Ellen Lo

XR / Unity Game Dev

say hi 💌

🖱 click anywhere to view work          🤹🏻 available for freelance work – games, websites, XR prototyping

👆 tap anywhere to view work          🤹🏻 available for freelance work – games, websites, XR prototyping

  • design
  • website
  • mixed reality
  • game
  • experiment
  • installation

Crash Course

Crash Course

Crash Course is a first-of-its-kind mixed reality obstacle course race that combines physical inflatables with digital gameplay. Players drive real karts while wearing headsets, navigating a modular track built on top of a 3D scan of the venue — starting with gentle straights to get used to driving in MR, then ramping up into steeper curves.

The gameplay rewards chaos: crashing into inflatables racks up points and sends them flying with physics-driven reactions. I built the bouncy wobble by rigging bones down the spine of each prop and driving them with Unity's configurable joints, then wrote a script that programmatically configures joint settings across the rig hierarchy so any model can be turned into a bouncy prop. It became a staple across all Dream Park titles. Crash Course debuted at Dream Park's inaugural location at West Canal Yards in Seattle in June 2025.

Read more

BUGSKILL

BUGSKILL

BUGSKILL challenges players to eliminate every fly in sight using their hands and quick reflexes — slapping them against surfaces, clapping them mid-air, or snapping them up with power-ups bought from an in-game shop.

Built in Unity for Quest 3 with Passthrough, Hand Tracking, Depth API, MRUK, and Audio SDK. Flies spawn and navigate any room procedurally via the Scene API, and spatial audio with Doppler cues helps players hear them coming.

Read more

Wireloop

Wireloop

Inspired by the classic buzzwire game, Wireloop is a series of AR games built with the New York Times. Users are encouraged to move the ring ("phone"), trace and light up the dark wire, and reveal hidden shapes.

To recreate the "buzz" without access to haptic feedback, we focused on refining the visual by leveraging Spark's particle system and custom shaders, with the goal of delivering an elegant, stress-free gameplay.

Read more

Mosquito Catcher

Mosquito Catcher

This is a prototype for an asymmetrical 2-player game I designed, where one player catches mosquitoes and the other plays as a mosquito. In front of a webcam, the catcher uses their hand to capture the mosquito, while the mosquito uses a joystick to evade capture and suck blood out of the catcher's hand.

Read code

Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger Hunt

This is a multiplayer XR game where gacha collectibles are scattered around the arcade space and players must race to collect them all. Players are equipped with the Extendo 3000, a device that extends up to 10 meters long and rewards precise aiming, allowing them to grab out-of-reach items. As they successfully extract the collectibles, they transform into charms that can be worn on the player's wrist.

Built with Unity, OpenXR, and Normcore. Demoed at Creator Campus Beta Night in March 2024, the game was developed originally at the 40,000 sqft arcade space of Two Bit Circus in DTLA. In-game collectibles were localized and hand-picked to match the surrounding arcade cabinets.

Pikmin XR

Pikmin XR

This is a project exploring how existing 3D game mechanics can be borrowed and adapted to create more intuitive and immersive gameplay in mixed reality. Using the Pikmin game series as an example, I reproduced various classic interactions in passthrough, such as Throw and Pluck, that introduce some alternative interaction patterns in XR.

Read code

Kapu

Kapu

Kapu is a glass making practice by Prinita Thevarajah and she takes inspiration from shapes found in children's playgrounds. The endless scroll of images down the shapes and paths was a whimsical way to incorporate her work, and also an imagination of nonlinear navigation on the web.

Every moving element on the site was hand coded with p5 and roughjs - sketchy clouds and stars, shape shifting butterfly, wiggly caterpillars and more are uniquely generated per visit. Take a stroll in our online playground ॱ⋅.˳˳.⋅˙ॱᐧ.˳˳.⋅ઇଓ

Read code

Nasal Swab

Nasal Swab

Read How Far Should a Coronavirus Test Go?

We worked with illustrator Julia Rothman to create a AR face effect to show the interior of a nasal cavity in 2.5D.

A Tiny Frog's Climb

A Tiny Frog's Climb

Working with NYT Kids for the launch of their “Tiny Issue,” we built a real-scale immersive rainforest environment to show the journey of the tiny strawberry poison frog.

Somewhere Good

Somewhere Good

For the Somewhere Good app launch, I worked with Annika Hansteen-Izora and helped them revamp their colorful and motion-heavy website. I also created a mini quiz that helps new users find their community through a series of intimate questions.

Studio Ānanda

Studio Ānanda

I designed and developed a new website + CMS for Studio Ānanda, channeling their spirit of wellness with soft aesthetics and use of CSS filters, blend modes, and SVG animations. Featured on loadmo.re❣️

Shattered Crosswords

Shattered Crosswords

The first AR game of NYT – this game takes the crossword and explodes it, using mobile AR technologies to create a 3D hunt for the proper perspective on a word to fit into the puzzle.

Read case study

Dalilah Muhammad

Dalilah Muhammad

For Olympics 2021, we created an AR effect to visualize Dalilah Muhammad's motion over the hurdle in real-scale, published to go along with her interview with the New York Times.

Inflation Shrinkray

Inflation Shrinkray

We created a shrink ray in augmented reality where users can interact directly with consumer goods and see how inflation has affected buying power.

Lost Code

Lost Code

Lost Code is a graphic design project exploring the friction in translation. Made with Paper.js. Featured on It's Nice That!

Design by Hilda Wong

Enter site

Axis Mundi

Axis Mundi

Axis Mundi is an experimental exhibition project exploring man’s attempt to override nature with technology and nature’s resistance. Featured on klikkenthéke!

Installation design and development by me

Web design by Hilda Wong

Enter site