ORBYX – AI-augmented full-stack lab in 3D-game form Lab

Lab project: Unity 6 3D game with live multi-board leaderboards, HMAC anti-cheat and a four-gate CI pipeline.

Currently in closed beta

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ORBYX

Why ORBYX sits in Labs

ORBYX is one of our lab projects: proof of what one developer with AI as a development partner can deliver across the full stack. The visible layer is a Unity 6 3D arcade game where the player flies through glowing rings in an abstract space corridor — pay-off Chase the impossible, every ring you hit speeds you up, every ring you miss costs a life. The technical backbone is what makes it a Lab: live multi-board leaderboards (per-mode × per-theme + cross-theme + daily) on a shared HMAC-signed backend, a four-gate CI pipeline (quality-gate, project validation, asset validation and pure-logic unit tests with no Unity licence required), and infrastructure coordinated across three repositories. The game is the surface; the engineering underneath is the real story.

Five environments, five difficulty tiers

The campaign features five distinct themed worlds, each with its own visual style, ring size, speed curve and hazards:

  • Neon Corridor (★) — beginner-friendly: wide rings, steady pace, learn the flow.
  • Asteroid Field (★★) — meteors spawn, ring spacing tightens.
  • Deep Sea (★★★) — enemy ships appear, rings start moving, pressure builds.
  • Solar Storm (★★★★) — aggressive enemies, moving rings from level one — expert-only.
  • The Void (★★★★★) — tightest rings, max speed, minimalist design — the ultimate test.

Five ways to play

  • Single Player — classic arcade run with three lives.
  • VS Computer — race a pre-simulated AI opponent with rubber-banding (and your choice of three personalities / difficulties); drafting behind the bot grants a speed boost.
  • Time Attack — 60 seconds, no lives, score as high as you can.
  • Daily Challenge — the same seeded course for everyone every day, with daily login streaks earning bonus rings.
  • Pro Mode — one life, no power-ups, no meteors, no cannons. Tighter rings, faster speed ramp. Its own leaderboard. Pure precision.

Power-ups, enemies and weekly modifiers

  • Nine power-up types: shields, slow-motion, speed boosts, ring magnets, big-ring modifiers, double-score boosts — and traps that shrink rings or disarm your cannon.
  • Optional cannons with limited ammo, theme-coloured, for taking down enemy ships and meteors.
  • Weekly modifiers — every Monday a new global modifier rotates in (double speed, shrinking rings, meteor storms, combo boost). Everyone plays with the same modifier that week.

Pilot progression

Persistent rank system from Rookie to Ace Pilot, twelve achievements across three categories (Skill, Progression and Combat), per-run missions with ring rewards, and daily login streaks. A Pilot Status panel surfaces rank, flight log, mission dispatch and sector progress. Each level opens with a briefing — flavour text, pilot clearance and sector conditions.

Customisation

Six ship skins and three trail effects, all unlockable with rings earned in-game. No paywalls, no paid shortcuts.

Controls, audio and accessibility

  • Three steering modes: mouse + keyboard (desktop), touch drag (mobile), and tilt via the gyroscope. Switchable in settings.
  • Procedural audio — every sound is synthesised in real time. Engine hum scales with speed; ambient music adapts per world.
  • Haptic feedback on ring hits, misses, level-ups and damage (Android VibrationEffect API + iOS Handheld.Vibrate).
  • Tablet-optimised UI — auto-detected via screen diagonal; UI scales accordingly.
  • Colourblind mode, screen-reader-friendly UI labels, and a safe-area-aware HUD for notched phones.

Engineering and quality

ORBYX is built in Unity 6 (6000.3.11f1) with the Built-in Render Pipeline and the New Input System. Landscape-only, primarily Android (IL2CPP, target SDK 34), secondarily macOS and Windows. The CI pipeline runs four quality steps on every push: quality-gate.sh (brace balance, namespaces, duplicate classes, old Input API, TODO markers), project validation (required files, scene GUIDs, orphaned metas), asset validation (required textures, meta completeness, oversized files), and pure-logic unit tests via dotnet test against Unity stubs — no Unity licence required in CI.

Status

ORBYX is currently in a closed beta phase, with a public release on the Google Play Store planned once leaderboard infrastructure, in-game missions and device tuning are complete. Updates and any beta access run through the ORBYX landing page.

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