Bark no More is a mixed reality (MR) tower defense game that reimagines your everyday surroundings as an interactive battlefield. By leveraging spatial mapping and depth sensing, the game blends virtual elements with the physical world, allowing players to place defense towers beside real-world objects like desks, tables, and chairs. While full environmental recognition is not yet implemented, the project is designed with this future functionality in mind, aiming to create dynamic, adaptive gameplay environments unique to each player's space.

The core gameplay of Bark no More centers on intuitive, embodied interaction. Players use natural hand gestures to collect energy dropped by defeated enemies or to hammer down and upgrade towers in real-time. These physical motions replace traditional controller-based inputs, creating a seamless bridge between the player’s body and the game world. This approach enhances engagement, making the experience not just visual, but physical.

Departing from conventional tower defense mechanics that rely on mouse clicks and static screens, Bark no More leverages MR to create a deeply immersive and strategic experience. Players must physically move, observe, and react within their real-world environment to fend off waves of invading dogs. With precise hand tracking enabled by Meta Quest headset, the game offers a level of interactivity and immersion. 

Gameplay Features

Our proposed project explores novel embodied interactions utilizing spatial data and hand tracking. Below are the gameplay features we plan to develop:

• Magic spell casting
• Defense tower placement based on physical object
• Resource collection and management
• Tower repair and upgrade
• Enemy AI for navigation and attack logic
• Tower attack logic
• Cute, medieval cat vs dog narrative setting

Credits

• Shamit Ahmed
• Yu-Jung Liu

Supervisor: Matti Niinimäki

Tools

• Meta Quest 3 headset
• Unity 6 game engine
• Visual Studio code editor
• Blender
• Figma
• Adobe Photoshop

Techniques

• Hand Tracking
• Gesture Recognition
• Passthrough / Mixed Reality
• Physical object position detection

Motivation

• Novel interaction technique exploration
• Encourage physical movement
• 1st room-scale, mixed reality, tower defense game