Beat Bar VR

Beat Bar is a game heavily inspired by Beat Saber and Fruit Ninja. Slice your fruit in time with the music to earn your free Cocktail!

My contributions to Beat Bar

Designed and implemented the core gameplay mechanics.
Developed and iterated on the experience flow.
Iterated on game feel through rapid prototyping and playtesting.
Designed and implemented a scalable difficulty system.
Created a clear, accessible UI/UX tailored for VR interaction.
Designed and implemented dynamic lighting systems that react to music.
Collaborated closely with clients to translate their vision into a playable experience.
Delivered a polished experience within a tight development timeframe.
Optimised for use on the Meta Quest platform

Design Decisions

Designing for a Festival Audience

Beat Bar began as a rapid prototype inspired by Beat Saber, using colour-coded blocks that disappeared when sliced and sabers restricted to specific colours. Early conversations with the client helped clarify that the primary audience would be music festival attendees, many of whom would only engage with the experience for a few minutes. This shifted the design focus away from mastery and toward immediacy and accessibility.

To reduce the learning curve, both sabers were updated to interact with any target. This allowed players to feel successful almost immediately, without needing to learn additional rules, while preserving the core rhythm-driven interaction.

Aligning Interaction with Theme

To better support the cocktail-themed context of the experience, the visual language of the targets was reworked. Abstract blocks were replaced with slicing fruit, which corresponded to the cocktail which they would receive at the end of the experience.

To support more convincing slicing interactions, I worked closely with the 3D artist to model each fruit as two separate halves. This allowed for clean, readable splits and reinforced the physicality of the interaction, along with particles for spray.

Reflection

I’m extremely happy with how BeatBarVR turned out and had a huge amount of fun developing it. The project came together under a very short timeline after being commissioned by a Latvia-based music festival, which required fast decision-making, rapid iteration, and a strong focus on what would resonate immediately with players.

Throughout development, I frequently found myself testing a new feature and unintentionally playing through the entire level, which I took as a positive sign. Many of the final design decisions were the direct result of repeated playtesting and iteration, taking into account accessibility, game feel, and short-session engagement.

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