Wall Town Wonders
Overview
Wall Town Wonders is a mixed reality city-building social game where you assist the townsfolk in gathering resources and expanding their charming community. As a MR experience, all the adventures unfold right in your own home, integrated seamlessly with your furniture and surroundings!
I conceived the minigames and mixed reality interactions. One of the most rewarding parts of the project was bringing the NPCs to life alongside the animation team, capturing their quirky personalities through motion capture and helping shape their unique character traits.
Roles and responsibilities:
Game Design
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Prototyped core systems and VR interactions.
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Crafted the core gameplay loop and progression system.
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Devised the island and upgrade systems to support long-term engagement.
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Wrote character backstories and dialogue to enrich the narrative.
Quest Design
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Designed and documented minigames and quests in Confluence.
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Iterated on minigames to expand variation and improve rewards.
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Built the intro loop for onboarding players.
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Concepted, tested, and implemented seasonal events using Blueprint scripting.
UI/UX Design
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Wireframed complete player interaction flows and translated them into UI designs.
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Implemented in-game menus and UI elements.
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Developed UI animations and icons, iterating to improve readability and usability.
Motion Capture
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Prepared animation documentation and assisted in directing motion capture shoots.
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Performed motion capture for seasonal content animations.
Media
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Produced materials for release trailers and media campaigns.
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Contributed as an actor in the release trailer.
QA Lead
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Tested every patch and release.
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Oversaw and documented QA efforts.
Genre:
Platform:
Engine:
Duration:
Studio:
Team size:
Cozy, Sandbox, Social, Citybuilder
PC, Steam, Oculus, Pico, PSVR
Unreal Engine
2 years
Cyborn
~19
Tools Used:
Unreal Engine, Maya, 3DS Max, Adobe premiere, Confluence, Jira
Design Highlights
Procedural islands
Wall Town Wonders was a cutting-edge and highly technical project. Not only was it developed for mixed reality, but much of what we set out to achieve had never been attempted before. Pre-production was dominated by one central challenge: how to build an entire city on the player’s wall in a way that was both technically feasible and visually unique.
After extensive iteration with WFC-inspired procedural prototypes, we realized that a fully procedural approach could not deliver the fine-tuned art direction we envisioned. I made a key contribution by proposing a handmade modular system. To prove the concept, I built example islands with existing prop sets and their upgraded versions, which were approved by the directors. From there, I took responsibility for designing every additional island and its variants, coordinating closely with animators and developers to ensure that each design was future-proof and technically scalable.
UX/UI Design
My second major contribution was wireframing the entire game to identify all necessary UI elements. This process went through several stages of prototyping. The first iterations consisted of quick mockup art and wireframes documented in Confluence, which were used to set the scope and discuss possibilities with the other leads. Once the scope was agreed, the prototypes became more detailed: we placed flat images in VR and added basic interactions to test functionality and user experience. Finally, we introduced multiple visual menu iterations in VR for the directors to evaluate and select an art direction.
Beyond the menus, Wall Town Wonders featured numerous subtle pointers and popups, all handcrafted by me and enhanced with effects and feedback to improve readability and player understanding. One of my favorite iterations was the removal of unnecessary popups, ensuring that only the UI elements relevant to the player’s focus would appear. This decision greatly increased immersion while keeping the interface smooth, pleasant, and functional. Achieving this level of polish required extensive testing and iteration, but it proved essential in making the UI feel natural and intuitive.
Seasonals
One of the reasons the islands needed to be future-proof was to support seasonal updates. With each patch, we introduced new animations, quests, and minigames that tied the systems together. I was responsible for designing full seasonal content packages and implementing the approved content into the existing modular blueprints. While developers focused on new minigames, I integrated the quests, dialogue, and art assets directly into Unreal Engine.
Seasonal content also posed a major challenge for QA. As I knew the new content best, I was tasked with ensuring releases were spotless. I often led a team of up to five internal testers to review the entire game and report anomalies in both new and existing features. This was especially complex given the nonlinear nature of the city builder and its volume of content. To make QA more efficient, I coordinated how content was divided among testers and introduced tools to skip cutscenes, add resources, and accelerate animations, ensuring thorough coverage and timely delivery.
One of the most fun experiences I had with the seasonal content was actually acting out the festive New Year’s party for the holiday update. I performed several of the stage characters and immortalized my silly dance moves in the animation studio, later transferring them to the tiny inhabitants of Wall Town Wonders.
I also had the chance to write slapstick sketches and scenarios for the Valentine’s couple update, though it was truly the talented motion capture team that brought those ideas to life.
Final note
As a final note, I’d like to share a small anecdote. One evening, while we were working late, a colleague invited his mother to cook Malaysian food for the team. After the meal, she agreed to try our current VR build. Moments later, the entire office gathered to watch the magic unfold. This woman, who had never experienced VR or MR before, was holding tiny characters in her hands, letting out cheerful gasps as the game came to life before her eyes.
It was the first time I truly realized how special and meaningful these experiences can be. Seeing someone discover our work with such joy made me understand the impact games can have, and I hope every designer has the chance to witness a player enjoy their game for the very first time.
