I built an offline AR Tactical Shooter that turns your actual room into a sci-fi battlefield (and uses your physical steps to travel!)

Hey everyone,

I’ve spent the last few weeks building Tactical Shooter AR, a mobile first-person shooter that brings sci-fi combat directly into your physical space using Augmented Reality (AR) and local device sensors.

It runs entirely offline and has a strict privacy-first approach (no camera feeds or sensor logs ever leave your device!).

Here is the gameplay loop:

• AR Combat Scanning: The game uses your device's camera to dynamically analyze corners and boundaries in your room, spawning vector target drones around your real-world space.

• Smart Motion Controls: Aim physically by panning your device. Tapping fires your energy weapon, and you reload by hitting the HUD reload command.

• Smart Wrist-Flick EMP: If you get surrounded, flicking your wrist sharply (detected via the gyroscope) triggers an EMP Shockwave that zaps all on-screen drones.

• Move to Travel (Sector Translation): To move to different zones, you physically walk. The game detects your steps (using a hardware step counter or accelerometer fallback). Walking 10 steps shifts your sector, refilling your ammo clip, giving you bonus scrap credits, and spawning a fresh set of drones in your new location.

• Weapons Armory: Earn scrap credits from destroyed drones to purchase and equip heavier weapons:

  • Tactical Pistol (Default)
  • Pulse Rifle (Automatic fire)
  • Plasma Shotgun (Wide pellet spread with custom hitboxes)
  • Hyper Railgun (Heavy electromagnetic slugs)
  • Nano Disintegrator (Continuous rapid lightning beam)

• Shield Capturing: During combat, friendly Shield Cells will float into your space. For 40 scrap credits, you can shoot and capture them to instantly boost your blue shield bar by +50% to absorb incoming damage.

• Enemy Variety: Face different drones as waves scale, ranging from fast Scouts to cloaked Stealth Drones (that flicker transparently until they shoot or take damage) and massive Elite Boss Drones with rotating protective shields.

• Local Leaderboards: Track your highscores, max waves secured, and weapons used in a retro monospaced progression tracker.

Download the game here: Tactical Shooter AR - Apps on Google Play