HEADBATT

A game as fun as Headbatt unsurprisingly has an equally fun story behind it. The VR game was born at an office party out of our passion for video games; it was a labour of love from day one.

Our Łódź-based Tech Lead, Maciej Zasada, was organising the opening of UNIT9’s new Łódź office when it occurred to him how great it would be to have a technological attraction at the event – ideally an exciting Oculus Rift mini game. A VR game named Headbatt was about to be born.

“We wanted to create a game that would look completely absurd from the outside. But having people do it in isolation isn’t social, so we thought: let’s make it multi-player,” says Maciej. And then the idea was born: people would use their heads as bats, sit opposite each other and bounce a virtual ball between them. To onlookers, they would look pretty strange.

The first version of Headbatt was created by UNIT9 developer Witold Rząsa in four days and then showcased at the office party. Because the feedback was so great, we started thinking about releasing it as a product. Now, it’s available all over the world and people can play it anywhere.

An upcoming version will enable a remote multi-player option so that you can play with a friend who lives in a different city or even on a different continent. In single-player mode, users can play against an AI opponent.

The concept of the game is simple and fun, an 80s style arkanoid game that is played horizontally in a 3D space. There are two bats – yours and the opponent’s – and the idea is to use your bat to bounce the ball in such a way that the opponent doesn’t manage to bounce it back to you. The catch here is that the bat is your head!

After coming up with the original concept, UNIT9 developer Witold Rząsa began developing the experience in game engine Unity. It was an agile process that mainly involved coding and 3D modelling. Reviews took place several times a day to discuss design, the use of position tracking in the Oculus, networking the game to make it multiplayer and implementing sound.

You can download HeadBatt on Google Play here.