Blending Worlds: Building My Venus Flytrap VR Game
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been figuring out how to bridge what I’m doing creatively with the technical setup—finding a way to connect my ideas in Unity with a working space that includes a VR headset, microcontroller, and physical components. After sorting out how to get Unity communicating to the microcontroller based on my exploration, described in the previous blog post, I began working on my more sophisticated idea.
One small but meaningful breakthrough was setting up a button that, when pressed, would light up an LED on a breadboard. It was a simple interaction, but it confirmed that the virtual and physical systems could communicate. It might seem basic, but this helped me break through a technical wall I’d been stuck on. Sometimes the simplest prototypes are the most important steps forward.
From there, I started thinking about how to bring coherence between the physical and virtual elements of the project. The game I’m building revolves around a Venus flytrap, and I wanted the whole aesthetic and gameplay experience to revolve around that concept. In the game, the Venus flytrap acts as both protector and trap. It hides a real-world object inside its petals (in this case, the user) and stays closed. The player’s goal in VR is to defeat all the “fly monsters” surrounding it. Once they’re defeated, the Venus flytrap opens, revealing the trapped player and marking the win.
Repurposing Physical Models
For this, I built a physical model of a Venus flytrap. The petals are made of painted cardboard and 3D-printed components, designed around a gear-based movement system that controls how the trap opens and closes. A DC motor mounted at the back drives the movement, using a cog system with four gears that allow the left and right petals to move in opposite directions. The mechanics are relatively straightforward, but designing the gear system took a fair amount of design thinking and trial-and-error.
Bridging Code and Motion
The movement logic is coded in Arduino, which I then uploaded to the microcontroller. It communicates with Unity through a patch that tracks what’s happening in the game. Specifically, the system monitors how many fly monsters have been “killed” in the virtual world. Once all the fly monsters are defeated, a signal is sent to the motor to open the Venus flytrap in real life—a moment of physical transformation that responds to virtual action.
This project sits somewhere between VR and physical computing. It’s not just about creating a game, but about exploring what happens when virtual reality meets metaphysical, embodied experiences. I’m fascinated by this transition between worlds—the way something in the virtual space can have a tangible, physical consequence, and how that loop can create a more meaningful sense of interaction and presence.
Setting up this system—both technically and conceptually—helped me shape the final scenario. It’s about merging playful game mechanics with thoughtful digital-physical storytelling, and I’m excited to keep exploring how far this kind of hybrid setup can go.