Spectacles Community Challenge #9: Winners Announcement

It’s been months since the Spectacles Community Challenge debuted, and we’re still amazed by the creativity and innovation with each new edition. Time and again, Spectacles developers dedicate their energy, imagination, and technical expertise to building, improving, and experimenting with new tools and features, with each new Lens they create.

Every submission in the Challenge has a chance to win incredible prizes:

➡️ $14,000 – New Lens Category
➡️ $10,000 – Lens Update Category
➡️ $6,000 – 1st Place Open Source Category

Dive in and explore the standout winning Lenses from Spectacles Community Challenge #9. ⤵️

New Lens Category

⭐ A category that pushes you to experiment with unfamiliar tools, features, and ideas, turning curiosity into innovation to create new, engaging Lenses.

1st Place: The Heist by the GrowPile Team

The Heist is a high-stakes puzzle game for Spectacles where players race against the clock to crack open a safe. To succeed, they must solve three ever-changing modules and disarm the anti-theft system using an online manual that deciphers contextual clues like serial numbers and fuse colors.

While solo play is an intense challenge, Team Mode invites friends to join from their phones, access the manual, and guide the player through a live bodycam stream, making communication and collaboration the key to pulling off the perfect heist.

2nd Place: Fossils by VyuXR Immersive Studios Team

Fossils is an interactive experience that casts players as ARcheologists uncovering hidden prehistoric remains. By breaking open rocks and assembling bones through spatial puzzle mechanics, they gradually reconstruct extinct creatures piece by piece.

As each skeleton comes together, contextual facts reveal insights into the animal’s life and extinction, culminating in a revival moment that brings the creature back to life in AR, transforming players from observers into restorers of the past.

3rd Place: Vector Fields by Armand Sumo

Vector Fields makes abstract math concepts tangible by visualizing vector fields in AR. Players can explore magnetic dipoles, expansion and contraction dynamics, and vortex or wave patterns, switching between field types and rendering modes like flow lines, particles, and arrows for a hands-on learning experience.

Runner up: Talking Timmy by Roland Smeenk

Talking Timmy is a holographic AI companion for Spectacles that loves to chat and interact in real time. Players can talk with him naturally in their preferred language, watch him react to gestures, follow their gaze, and even dance on command.

With hand-aware interactions, magical materialization effects, and spatial tracking that integrates him into the environment, Timmy brings a playful, lifelike presence.

Runner up: Fork Fighter by Nithin Shankar

Fork Fighter is the world’s first mixed-reality game played with a real fork. Players pierce a virtual chili at the center of the plate to trigger a portal, unleashing tiny vegetable invaders in miniature tanks.

The fork serves as a tactile weapon, letting players splatter paint-ball shots and defend against enemies that leap toward the Spectacles, turning a simple utensil into an interactive AR controller.

Lens Update Category

⭐ The Lens Update category invites you to revisit and enhance an already published Lenses, adding new features or refinements to unlock monetization and gain extra visibility.

1st Place: Artel by Yegor Ryabtsov

Artel is a creative tool for Spectacles that lets users draw and build colorful 3D scenes in space. The update adds 3D objects like cubes, spheres, and cylinders, solid 3D brushes, and surface-snapping for painting directly onto objects. Brush smoothing, improved UI, and Snap Cloud integration make creating, saving, and exploring 3D art more intuitive and seamless.

2nd Place: Nine Legends by Pal Kagrecha

Nine Legends is an AR evolution of the 3,000-year-old strategy game Nine Men’s Morris for Spectacles. Now multiplayer-ready, it features real-time co-located play, Bitmoji avatars as an 18-piece army, and a global leaderboard. In-lens instructions, smart move suggestions, live scoring, and a persistent HUD guide players through each match, combining classic strategy with immersive gameplay.

3rd Place: Whereabouts by Liam Mason

Whereabouts is a geoguesser-style AR game for Spectacles that lets players explore the world through spatial images. Guided by Amelia, an AI companion with country-specific animations and voice lines, players guess locations across multiple modes, from Table and Sofa setups to daily and weekly challenges, while competing on global leaderboards.

Progression rewards include cosmetic items and gameplay tools like a compass and plane, while improved maps, zoom, and interactive pins enhance spatial exploration. The game combines immersive AR visuals, responsive AI guidance, and a variety of challenges to make geography both fun and interactive.

Open Source Category

⭐ This category welcomes open-source Lenses on GitHub, including those using Experimental APIs, giving you the freedom to push boundaries and break new ground without requiring Lens Explorer publication.

1st Place: Noodle by the Snak Team

Noodle turns everyday spaces into collaborative AR ideation studios for Spectacles. Users capture real-world photos and create node-based workflows powered by Generative AI, evolving ideas into text, 2D images, and 3D models. Workflows can be shared in real time, enabling fluid, spatial collaboration and iterative creative exploration.

2nd Place: Vector Fields by Armand Sumo

Vector Fields brings vector fields to life in AR, letting users explore magnetic dipoles, expansion, vortex, and wave patterns. Field types and rendering modes – flow lines, particles, or arrows – can be switched for a hands-on, visual understanding of complex dynamics.

3rd Place: Lucid Weave by the Dream-CatchARs Team

Lucid Weave lets Spectacles users sculpt music in midair with hand movements, transforming sound into light and motion for a dreamlike, immersive spatial performance.

Month after month, developers demonstrate that the AR industry will continue to grow, evolve, and push boundaries thanks to their brilliant minds. Each Lens reflects the creativity and dedication of the Community, offering new approaches and ideas that push the boundaries of what’s possible in creative technology.

The Spectacles Community Challenge provides a space for these innovations to be shared, learned from, and built upon, contributing to the ongoing development of the Lens Studio ecosystem.