Build Clever Machines in Mixed Reality: ‘Rube Goldberg Workshop’ is Out Now on Meta Quest 2 + Pro
We’ve all seen Rube Goldberg Machines® before: laughably complicated contraptions built with dozens of objects and gizmos to achieve a simple task. But you’ve probably never made one in mixed reality, and that’s where Rube Goldberg Workshop comes in. The game lets you use the surfaces from your real world environment to build an unlimited number of silly and colorful machines. And the best part is there’s no cleanup involved when you’re done!
Rube Goldberg Workshop is now available on Meta Quest 2 + Pro for $9.99 USD.
Rube Goldberg Workshop uses our Presence Platform technology to scan your room and determine which walls, furniture, and surfaces you can build your machines on. You’ll then see your room within the game via the Passthrough feature on your headset: If you’re playing on Meta Quest 2, this will be shown in black and white, while Meta Quest Pro owners will see their rooms in full color. From there, you’ll be able to choose from over 80 different components to build your machines, including toy cars, gears, books, rubber balls, bowling pins, cannons, and much more.
There’s no high scores to chase or challenges to cross off, so you’re free to let your imagination run wild and build whatever you want. When you’re done with one of your machines, you can create a video showing it off with Recording Mode (you can use Rube Goldberg Workshop’s scene backdrops to hide the details of your room), and then share it to the world from your headset.
To celebrate the launch, we spoke with Free Range Games Producer Stephen Scholz about what it was like building a game for mixed reality, the significance of being associated with the Rube Goldberg Institute, and why it’s so fun to make these machines in the first place.
Stephen Scholz: When we heard of the developments in mixed reality, we wanted to make a game that really used a person’s physical space—not just as a background, but as part of the play space. Making Rube Goldberg Machines® seemed like a natural fit. We could develop models of common household objects and players could place them in their houses, just like they could in real life. Rube Goldberg Machines® in mixed reality are just as fun as they are in reality, but many times easier (no mess, no needing to reset the machine after every trial, and you have the ability to pause the action).
Playing in mixed reality mitigates one issue common to VR games: What’s the play space? In any computer game, there are places you can go and places you can’t. Those are not always obvious in VR, and if you bump into an invisible border while you play, that can ruin your immersion. But when the play space is your own office, kitchen, or living room, you know exactly where you can play.
SS: We’ve done research before with VR to see what was possible. But this time working directly with Meta, it was like having several whole teams working with us to really push the boundaries of what was possible.
SS: We were working with technology that was still in development. Sometimes new updates were coming in fast and we needed to be pretty agile to keep our app on the latest developments. The Meta staff was very helpful in giving us a heads-up when something that would affect our project was in the pipeline.
SS: It’s exciting to be continuing a legacy that inspired many of us. Rube Goldberg challenges promote creativity, artistic expression, and STEM education. So we’re all about pushing players’ creativity and engineering skills. Rube Goldberg’s illustrations also had a distinct style, so we worked closely with the Rube Goldberg Institute to get the branding right. Certain objects he loved to draw, like the extending boxing glove, are iconic. We have a fun update coming very shortly after launch with a bunch of new objects inspired directly from his cartoons.
SS: MR is definitely going to be something big. As headsets get more comfortable, and people become more familiar with the technology, we’ll see MR as a way to enhance people’s experience of their own environments and beyond.
SS: It was reassuring to hear that our product really resonated with VR veterans who wanted to test out mixed reality. We got a lot of great ideas to expand the game, and some good feedback on a couple issues we needed to tighten up.
SS: One of the more challenging things to do in the game is to get balls to bounce continuously. Our physics models are pretty realistic, and just like in real life, it isn’t easy. But when it works, it looks amazing.
Our developers were always sending us videos of crazy long and complex builds they made while testing their updates. The testing sessions were longer than usual because people kept getting caught up in play.
SS: Your most important tools are on your controller (or your wrist if you’re using hand tracking): Pause and Reset. With Pause you can stop the physics so objects remain in the air and are unaffected by motion or gravity. With Reset, you bring every element to the last place you placed it. I find it easiest to do all my building with the machine paused, then hit play to test it out.
The walls, floor, and furniture you define in the Meta Quest room setup are all recognized as game spaces. So you can bounce balls off the ceiling, place dominoes on your kitchen table, and stick virtual shelves on your walls.
SS: Rube Goldberg Workshop is fundamentally a tool box to make your own fun. We don’t dictate what success looks like, and there’s no finish line or final boss. You set your own pace. You can build a machine, save it, and add to it later.
We want to see your machines! Use the tools in our Recording Mode to record your machines in action, then use the share features on your Meta headset to put them on social media. Remember to tag us @freerangegames and use the hashtag #rubegoldbergworkshop on your posts. Thanks for playing!
Want to build an elaborate racetrack around your sleeping pets? Go for it. Cover your kitchen in dominoes and fireworks? Sure, why not! The possibilities are endless with Rube Goldberg Workshop, and you can try it for yourself on Meta Quest 2 + Pro.
