Independent studio · Austin, Texas · Since 2016
VR games, privacy-first apps, and honest field guides from Stephanie Traska. Fourteen live projects, each built to leave you a little calmer, sharper, or more curious than when you arrived.
Categories 01–03 · Virtual reality & games
A meditation you can touch. A marble arena in zero gravity. A cosmic journey, a cross-dimensional co-op, a planet full of opinionated aliens. Solo creations first, then the jam-born collaborations still growing into modern headsets.
Every model, line of code, and voice line: made independently.
Leave the noise on the shore of a quiet island. A guiding voice sets a four-in, four-out rhythm, light gathers in your hands, and moss-covered ruins, fireflies, and three shifting skies wait at your pace.
Solo design, 3D modeling, sprites and particles, programming, narration, UI, and logo. Built for PC VR: HTC Vive, and Quest through Link.
One VR pilot and one keyboard gunner share a rig against a rival duo. Fire your twenty marbles, vacuum them back, and shove the spinner into goal while a crowd of chihuahuas howls.
Created the arena, characters, weapons, textures, theme, and backstory. Programmed scoring, timers, collisions, win/lose flow, sound events, and camera controls; adapted the multiplayer code.
Weekend game-jam sparks, finished, published, and carried forward to new headsets.
Published · Quest 2 port in progress
Where breath becomes weightless. A teacher’s voice and binaural beats carry you out of your body to witness the Big Bang, then you look around to bend the flow of time.
Modeled the human form and an animated vine growing around a cooling star, wrote the meditation script, helped with the font and logo, and ported the Android build to SteamVR. Team of nine.
Published · Quest 2 port in progress
Hold the line. Neon vector arcade combat that surrounds you: defend your crates, cut through fighters with lasers, save your missiles for the boss, and chase one more high score.
Modeled the enemy ship and the Borg Boss, built the hive-mind shield dynamics, and handled the Quest port.
Now with a Quest 2 port
There is more to your world. One friend guides Hex through a 2D maze on PC; the other reaches in from VR with 3D shapes. Dodge sentries, open relays, and recover the Tesseract across three chapters.
Team lead. 3D character models and textures, 2D characters and tile sprites, fractal animation, backstory, and particle effects. Inspired by Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland.
Now with a Quest 2 port
Little worlds, big consequences. Lift tiny aliens with a tractor beam, move them between three planets, and hear dissonance turn into harmony when you find the right neighbours.
Character and UFO modeling, textures, visual design, musical-note particles, and concept development. Made with Paul Gasca, Daniel Perry, and Emily E. Meo at the 2016 VR Austin Jam.
Fast ideas, one shared keyboard, and a twist.
Thirty seconds of strange. Two players on one keyboard race for fallen tickets and deep-fried butter at the carnival, then the world flips upside down. Built for a jam where every round had to last thirty seconds or less.
My contribution: Photoshopped each character, obstacle, edible, ticket, enemy, and background with the theme in mind. Animated the intro logo in After Effects, re-creating Stranger Things. The font is not mine.
Play free on itch.ioCategories 04–05 · Windows & Android apps
Bedtimes that actually happen. Decisions that make themselves. Lights, signals, and odds you can finally see. Private by default: no ads, no trackers, and no account required.
An off switch for “just five more minutes.”
The bedtime alarm that doesn’t ask nicely. At bedtime it takes over the screen, counts down, and puts your PC to sleep, with time to save your work and an honest snooze that always comes back. Built for time-blind brains, kids and adults alike.
Less friction, more control. Tools made from everyday curiosity.
FocusCan’t decide? Roll for it.
Dump every loose thought into three buckets, tap the dice for one task, then log how long it really took. It quietly trains time blindness, one honest number at a time.
Offline first · Optional sync · No ads
PerspectiveSmall dog. Big house edge.
A chihuahua-club slot machine with a Matrix button. One tap trades the casino glow for the live math: win chance, expected return, and house edge. Free practice credits; never real money.
Android · Offline · Adults 18+
ControlYour lights. Your network.
Local-only control for Govee Wi-Fi lights. Discover them in about a second, then set colors, schedules, and effects. No cloud, no account, no location permission, no trackers.
Android · 100% LAN traffic
DiscoverySee the invisible airwaves.
Walk toward a lost earbud with live Bluetooth proximity, then see every Wi-Fi router, cell tower, and satellite your phone can hear. It has no internet permission, so it can’t phone home.
Android · Offline RF scanner
Category 06 · Educational PSA websites
Free, independent field guides that turn confusing business decisions into clear numbers, honest caveats, and checklists you can act on today.
Practical questions, clearer choices.
What I bring to your project
Concept, art, code, and the page that sells it. Every capability below is backed by something you can open today.
Unity and C# from first prototype to headset: interaction design, calm seated-friendly comfort, and ports to SteamVR and Quest.
Proof: Chi Me UP VR, Trancendence, Vek Wars
Characters, environments, textures, and particle effects, shaped with a film-school eye for mood and story.
Proof: Star FiVR, Musical Migration VR, ArtStation
Focused Android and Windows utilities that solve one real problem well: offline first, no trackers, no dark patterns.
Proof: LAN Lights, Find That Device, Go To Sleep 3000
Fast, hand-built product pages and field guides that make complicated things clear, and sell honestly.
Proof: Solo & Secure, DropShipMeUP, and every project site above
The person behind the pixels
A film major turned 3D modeler turned independent developer. VIDesign Studios, short for Virtual Interactive Design Studios, began as a hobby in 2016, the year Trancendence shipped.
I’m primarily self-taught: 3D modeling, animation, Photoshop, C#, HTML, and a lot of Unity. Austin’s game-jam scene put the Oculus DK1, DK2, and Vive Pre in my hands before they reached the public, alongside generous, inventive local developers.
“VR should not be limited to games, and games should not be limited to violence.”
Film taught me that experience matters more than objectives. On a flat screen, an environment is decoration; in a headset, it can change how safe and calm a person feels. That’s the line I keep building on, now in apps and guides too.
Trace spells in a mysterious forest, where rituals don’t quite go to plan. Team lead, environment art, and core mechanic.
Development story ↗A claustrophobic escape through underground tunnels. Cave modeling, textures, graphical UI, and maze design.
Development story ↗A VR player and a keyboard partner cooperate to escape. Props, prefabs, triggers, level design, and logo.
Download on itch.io ↗Dev blogs and downloads from a decade of Austin VR jams, from the Oculus DK1 onward.
Browse the jams ↗VR Beer Pong, The Vegan Chronicles, EEG brain-computer prototypes, and the full record of earlier contributions.
Original portfolio ↗
