Infinite Inside

Infinite Inside was released in July 2024 and quickly became Maze Theory's best reviewed game so far. I was Lead Programmer on this project, and as such, contributed heavily to every technical aspect of the game.

In Infinite Inside, players explore a mysterious plinth that has appeared in their physical living room, using their headset's AR capabilities. They complete puzzles and interact with figurines to enter miniature dioramas inside the plinth itself, and explore it in fully immersive VR environments.

The main driving force behind Infinite Inside was game director Marcus Moresby, who set our team a high bar for pushing the boundaries of what VR and AR games can be. From this striving resulted a meditative puzzling experience, that lets players make what they will of the trail of clues left by the game's narrative.

As Lead Programmer in a small, flexible team, and working closely with Lead Designer Guy Sargent, my contributions ranged from the minutest gameplay interaction to the broadest foundational groundwork; from implementing haptic feedback and animations on puzzle completion, to writing a modular, addressables-compatible level-loading system that can be updated with new content without modifying the APK players have downloaded on their headsets.

The needs of Infinite Inside's gameplay required me to code a node-based traversal system, two separate physical & modular puzzling system, a VR-to-AR-and-back transition system, and all the related tooling to allow my colleagues in the design team to do their work easily and efficiently.

One of the goals of Infinite Inside was to push the envelope of what a VR and AR experience could be; as such, it was decided to ensure that the game was fully playable both with controllers and with hand tracking. I proceeded to adapt the input system to accomodate for this on Meta Quest, and succeeded in offering a parity of experience between the two control schemes. Another reason for this adaptation work was to prepare for the game's eventual port to Apple Vision Pro, which relies exclusively on hand and finger tracking.

Infinite Inside, like Peaky Blinders: The King's Ransom before it, was intended for release on multiple headsets at once; in this case, Meta Quest 2 & 3, PICO 4 & 4 Pro, Playstation VR 2, Steam VR, and, eventually, Apple Vision Pro. I conducted most of the porting, mostly to PICO and Steam VR, but I also helped my colleague Chris Gilkes in the initial investigations on the port to Apple Vision Pro.

Infinite Inside garnered positive reviews from users and the press alike after launching in July 2024, maintaining a 4.6/5 average user score on the Meta Quest store. User reviews cited similarities with the works of famous artists ("I felt like I was wandering through a world created by Escher" - @Alisa) and praised its novel mechanics ("Perhaps one of the best blends of Mixed Reality and VR" - @M4cheteColletti).

Don Hopper, writing for UploadVR, called it a "feast for the senses" and hailed its "smooth transitions between VR and MR elements". Similarly, Mixed News' Tomislav Bezmalinovic praised its "clever fusion of MR and VR" as well as "its aura of mystery, magic and otherworldliness", writing: "Infinite Inside weaves mixed and virtual reality together in interesting new ways".