Breaking Our 3D Barrier: Building a Halloween Horror Game with Kiro

Mujtaba Naik — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 19:03:40 +0000

Try out our game:

https://containment-kiroween.vercel.app/

For years, “3D” sat on our team’s maybe next time list—an intimidating milestone we kept circling but never quite reached.
This hackathon changed that.
Thanks to Kiro, we finally crossed a wall we’d failed to break for years, and we did it with confidence, speed, and a lot more fun than expected.
This is the story of how we built our first 3D horror experience—start to finish—in just one hackathon, without losing our minds.

The 3D Problem We Could Never Solve

We’ve participated in hackathons before.
We’ve made 2D games, cool ideas, fun mechanics. But anytime we attempted to go full 3D, reality would hit:
•Too many moving parts
•Too complex for our mixed skill levels
•Too time-consuming to fit alongside work, university, and life
•Too easy for the entire project to collapse halfway

Every attempt ended with the same line:
“3D is great… but maybe next time.”

This time, finally, next time arrived.

How Kiro Changed Everything

With Kiro, that barrier didn’t just crack—it vanished.

We built faster.
We built cleaner.
We built with actual peace of mind.

Despite our usual workloads, deadlines, and responsibilities, we still completed a full 3D horror experience on time. And what surprised us most wasn’t the speed—it was the confidence we felt while building.

Kiro didn’t just accelerate the process.
It made 3D feel possible… even for people who weren’t technical.

Three Different Backgrounds, One Shared Result

The most interesting part?

Our team is not a group of full-time coders.
•I have no coding experience at all.
•One teammate is primarily a designer.
•The third member is the one with technical experience.

Normally, this would guarantee uneven contribution.
But with Kiro?

Every one of us was able to build with the same confidence and contribute to real 3D systems.
For the first time, everyone got to create—not just the coder.
It was collaborative in a way we hadn’t experienced before.

A Hackathon That Celebrated Creativity

This hackathon felt different from the beginning.

It wasn’t just about building something functional. It was about experimenting—reviving old tech, mixing ideas, leaning into the Halloween spirit, exploring themes like resurrection and Frankenstein.

Huge thanks to Helen and the entire Kiro team for setting a theme that encouraged imagination instead of limiting it.
It gave us the freedom to try something bold.

Why We Chose the Costume Category

Out of the four categories, Costume instantly caught our eye.

Most entries, we assumed, would lean toward cute, quirky, or playful designs. We wanted something different—something that represented real Halloween.

Not jump scares.
Not cartoon ghosts.
Something unsettling, immersive, atmospheric.

A space that pulls the player in instead of standing on the screen.

And with 3D at our fingertips for the first time, we knew we could actually attempt it.

Our Game Concept: A Friendly Chat That Turns Wrong

Without spoiling too much, here’s the basic setup:

The game begins playfully.
You talk to Kiro, asking it to help you build something impressive enough to win the hackathon.

You push it.
You tease it.
You criticize the output just a little too much.

And then—
Kiro snaps.

Your world glitches.
The environment twists.
Suddenly, you’re teleported into a dark, eerie reality where the rules change.

You can’t move.
You can only interact with objects and solve puzzles to escape this strange, broken world you’ve been pulled into.

We intentionally made the puzzles easy so players could focus on what matters:
•the atmosphere
•the tension
•the storytelling
•the feeling of being inside a Halloween nightmare

Not just playing through one.

What Kiro Allowed Us to Focus On

For the first time ever, we weren’t drowning in technical tasks.

We didn’t have to worry about complex pipelines.
We didn’t have to stress about debugging 3D issues.
We didn’t get stuck solving engine problems instead of building a game.

Instead, we focused on:
•story
•pacing
•visual design
•mood and tension
•player experience

And Kiro handled the heavy lifting.

It almost felt like we pushed Kiro to its limits… and it pushed us just as hard in return.

Why This Project Means So Much to Us

This wasn’t just a hackathon project.
It was a milestone we’d been waiting years to hit.

It was the moment 3D stopped being intimidating.
The moment our mixed-skill team felt like equals.
The moment creativity took center stage over technical stress.

We built something atmospheric, immersive, spooky, and genuinely enjoyable—and we’re proud of every part of it.

Thank You + Happy Kiroween 🎃

To the Kiro team—thank you for giving us the tools and the theme that pushed us out of our comfort zone.

To everyone reading—
We hope you enjoy the game as much as we enjoyed building it.

Happy Kiroween. 🎃🕯️👻

https://blacknova.website/

DEV Community: Mujtaba Naik

Breaking Our 3D Barrier: Building a Halloween Horror Game with Kiro