turn the tide of battle.

How did you use lighting, color, or textures to blend realistic and stylized elements together?

Here’s a look into a bit of each of those:

Lighting for Immersion: Subtle, realistic lighting brought depth to environments, making them feel like a natural part of your real-world space.
Color for Clarity: Stylized colors added energy, ensuring key gameplay elements—like enemies, weapons, and power-ups—stood out during intense combat.
Textures for Balance: Semi realistic textures grounded the environments, while bold and elaborate designs on guns and portal machines ensured they captured attention during battles or hacking sequences.

This thoughtful blend created an experience that felt both immersive and exhilarating, drawing players into the perfect mix of realism and stylization.

What advice would you give to other artists who want to blend realistic and stylized art in their work?

For artists looking to combine realism and stylization, here's our advice:

Anchor in Realism: Start with a grounded, realistic base for environments to ensure immersion. This helps virtual elements feel like they belong in the real world.
Stylize Key Elements: Use bold colors for interactive objects, simplified shapes, and exaggerated designs for interactive elements—like enemies or power-ups—to keep gameplay clear and engaging.
Find the Balance: Keep testing to see what feels right—realism for environments and stylized designs for action-oriented gameplay can create an exciting, dynamic experience.

By thoughtfully blending these approaches, you can craft a world that feels both immersive and fun.

Looking back, is there anything you would change about your approach to balancing realism and stylization in this project?

Reflecting on Spatial Ops, we’re proud of how we balanced realism and stylization to create an immersive, exciting mixed-reality experience. But if we could change one thing, it would be experimenting even more with subtle stylization in the environments. While we feel we nailed the realistic feel for immersive spaces, adding a bit more visual flair to the environments could have enhanced the overall tone without compromising immersion.

The key takeaway: It’s all about finding the sweet spot where realism grounds players, and stylized elements keep the gameplay energetic and fun.

The Takeaway

Spatial Ops is a testament to the power of blending artistic styles to suit both narrative and gameplay needs. By combining realistic environments with stylized gameplay elements, it creates a world where players feel immersed and engaged without sacrificing clarity or fun.

Whether you're a game developer or an artist, finding the "sweet spot" between these two approaches can transform your work, creating experiences that resonate deeply with your audience.

How Cutting-Edge Technologies Are Taking Home Sports to the Next Level

Clarisse — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 09:00:00 GMT

Part 3: How Co-location Brings Friends Together in Mixed Reality

Imagine playing your favorite sports—bowling, badminton, or even mini-golf—right in your living room. No gear, no extensive setup, just you, your friends, and a virtual court that feels just like the real thing. That’s the power of co-location, or Shared Spatial Anchors, one of the most exciting features in Home Sports. It allows players to share the same virtual and physical space, transforming any room into a shared, immersive playground.

With co-location, all the sports in Home Sports can be played in real-time, and if you’ve got enough space, you can even play them at their full scale. It’s like bringing the sports field home, where you can compete with friends as though you’re actually on the court. All you need is a headset, and you’re ready to step into a world where the boundaries between reality and virtual play disappear.

The Challenges Behind the Magic of Colocation

Of course, getting co-location up and running smoothly wasn’t without its hurdles. The concept came to life quickly on the technical side, but making it easy for players to set up took a bit more finesse. From the start, we realized that players need to look around the room to map out the virtual space. But this initial setup isn’t intuitive—it can feel forced if players don’t understand why, where, or how long they should look around. And the technical terms we relied on? They only added to the confusion.

Our solution was to infuse a playful twist. Instead of asking players to methodically map their space, we added virtual bubbles for them to find around the room. This simple game mechanic made the setup fun and seamless, encouraging exploration without feeling awkward. For an extra layer of ease, we introduced a way for one player to define the others' positions manually, providing a handy safety net. And to keep everything crystal clear, we simplified the language to “local multiplayer”, stripping away jargon so that anyone—even first-timers in mixed reality—could get started without a hitch.

A Truly Intuitive Experience

The result? An intuitive, immersive experience that lets players feel right at home in a virtual sports environment. Home Sports’ co-location is incredibly easy to set up, engaging, and accessible, even to newcomers in the world of mixed reality. Whether you're challenging friends to a game of badminton, rolling strikes in virtual bowling, or navigating a mini-golf course, colocation lets you play together with ease and excitement—wherever you are.

Ready to bring the court home? Just grab your headset, invite some friends, and let the games begin when Home Sports launches later this year.

How Cutting-Edge Technologies Are Taking Home Sports to the Next Level

Linnéa — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 20:51:35 GMT

Part 2: Enhancing Realism in Mixed Reality: Exploring Meta’s Haptics Studio and SDK

When it comes to creating mixed reality (MR) experiences, visuals and sounds are essential, but there’s another crucial element that brings it all together — haptics. Without the tactile sensation of “feeling” what’s happening, interactions can lack authenticity. This is where haptics, and specifically, Meta’s Haptics Studio and SDK, take center stage.

Think about the difference between a slapshot with a hockey stick and tossing a bowling ball, or the feel of a soft hit versus a hard one in pickleball. Each of these requires distinct feedback, right?

With Meta’s Haptics Studio, we can fine-tune these differences thanks to two powerful features:

Sound-Based Haptic Creation:
We can build haptics directly from sound files, so what you hear perfectly matches what you feel. Imagine the difference this makes in creating a synchronized experience — it feels more grounded because your senses are in sync.
Advanced Haptic Editing:
Beyond just adjusting amplitude (signal strength), the studio lets us dive deeper with frequency modulation and emphasize specific points in a sound file. This added control means we can create even more precise haptic experiences, helping us craft unique sensations for every virtual action.

Ultimately, this lets us elevate the entire Home Sports experience, blending mixed reality even more seamlessly with physical surroundings.

Home Sports is releasing this year. Stay tuned for updates and more insights into how we created the game.

How Cutting-Edge Technologies Are Taking Home Sports to the Next Level

Clarisse — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 21:13:00 GMT

Part 1: The Boundary API

We recently announced that we’re launching Home Sports, the first multi-sport that gets you moving in mixed reality on the Quest 3 lineup of devices this year. But how did this game come to be? In this new blog series, we’ll take you behind the scenes to explore the cutting-edge technologies that played a key role in its development.

At Resolution Games, we enjoy being on the forefront of new technologies, always seeking out ways to refine our processes and create better games. We’ve spent countless hours experimenting with various tools—some turned out to be perfect fits, while others required adjustments, and a few just didn’t quite align with our goals. However, through all this exploration, we’ve identified five Meta technologies that significantly enhanced the Home Sports experience.

Let’s start by sharing one of the standout tools we’ve integrated: The Boundary API, specifically its boundaryless feature.

What Is the Boundary API?

For those who aren’t familiar, boundaries in VR are a safety mechanism that allows users to set limits in their play area. When a player nears the edge of this space, visual cues appear to alert them. The boundaryless feature, as its name suggests, removes those limits, creating a more open and uninterrupted experience.

How We Implemented the Boundaryless Feature in Home Sports

By incorporating the boundaryless feature into Home Sports, we unlocked a new level of freedom for players. They can move seamlessly from one room to another, whether that’s heading from the living room to a bedroom or grabbing batteries for their controllers, all without having to pause or exit the game. Even sitting back and watching their friends play remains a smooth, immersive experience.

On the technical side, we appreciated the ability to save the play space location. This feature ensures that both players and developers can easily pick up right where they left off, without the need to recalibrate the play area each time.

This boundaryless approach has enhanced the overall gameplay and allowed us to offer an experience that feels more dynamic and less restricted.

Stay tuned as we continue to explore the other Meta technologies that helped shape Home Sports!

My Reflections This International Women’s Day

Natalie — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 14:48:54 GMT

The following is a copy of an internal message by our Head of People & Culture Natalie Poppelvik.

As International Women’s Day is upon us, I find myself reflecting on its purpose and ongoing necessity. I belong to those who feel that International Women’s Day is about celebrating the pioneering women who paved the way; reflect on progress and my efforts to date as well as strategizing my next moves toward a more inclusive world. I truly believe that inclusivity isn’t like cake—giving more to women doesn’t mean less for others. Yet, we’re up against one of gaming’s toughest levels, facing the formidable dragon of the gender gap, a boss battle that tests our collective resolve. The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Gender Gap Report painting a picture of a battle that spans over a century to win.

Inclusive Leadership: A Multiplayer Game

My recent parental leave with my now one-year-old daughter has reminded me of the fairness I’ve sought since childhood: what anyone can achieve with hard work should not be constrained by gender. We must also acknowledge the complex layers of identity that intersect with gender, such as race, sexuality, ability, and other identity facets, impacting each woman’s experience uniquely.

We need more than diversity; we need inclusion, with inclusive leadership at the forefront. In the spirit of making smart decisions, and thanks to the efforts of my brilliant team, we have launched a pilot inclusive leadership training project for around half of our line managers. At Resolution Games, we all have a lot of autonomy and freedom, but these come with the weight of responsibility. Inclusive leadership is a collective mission that requires each of us — leaders and team members alike — to use our unique skills. So I ask you to think about it and, if you like, post tips on how you can become more inclusive as a leader or as a valued colleague. To kick it off, here is my own.

My Pledge for Inclusion:

Embracing a Learning Mindset: Just as we learn from each gaming session, I’m dedicated to learning from the diversity around me. Today, I pledge to remain open to the valuable lessons it offers.
Recognizing and Mitigating Bias: Like reviewing gameplay footage, self-reflection is about identifying our shortcomings and aiming for a better run. I commit to challenging my biases to ensure fairness for all.
Cultivating Genuine Curiosity: Exploring perspectives is much like discovering new in-game worlds, adding richness to our collective journey.
Leveraging Diverse Perspectives for Innovation: Each team member is crucial to our success; by valuing every contribution, we pave the way for shared victories.
Leading with Empathy: Building trust is essential for strong teams. I promise to nurture this trust, ensuring everyone can reach their full potential.

Continuing the Campaign

Though progress may be slow, I am hopeful. The gaming industry has taught us that the most memorable victories emerge from the toughest challenges. The pursuit of equality is our ongoing campaign.

As we continue to navigate this game of life, I encourage you to share your thoughts and pledges on how we can foster a more inclusive environment. Together, let’s make this International Women’s Day not just a celebration but a commitment to closing the gender gap before the next century.

Natalie

Can I Play Demeo on Apple Vision Pro?

Team Resolution — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 14:41:56 GMT

May 23, 2024 Update: Apple Vision Pro players can now unite in fully-immersive Demeo adventures! Read more here: the press release on fully immersive Demeo for Apple Vision Pro.

When we founded Resolution Games in 2015, we had huge dreams of how we wanted to be a part of shaping the future of the XR industry. Since that time, we have seen headsets go from tethered to untethered, hand tracking introduced, the ability to see your own surroundings using passthrough and more. Now, nine years later we’re excited to see another major tech company enter the market with the launch of Apple Vision Pro.

As of the time of this writing, we have released Game Room for Apple Vision Pro, Demeo is playable on the device, and we even have another game in the works (more on that soon. Stay tuned…).

Learn about Game Room

Now to the main reason you clicked on this blog post… Demeo! Our goal with Demeo, as well as all of our games, is to always bring it to as many players as possible. You’ve seen us bring the game to PC, PlayStation 5, Pico, PlayStation VR2 and most recently iPad and Mac. And now you can use the iPad version as a compatible app to play on Apple Vision Pro. Imagine playing Demeo on the largest screen possible with intuitive gestures for rolling dice and moving minis! This version is complete with direct and indirect input gestures as well as full gamepad support.

We are continuing to work on a fully immersive version of Demeo for Apple Vision Pro, but we need more time. We will update as we have more.

The Long Road to Demeo Battles

Tommy Palm — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 14:50:00 GMT

A Pre-Launch Post-Mortem

When we first envisioned Demeo – long before its 2021 release – it was more than just a game. Demeo was conceived as a whole world filled with stories and adventures. But even more than that, it was conceived of as a system. A toybox where we could take the pieces everyone would come to know and love and find new ways to play with them, delivering more excitement than could ever be contained to just one release.

In late 2021 – mere months after the game’s initial launch – we saw there was enough of an appetite to realize that vision and began ideating on the next project in the Demeo Action Role Playing System. As we sit on the precipice of that next game’s November 9 launch, the time seems right to look back at how we got here – and what players can look forward to when they finally get their hands on Demeo Battles early next month.

Demeo Battles | Gameplay Trailer

THE FIRST STEPS TOWARDS BATTLES

Like a lot of the best mechanics and ideas that players see from Resolution Games, everything started from a simple question: “how fun would it be to play Demeo against other players?” A small team assembled and started experimenting to find out – and even from the very first prototype that resulted, we knew we had found something special.

There were countless iterations over the months and years that followed (some of which we’ll revisit in this post), but even from day one, there were elements that survived all the way to launch. You might be surprised to learn, for example, that teams of heroes (rather than solo champions competing) have been part of the plan from the beginning. After all, a big part of what makes Demeo work is the emergent gameplay that occurs when heroes work together – and if we wanted to make sure Demeo Battles lived up to the Demeo name, there was no way we could launch without retaining that element of cooperation. Synergies between heroes matter!

That first prototype and the first iterations that followed had us excited. Maybe a little too excited, leading to an honest error on our part. We included mention of what was then called “Demeo PvP” in our 2022 roadmap video. It was too early to talk about, and in retrospect, we should have kept this under wraps a little longer. We also called it a “mode” in that video, but in all honesty, we didn’t fully know what Battles was going to become at that time. That phrasing was premature, and we certainly didn’t want to create the confusion that resulted for our community.

While we may not have known how we would release Demeo Battles at this early stage, we definitely knew what we wanted: a new way to play that was faster, still familiar, and mixed what players already loved about Demeo with a sense of edge-of-your-seat competition.

As we entered into 2022, we realized just how big of an undertaking this would be.

EARLY ATTEMPTS

Scope grew quickly, and we realized early on that the logistics of keeping two complete games with their own update cycles in one distributable SKU would be a Sisyphean task. As time went on, we discovered we’d made the right decision for other reasons too. The broad appeal of quick-playing competitive strategy could make Demeo Battles a great entry point into the franchise for new players – but if we’d bundled it as DLC in Demeo, we’d be creating unnecessary roadblocks for those same new players to join in the fun.

But I suppose we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves in the development story. :)

Building on the bones of that first prototype, there were experiments that greatly changed the familiar core mechanics in an effort to optimize speed of play – but we recognized we were moving further and further away from what made Demeo work, and that was contrary to what we were trying to accomplish: delivering Demeo’s proven tactical fun in a new way.

To keep that Demeo spirit, we couldn’t move too far from what made Demeo work. This gave us important guardrails to work within – and significant challenges to overcome. Our design team had to walk an incredibly thin tightrope: change the game substantially enough to meet all our goals and deliver a completely fresh experience while hewing as close as possible to the proven gameplay that we know our players want. And as with any game in development, it took a lot of trial-and-error to get things right.

Our earliest direction saw large maps where huge battles between monsters could play out, which on paper sounds amazing – but in practice felt terrible. While a team’s minions headed to the middle of the map to fight each other, heroes would race around the outer edges of the map opening treasure chests until every last one was empty, every card was played, and every minion was defeated. Games would devolve into heroes chasing each other in circles, with melee classes endlessly trying to find cover to avoid taking damage from ranged competitors. Matches were taking upwards of 40 minutes, and worst of all, they weren’t exciting or fun.

We had something of a “eureka!” moment following this that led to the invention of The Burn – a flood of lava that comes in from all sides of the map to push players closer together. In its first iteration, it would randomly come in from one side. After some testing (both internally and in closed betas with players) we discovered a better way to handle it – but more on that in a moment.

Another attempt (and the first that was in closed beta back in 2022) saw two additions that were aimed at keeping matches playing fast: limiting the number of rounds and awarding points based on damage dealt. This, too, lacked the fun we were going for and felt more like a blunt tool rather than a clean, simple, elegant solution that would keep matches fast and frenzied. This version could also feel quite unbalanced, as players who opted to bring in a bigger team of minions were at a disadvantage. Their opponent would have more targets to damage, letting them earn more points.

In the end, we have our players to thank for the version of Demeo Battles that finally found the fun. It took three rounds of closed beta playtesting for a player to deliver another big eureka moment: have The Burn come in from all sides to push the players together, forcing a last-team standing scenario. With that we could abandon the rounds, the points system, and deliver an experience that ramps up the tension round-after-round until one side walks away as the victor.

But while we’d found a winning formula, there was still a long way to go before Demeo Battles would be ready for release – and it was already late 2022. For the first time in company history, we were going to have to delay a planned launch.

FINDING THE BALANCE

Fairness is important in any game – and when it comes to competitive games, it’s essential.

Yet Demeo was never designed for a PvP experience. In the first game, heroes weren’t designed to directly fight each other; they were designed to give players a sense of power. Doing incredible damage to a Giant Slime and its surrounding slimelings makes you feel invincible! But dealing that same damage to a competing player, wiping them off the board before they’ve even taken their first move? That’s not going to be fun for anyone.

We’ve spent much of the last year carefully balancing heroes, cards, and maps to ensure a level playing field for everyone, while also trying to keep things as close to the source material as we could. Veteran players will find that some heroes don’t play exactly as they’ve come to expect – and that’s entirely by design. Through playtesting, we discovered that negative dominant strategies could emerge from all sorts of combinations. A team of two wizards, for example, could zap the opposing team endlessly to leave them stunned and unplayable until their untimely demise. To eliminate this scenario, heroes are now immune to stun. A wizard’s Fireball card in Demeo can deliver 10 damage if centered on a minion – but centering it on an opposing player in Demeo Battles would sap every bit of health in a single move. Instead, we’ve replaced that card with the similar but slightly nerfed Firebolt. And with cards and minions purchasable before every match, finding the right balance of cost and rarity for every option was paramount.

Map design was equally important for delivering a great experience, and it took some time before we hit on the right approach to size and layout. We realized we’d hit on it when, during testing, there was one map we all kept coming back to time and again. It eventually became the map we’d use to test all our tweaks, and led us to understanding how Demeo’s different environments could be rethought to optimize for competitive play while still retaining what makes each unique. This inspirational map has actually survived to the final release – see if you can guess which one while you’re playing! (For more on maps, check out our earlier post).

And some of the cards that experienced adventurers know all too well from Demeo? They hit different in Demeo Battles, even when completely unchanged. A barricade might seem like a low-value card in Demeo, but what about when you’re trying to prevent an opposing player from escaping The Burn? And cards that do minimal damage but cost 0 action points are a huge advantage now. Maybe a bone is all you need to do the remaining 1HP of damage to take an opponent out. Or you can throw that bottle of lye to ignite an oil lamp and catch both opposing teammates in the resulting explosion.

Health mechanics were another serious consideration. We didn’t want them to feel drastically different, but we also couldn’t leave them as they were. In Demeo, a downed player can crawl around for a few turns before succumbing to the inevitable (or choose to drink a health potion if they have one). Demeo Battles' quick playing nature, by contrast, means everything benefits from a stronger sense of urgency – and a well coordinated team could exploit Demeo’s original approach to health to be relatively invulnerable for most of a match. So now players will either automatically drink a health potion (if they have one) when they’re downed, or die at the start of their next turn. And if they die? They’ll leave behind a tombstone that, if destroyed, will give their teammate an incredibly powerful luck potion that will guarantee critical damage on their next attack.

Health is more important than ever, but it’s also in incredibly short supply in Demeo Battles. Given that players have the ability to choose their own cards at the start of every match (rather than receiving a randomly selected hand), playtesting revealed that multiples of health potions would lead to an incredibly lopsided experience, where the team with the most health would have an unfair advantage. So now everyone gets just one health potion – and an equal chance to receive healing through other means, whether that’s a Healing Fountain or the sweet melodies of a teammate who opted to play Bard.

A CHALLENGER APPEAR

It was a long journey to get to this point, but we’re incredibly excited that Demeo Battles will be in players’ hands in just a few short weeks – and when they play it, they still might find a few surprises in store!

To make sure players are ready for the new challenge that awaits them in multiplayer competition, we’ve created 40 single-player stages to test their skills and help them develop new strategies. They start out simple and great for beginners, but there’s no shortage of challenge the deeper you go – and you might just surprise yourself with some of the solutions you come up with.

Demeo Battles even rethinks Demeo’s leveling system by introducing a catalog that gives you more choice, more control, and more rewards. As you earn XP and level up, you’ll unlock pages filled with goodies to choose from including new maps, tombstones, dice, skins and more. You’ll even be able to unlock all of your favorite heroes from the original Demeo to see how well they hold their own in the arena.

Thanks for checking out this quick retrospective on our development process to date. And, once the game is released please do share your thoughts, suggestions and inspirations. Demeo Battles will be ready for play starting November 9 on Steam (flatscreen PC or VR), Meta Quest (VR) and Pico (VR), and we hope to see you there!

What is Mixed Reality?

Team Resolution — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 15:25:21 GMT

With new headsets coming to the market, there are a lot of buzzwords and confusing terms in the industry right now when it comes to everything under the “XR” or “spatial computing” umbrella. So, we at Resolution Games have set out to clear up a few things.

So what exactly are XR, spatial computing, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR)?

Things are changing fast in this industry, and you can get pretty into the weeds for some of these definitions, but for the sake of clarity, we are going to focus on a higher level of where things stand in the industry today. You can check out our quick video, “What is MR?”, but for more details, read on.

What Is Mixed Reality (MR)?

XR/Spatial Computing - For purposes of this blog, we are going to use these terms synonymously. XR has historically been the more mainstream term used to describe the overall immersive tech industry, and while in years past both Google and Magic Leap used the term “spatial computing,” it has recently received a resurgence of attention. In short, whether you say XR or spatial computing, we see these as umbrella terms for the sector of technology that includes VR, AR, and MR.

Virtual Reality (VR) - VR is a fully immersive technology. Experienced entirely within a headset, users are surrounded by a completely virtual world that they can interact with. While convincing, nothing you see in VR is real. Even your own hand movements, whether controlled with controllers or direct with hand-tracking, are recreated digitally. Previously, VR has made up the bulk of consumer gaming experiences in the XR industry, and will continue to play a role well into the future — as with our upcoming game Racket Club. You can check out all of our VR experiences here: our VR games.

Augmented Reality (AR) – While the term was initially used to describe wearables like pure augmented reality glasses (such as Magic Leap, for which we created the game Glimt: The Vanishing at the Grand Starlight Hotel), most people nowadays think of AR as what you see when digital elements of play are placed on top of your real world on your mobile device, like Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs or Pokemon Go, or using a Snapchat Lens or other photo filter. These experiences blend the real and digital, but typically lack the ability to interact with environments or real objects in meaningful or more truly immersive ways.

Mixed Reality (MR)- This is a newer term. And it's evolving. So what is it? First off, you need a headset for this as well. An easy way to think of mixed reality is kind of like augmented reality in an XR headset, but with digital elements that are capable of interacting with your environment. A headset capable of MR can scan your room — as well as the objects within it — to achieve a level of immersion in a real environment that was only previously available in the virtual worlds of VR.

For example, imagine placing a virtual tabletop game board like Demeo onto your real kitchen table (like in the picture below), and being able to directly use your hands with hand tracking to roll the virtual dice off the table and onto your floor. Or playing a team deathmatch shooter in your living room, where the headset can recognize the real furniture you can hide behind, as well as the positions and actions of the other players in the room with you. It might sound like science fiction, but we’re already making games like this today, such as Spatial Ops.

By combining the real with the imagined, mixed reality truly offers the best of both worlds. While there will always be experiences tailor-made for VR and AR, mixed reality provides an optimal experience for those keen to bring the magic of games into their homes and beyond. It’s also great for those who prefer to stay aware of their surroundings — and there are plenty of other great reasons to give it a try.

For developers, there is a great amount of flexibility to create magic with MR since you can manipulate the space more easily and meld digital and the real world together, like opening a portal to a whole other world right in your living room.

Spatial Ops Room-Scale Demo

That’s why at Resolution Games, we are currently focusing 50% of our efforts on MR experiences. We have several playable MR experiences - including Demeo, Spatial Ops and Blaston - available in the stores already, with several more in the hopper.

For more information on our mixed reality initiatives, visit https://www.resolutiongames.com/mixed-reality-games.

How We Approached Map-Making in Demeo Battles

Team Resolution — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 14:00:00 GMT

Demeo, the first game in the Demeo Action Role-Playing System, introduced players to five distinct environments to explore: from the dangerous depths of the Elven Necropolis to the sewers under Sunderhaven, the druid-filled Drych Forest, the sun-scorched Ronth Desert, and the tainted town of Ends.

Players of Demeo Battles will see these familiar settings once again, but in an all-new light and designed for an all-new style of play.

Rethinking the Game Board

As a competitive experience, Demeo Battles couldn’t be more different from its predecessor — and because of this, neither could its maps. Gone are the sprawling environments that task players to explore every nook and cranny of each dungeon in search of secrets. Instead, Demeo Battles offers smaller maps, full of strategic positions, with players vying for an advantage against the opposing team.

Each map in Demeo Battles is largely symmetrical, ensuring balanced play. Starting areas give both players equal footing, while The Burn (an ever-encroaching flow of lava) surrounds the players and pushes them closer together, until it covers everything!

In short, the only thing to set you apart from your competitor is how you play.

Flipping the Script on Surprise

In Demeo, the element of surprise came from the environment. You never knew what was going to be behind that next door, or just how many monsters you’d have trailing you as you grabbed a key and rushed towards the exit. And while that works great for a collaborative adventure, an unexpected environment doesn’t do players any favors when they’re working towards building their skills in competitive play.

Demeo Battles instead offers maps that players can memorize every tile of — and the element of surprise comes from the competition! With a variety of heroes, monsters, and abilities to choose from at the start of each match, you never know what you’ll be going up against. And neither does your opponent.

Get Over Here!

To keep the action moving quickly with plenty of head-to-head encounters, you’ll find a number of elements in each map that drive players to frequent encounters — the most obvious of which is The Burn.

Delivered into the gamefield by massive statues whose cups runneth over with lava, The Burn works its way towards the center of the board and causes immense damage to any player or monster that finds itself caught in its path. Careful positioning is core to the Battles experience, as you’ll want to stay at least a turn or two ahead of the creeping hot death. Or maybe you’ll want to risk it to open a chest, or activate a healing fountain, and hope that you can make it back in time?

It’s worth noting that tools that can help block a pathway (like barricades, or the Sorcerer’s Magic Wall) can play a far more tactical role in Demeo Battles. If your opponent is the one daring it all to open that chest near The Burn, can you play a card that blocks their path back?

Beyond The Burn, those chests and healing fountains help to bring players together too. Securing new cards and keeping your team at full health can be as tempting as a Siren’s Song, when it turns out your opponent had the very same idea and manages to spot you first.

Expanding a Familiar World

While there are some huge fundamental differences in how we’ve approached level design in Demeo Battles, there are elements of each environment that go beyond the cosmetic that should be familiar to Demeo players, and help to reinforce that this takes place in the same shared universe. Sure the Ronth Desert is sun-bleached and sandy — but its maps also feature significant height differences, just like you’d find in the Demeo adventure Curse of the Serpent Lord. The Elven Necropolis, by contrast, will lean more into the room-based style that players who’ve dared to explore have come to expect.

While the final number hasn’t been decided on yet, we’re looking at including upwards of 10 unique maps in Demeo Battles at launch — and we’re looking forward to seeing which ones become player favorites!

Life At Resolution: Pon, 3D Artist

Team Resolution — Mon, 01 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT

To create art for a game, you need to have artistic ability, the ability to pay attention to detail, and a willingness to learn new techniques - especially when it comes to creating art for new technology. One major part of that process is working with others to create a finished product that makes a lasting impression. Learn some of the ins and outs of creating art at Resolution Games from Pon, a 3D artist on our team.

What is your favorite part of working at Resolution Games?

The work environment is very open, creative, and tolerating. Beyond that, the projects we work on are all different. We span across different genres and I find that type of work rewarding because I get to try out a lot of different styles. There is also a sense of being in creative control of my work and having a say in how things should be done from an art perspective. Even beyond art, the whole game team usually joins in on playtests to get a full sense of the experience we are trying to convey and I get to be an active part of achieving that.

Tell us about some projects you've worked on, and challenges you’ve encountered

The first project I worked on at Resolution Games was Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale. I spent most of my time figuring out the more technical side of the visuals and a lot of that was very new to me. Some examples were visual optimisation, light baking setup, and implementation of items that had specific technical parameters with a need to be set individually. Optimisation for art in VR and AR is extremely important, but it can be very time consuming. I needed patience and a keen eye when trying to find places where unnecessary draw calls, alpha planes, or polygons could be removed. There are always things you can improve on to make a game run better. This experience later helped me when I was tasked with assisting the port of Carly and the Reaperman from PC VR to the Quest 2. Wireless VR needs so much more optimisation than PC VR, especially on the art side!

Today I am part of the AR division where I get to work on several projects focusing on up-and-coming technology. It’s very exciting! However, this poses new challenges for me as an artist. There are limits when it comes to making visuals look good without clashing with your real world surroundings. The main project I have worked on is an AR laser-tag style shooter game, Spatial Ops. It lets you walk around a real-life space while using virtual weapons, covers and avatars to win against the opponent team. When creating assets for this I have to keep in mind that they should stand out to the player while still feeling like they could be part of your real surroundings. This is also the first project where I have implemented proper LOD steps for almost all assets since there is so much space you can move around.

How do you collaborate with your colleagues at Resolution Games?

I sit with my team, which allows me the chance to receive day-to-day feedback. I can usually just turn around and ask my colleague or art director for advice - direct communication is the quickest way to get answers. If I have queries to my programmers I run across the office floor to their room to get answers. Since some days are spent at the home office, Slack and online meetups are also extremely helpful tools for a smooth communication process.

I often collaborate on tasks with other artists as well. When we need to create an environment we can share the task of making the props and decor before curating the final scene. Sometimes tasks are also tag-teamed, for example I created a lot of LOD models for assets another artist made before moving on to another project. You need to be flexible and work relatively clean so other people can take over if needed!

Can you tell us about some of the fun things happening at Resolution Games, outside the daily work routine?

Oh gosh there are a lot of things! We have art meetings where we share our thoughts about art as well as things we have accomplished both at work and privately. We have gameplay shares where we can present game ideas and brainstorm together. There are also a lot of spontaneous get-togethers arranged by coworkers motivated to do things outside of work, like tabletop game nights or a dinner on a Wednesday. Something we recently picked up again after people started coming back to the office is game jams! Personally, I never seek out such events outside of work, so having it arranged through work is very exciting and sparks a lot of creativity.

What excites you about being in the VR/AR games space?

The amount of experimentation and new discoveries you can still do with these platforms is very intriguing. As an artist. you constantly need to figure out how to make things look interesting and accurate when right in front of a player, AR even more so since you can’t even manipulate the entire surrounding with light and colorful environments. You need to try and make items naturally seem like they could be real while still giving them something interesting that makes them pop. It’s a tricky balance to manage for sure, but that’s what’s exciting!

More generally speaking, the excitement for me is how we need to figure out new ways of interacting with games. What can we gamify and how? Innovation is always needed and the market isn’t oversaturated, it’s almost the other way around. There is so much room for exploration and I love that.

What do you look forward to learning at Resolution Games?

I want to keep evolving as an artist and a game developer. There are so many tricks I haven’t used and so many angles to approach visual problems. I love coming up with new ways to make my work more efficient as well as develop my visual eye. I’m surrounded by so many creative smart people, I feel like I learn new things every week. It’s very fulfilling and I look forward to filling my brain with all the knowledge I can handle!

If you want to see some of Pon’s latest work, be sure to check out Spatial Ops.

What does a Narrative Department do?

Ian — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 07:00:00 GMT

“You write the story, right?”

Well, sort of.

The idea of a narrative department is still surprisingly new in the games industry. Even within development teams, there’s not a lot of knowledge about what people involved in narrative for games actually do and what they can do.

There is a general understanding that games writers write words, maybe for you to read, or maybe for other people to speak. There’s also a mysterious beast called a narrative designer, and people rarely agree on what that means. Even if you find two people with that job title, you’ll find that their jobs might be quite different.

I’ve attempted to write about the various things to do in game narrative before - there’s a detailed blog about it here. But let’s simplify it.

The narrative team fundamentally focuses on answering a few big questions for the player, which are all about game context.

Who am I?
Where am I?
What’s my aim?
What do I actually do?
How do I feel about it?

These questions are shared by the whole development team, but the narrative department cares about them. A lot. They have to understand the answers to those questions and then, critically, communicate them to the player… but also… communicate them to the team!

To expand on those a little:

A key narrative department skill is hiding under a ladder with a plastic toy whistle in your mouth. For Reasons.

Who am I?

Are you a detective? An embittered cop who’s close to the edge? A garden designer? An Italian plumber trying to rescue someone he really, really likes? What is the player fantasy? And what is their role in the game and in the game world?

This is something that the game developers need to figure out how to get across to the player. Does someone pop up and say “Welcome to the game, detective”? Is it subtler than that? Maybe you have a hat, a disorganized office, and a board covered in photographs and red string?

This is something that all departments will contribute to, but which the narrative team can deepen, add detail to, and document for the rest of the game team so that everyone can be involved in framing it for the player.

Games writers just need to accept that good communication doesn't need words. Also it's easier to localize!

Where am I?

Am I in a film noir world? A pulp adventure world, where archaeologists carry whips and wear hats? A world where everything is made of plastic bricks? What’s the setting? What does it feel like? How does it work? What’s the technology level like? Is gravity even a thing here? What mental model are we trying to give the player?

Here game writers and narrative designers will often collaborate with game designers and concept artists to figure out what the rules of the world are. How does it work? In a noir setting, if you get shot once, you’ll fall over and may need to find a doctor. In a pulp adventure world, you’ll be fine in no time, unless it’s a Dramatic Story Moment. Even if the rules are never explained directly to the player, the game team needs to know them so they can be consistent and make things feel solid and believable. There’s a lot of work here in examining players’ existing expectations and using their beliefs and biases. The more they already understand, the fewer explanations we need to give them.

But first, someone needs to write down all these rules-of-the-world so that the team knows them and can use them to bring the world to life!

Communicating the setting and tone in a brief image. Art and narrative working together.

What’s my aim?

Why am I here? Am I a grizzled older person trying to protect a young person who might or might not be my child as we journey across a landscape filled with hostile creatures towards a vague destination? Am I just trying to run through mazes eating pieces of fruit and avoiding ghosts?

What should the player know and understand, when, and how do we tell them? Information delivery at key points so that the player understands the overall objectives and current objectives is, of course important. Signposting and direction is a major element of any game design.

But why should the player bother pursuing the aim? Just to get a trophy? The narrative department will help the player care about that aim, ideally connecting with them at a deeper level than that.

Once we know what we want them to care about, how do we - in all departments - actually make that happen? Dialogues between characters? Careful animation choices? Music? Appealing character design? A well-placed info-dump? The answer, as always, is ‘all of these,’ and the narrative team can help focus and marshal that.

This may also involve player choices, as we give them more than one aim to wrestle with and kick them hard in the feels about the choices they have to make.

What do I actually do?

Okay, I’m a detective, but how do I detect, exactly? By repeatedly pressing the A button? Ahah, I’m a silent assassin belonging to an ancient bloodline of assassins, am I? How come I keep getting in big unsubtle fights in marketplaces? Maybe if I shave my head and put on a black suit I’d be better at this stuff… Oh, I’m a smooth-talking Hero, right? How come I just shot a thousand people on my way to this cut scene?

There is lots of careful collaboration across departments on game mechanics - which, after all, in most cases, is the core loop and activity set of the game and is often thought about way before the story.

Do those mechanics really align with the player fantasy? If you’re a detective, then we’d better give you detective-type activities to do, and moments where you totally feel like a detective - “Ahah! I’ve solved the case!”

If the mechanics don’t support the fantasy, but the mechanics are fun and really what we want to build the game around - then maybe we need to change the fantasy!

If we’re adding new mechanics, how can we think about them through the lens of the player fantasy and the narrative, to make them support each other?

How do I feel about it?

I had to make a choice between Companion A, and Companion B, and have had to sacrifice Companion B. There’s lots of sad piano music playing. But he was a jerk anyway!

This really ties across all of the other questions, and again is a massive collaboration between departments. This often sparks character design, suggests how we build dialogue to create relationships between characters or the environment, provokes ideas about player choice and branching, and even informs game mechanic feedback.

And how we want the player to feel at any given point in the game is a critical question that we need to answer clearly, as then choices of music, sound, color palette, camera shot, speed of movement, background animation, available game mechanics (or withholding game mechanics) and everything else will combine together to provoke the player into feeling something that they will always remember.

We hope!

(Narrative Departments are built on hope.)

A Bonus Sidenote On AR, VR, and MR

Since it’s what we do here at Resolution, here are some things that are true about storytelling for a platform where players put on headsets and have characters appear in front of them in a physical space.

It’s not at all like cinema. Cinematic writing and acting won’t really work. There’s no possibility of close-ups on intense faces. We can’t point the camera at anything.
It’s often not like a computer game. Particularly not like the sort of blockbuster computer game that steals a lot of ideas from cinema. Game interactions, cut-scenes, and signposting often won’t work as you’d expect.
It’s most like a theatrical performance that’s happening all around you. Theatre cares about physical space and cares about getting emotional performances across to you from a distance. It also knows how to draw your attention so you look at particular things when they happen.
Actually, it’s often like LARP, too. You know. Dressing up as characters and acting as them in a physical space. Which we used to be called geeks for doing, but apparently it’s cool these days. Right? It is cool, isn’t it? *adjusts wizard’s hat and looks hopeful*

Anyway, thank you for your time.

Bringing Games to New Players

Axel N — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 07:00:00 GMT

Hi there! My name is Axel, and I work at one of our Swedish offices in the town of Linköping as a part of the Resolution Tech team. We are a small team with a couple of distinct responsibilities. First off, we maintain and support the older games in Resolution Games’ catalog, such as Bait! - which we added multiplayer to last year as a part of the Fishin’ Buddies update. The second of these responsibilities is bringing our games to new audiences, new devices/platforms and new geographic regions, which is what I will be shedding some light on today. Personally, most of my experience at Resolution Games has involved bringing our games to Pico, hence why large parts of this post will focus on that platform specifically.

The importance of being on multiple platforms

For a bit of clarification, a platform is an ecosystem with its own store, accounts, and hardware devices. An example would be the Meta Quest platform with its Quest store and Meta accounts currently accessible from the original Quest, Quest 2, and Quest Pro stand-alone devices.

As a VR/AR games studio, we work with numerous platform partners in a market that is constantly changing. For instance, as of writing this, the Meta Quest 2 isn’t even three years old, the Pico headsets are even younger and there are multiple new headsets released each year. Needless to say, there’s a lot to keep up with, and in order to stay relevant as a studio and with our games, it’s imperative that we are in front of the correct players.

A clear example of the importance of bringing our games to new platforms in order to stay relevant and in front of new players is Bait!. While it is now an iconic launch title for the Quest, Bait! was already three years old when the platform was released. Since Bait! was initially made for Samsung Gear VR, a headset that only has one controller and only tracks the rotation of the headset and the controller, the game had to be reworked when it launched for the Quest to add free movement support for both hands and your head.

By making these updates to optimize gameplay and porting it over to Quest, Bait! - which was already one of the most downloaded VR titles - was exposed to the even larger audience that the Quest platform would come to attract (and the game now has more than 10M downloads!).

And there’s no telling what the next big hit in terms of XR platforms will be. Last fall Pico made big waves in Europe after releasing the Pico 4, and recently the highly anticipated PlayStation VR2 was released. Making sure our games are available on these platforms not only makes them available to the players currently on the platforms, but also to the many additional players who will be on them in the future.

Bringing Games to New Regions

But being in front of players doesn’t just mean being concerned about platforms. It’s about where the players are based as well. As a studio based in Sweden, a country with a rather small population of just over 10 million, we have always made games for other geographical regions - primarily the western market. There are other markets, however, that the platforms of the west do not reach, and these markets have their own rules and conditions. These can be both practical restrictions and policies regarding internet communication. The internet connections between some markets and the west are not only slow but also unreliable as they can get completely closed at times. Many online services are also not available in every market. This means that when bringing our games to certain markets, we’ve had to make certain changes, such as making them single-player experiences without any online functionalities (including in-app purchases which can also be restricted). Even when bringing multiplayer games to these markets, they have had to be contained within their own isolated multiplayer environments. This is why many of our games that we have brought to some platforms in the past currently appear so different to their Steam or Quest counterparts.

For example, if you look at our games on Pico headsets when they launched vs. today, you’ll see that we had to make some changes to accommodate the Chinese market specifically. However, since Pico began selling headsets in Europe, we’ve been able to treat the western Pico market like we would any other platforms in this region. This is why Ultimechs has been the same game on Steam, Quest, and Pico since its release, and why Blaston since it was released on Pico has likewise been feature-complete when compared to other platforms. Since the recent 1.28 update, we can also say the same for Demeo as players on Pico can now play cross-platform with players on the other platforms in the west.

Rereleasing and Retesting

Having different needs for different markets doesn’t only offer a challenge, it also offers the greatest blessing that releasing the game on a new platform can offer apart from reaching a new audience: extra QA (quality assurance) testing.

Whenever you create something, you are bound to make some mistakes along the way, and the tricky part about mistakes in something as complex as video games is finding them all. At Resolution Games, developers test their own games. This is great because we get multiple eyes on the game, testing it with different perspectives, priorities, and goals. But what’s even better than a dedicated QA team helping with testing is multiple QA teams of different backgrounds and priorities doing so.

Every time you release a game for a new platform it needs to be approved by the platform owner before it goes live, and this usually means that a separate QA team specialized in that specific platform will test the game. Naturally, these teams will come across issues specific to the platform at hand, but more importantly they will sometimes also find issues that might be in the live version of the game on other platforms, and fixing them will therefore benefit multiple, if not all, platforms.

A real-world example of this is that we, when bringing both Ultimechs and Blaston to Pico, had reports of localization issues submitted, such as translation or formatting issues. That’s not too surprising though for a QA team that not only plays the game in a non-English language as a part of a task on their checklist but because it’s the norm for them. What’s great about finding localization issues like these is that they generally apply to most non-English localizations, meaning that when we get the issues fixed - as with Ultimechs and Blaston - we make the game better for all localized versions of the game in the process.

Facing Reality

What should be immediately obvious, however, is that all our games aren’t available on all platforms. No matter how passionate you are about letting everyone have access to your game regardless of what headset they own or where they live, and no matter how profitable bringing your game to a new platform or market could be, game development requires both time and manpower. This is also the case when bringing games to new platforms and regions.

You can be sure, though, that both the Resolution Tech team in Linköping and the teams in Stockholm (apart from developing the games of the future and updating the ones we have already released) are hard at work bringing our games to new audiences of all kinds.

If you would like to join us in this endeavor, you can apply for a position at either our Stockholm or Linköping office. We would love to get new colleagues passionate about multi-platform support and about bringing all kinds of players the best versions of our games that we can offer them.

And if you are a player on a platform that we have recently brought one of our games to, I hope you enjoy it!