A 2-mile virtual beach hike powered by Game Boy graphics and a custom, sand-filled peripheral.
Built during Global Game Jam 2017, Virtua' Walker 87 is a collaborative VR experience created by Robin Sloan and myself. The project was an experiment in blending hardware nostalgia with immersive tech: we paired a heavily stylized, low-fi VR world with a highly unusual, tactile input controller—a literal sandbox that you stand in to walk.
The Sandbox Controller
The core design goal was to let players walk through VR by walking in place, but with a unique sensory feedback loop. We buried the tech inside a custom box filled with sand to mimic the literal feeling of a beach stroll.
- Beneath the sand sit two Force Sensitive Resistors (FSRs)—one under each foot. These sensors change their electrical resistance based on the pressure applied to them. By tracking these resistance shifts, our micro-controller can instantly detect when a player lifts a foot and steps back down, translating real-world stepping into in-game movement.
- The brain of the rig is an Adafruit Feather (Bluetooth-enabled). To streamline our development pipeline, we programmed the Feather to masquerade as a standard HID Bluetooth keyboard. When the FSRs detect a step, the controller blasts standard keystrokes to the phone inside the VR headset.
- Emulating a keyboard made writing the engine-side code incredibly straightforward. We could use basic, native input logic for movement, and testing was as simple as tapping keys on a regular keyboard without needing to hook up the sand rig every time.
🛠️ Dev Log Note: Funnily enough, the hardest part of the entire game jam wasn't the code or the wiring—it was sourcing the sand at 2 AM. The prototype launched with some pretty coarse, gritty local sand, which we later upgraded to ultra-fine, hypoallergenic play sand for public exhibition demos.
(TODO: Insert wiring diagram, PCB photos, and full setup breakdown here.)
The Game World & Visuals
While I handled the hardware interface, Robin mapped and modelled a stylised reconstruction of the entire West Sands beach in St Andrews—spanning nearly two miles of digital coastline.
The beach environment is packed with nostalgic, low-poly points of interest to discover on your trek, including lifeguard towers, beach umbrellas, stray dogs, and rogue beach balls. To match the retro hardware aesthetic, the game runs a custom pixelation shader paired with a strict four-colour monochrome gradient, mimicking the iconic screen of an original 1989 Game Boy.
Accolades & Exhibitions
(TODO: Add details about where the project was showcased, the International Global Game Jam (IGGJ) award nomination/win, and public reception here!)