Hack Club: Juice

I landed in Shanghai with a Quest headset, a sketchbook full of chaotic party ideas, and a promise to demo something fun at the end of the trip. I built PartyVR - a living-room-sized playground filled with throwable cakes, physics-based mini games, and a soundtrack that gets louder the more players join.

The hardest part was networking. Every avatar needed to stay in sync, but late-night builds kept desyncing unless I rewrote entire systems. By day three I had authoritative movement, synced props, and a cheeky lobby that doubled as a tutorial.

Hack Club rented a storefront, filled it with extension cords, and invited the neighborhood to try our projects. My favourite moment was watching a group of students queue for the headset while the rest of us turned fruit from the market into actual juice.

The event also meant documenting everything: screenshots, stand-ups, and five-minute lightning talks. That habit of narrating progress followed me home.

• Scoping ruthlessly so a multiplayer idea actually ships.
• Designing onboarding for people who have never tried VR.
• Documenting progress in public - every day mattered.