Overview
Tilt Five Naval Warfare is an augmented reality, battleship-inspired game developed for the Tilt Five AR platform using Unity as part of the Research Issues in Game Development: XR course at CMU
Technologies Used
My Role
Project Management: Led the project as the Producer/Project Manager, managing task assignments, maintaining deadlines, and ensuring alignment with the Game Design Document through regular updates.
Development Contributions: Implemented core systems, including audio effects, and designed visual effects like spark trails for bombs to enhance gameplay and player feedback.
Iterative Improvements: Analyzed user testing feedback, facilitated discussions to define project direction, broke down actionable tasks, and tracked progress to ensure timely delivery.
Led the team successfully while officially taking on the role of Producer/ Project Manager for a game development project for the first time.
Developed a game for the Tilt Five platform for the first time.
Showcased the game at GCS Night, where it received a lot of positive feedback.
Introduction
Tilt Five Naval Warfare is an augmented reality, battleship-inspired game developed for the Tilt Five AR platform using Unity as part of the Research Issues in Game Development: XR course at CMU. As the Producer, I led the project by managing workflows, assigning tasks, and ensuring alignment through regular updates to the Game Design Document. I also contributed to the development of certain core systems like the audio effects system, and visual effects to enhance the overall player experience.
This was my first time being a formal project manager/producer for a team project, especially a game. I found a good template for the Game Design Document, tracked the tasks on a spreadsheet, and managed assets between teammates working on different tasks.
The Tilt Five system is an augmented reality (AR) platform for tabletop gaming that uses AR glasses, a retroreflective game board, and optional controllers to create immersive 3D holographic experiences. Players see and interact with digital content projected onto the board, enabling shared, dynamic gameplay. It’s lightweight, portable, and designed to bring traditional board games to life.
We chose the Tilt Five system to prototype how an augmented reality board game could change the modality and feel of an otherwise two-dimensional board game
We chose battlefield as our inspiration to make an augmented reality board game, because:
There are two separate game boards
Players sit exactly face-to-face
Players completely hide their play
They share the gameplay only through conversation
Out original plan was to compare the performances of how a physical interface might change the strategies used by the players in battleship, as compared to the original point and click interface that is present in the final game. I took charge of coming up with the design for the interface, as well as a plan of what electronics would be necessary to build these. The plan included the above interfaces as the design reference, knobs for turning, physical buttons with labels on top, red LEDs and an Arduino Uno each, followed by hooking these up to the playing device, and have it act as a keyboard. However, we had to skip implementing this because of lack of time in modelling it in cad, laser cutting, and putting everything together.
Here are some interesting design challenges that we faced and how we solved them:
Aarnav Sangekar 2025