Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test is a series about finding, and exceeding, your limitations through extreme physical and mental challenges. Our goal was to capture that spirit by crafting a seamless extension of the show that was accessible to nearly everyone and that could scale individually as well as with various social communities.
Unlike most gameplay experiences that reply on speed or skill, we challenged participants to be vulnerable and put their limitations front-and-center. This unique approach aligned with the show's ethos of staying resilient in the face of adversity. Using a combination of push-ups and planking, the user navigates a 2-minute AR obstacle course, where the only score was how much suffering they could endure and how well they endured it.
Developing the AR obstacle course was a complex endeavor. The primary challenge was collision detection (whether the player was touching an obstacle course or course boundary) as the feature didn’t exist natively. We also had to develop a method of tracking each object’s position on screen in relation to the player. Finally, to keep the effect performant, only what is on screen is checked for position, rather than keeping track of the whole course. Overcoming these technical hurdles were essential to our success and made for a great final product.
The results of our TikTok challenge exceeded our team's objectives. The experience collected over HALF A BILLION views, 42M likes, and 2M shares, elevating us into the top 1% of effect creators. These numbers speak for themselves as an acknowledgement to the uniqueness and impact of our project, setting us apart from the vast array of content on TikTok.
