From Internal VR Prototype to Meta Quest Release: How Stepico’s Experiment Became Discovery: Rogue Planet
A project built initially to test ideas inside Stepico has made its way onto the Meta Quest store. Discovery: Rogue Planet, a sci-fi VR shooter released for Meta Quest 3 and 3S on August 13, 2026, began as an Unreal Engine prototype before growing into a standalone game with its own development team.
The path from experiment to finished title gives a rare look at what can happen when an internal R&D project is allowed to move beyond its original purpose. For the game development studio Stepico, the early version was a way to explore VR production and demonstrate what its developers and artists could build with Unreal Engine. It eventually became large enough to justify a separate product direction.
A Demo That Outgrew Its Original Purpose
Discovery: Rogue Planet was not originally planned as a commercial release.
Stepico's team created the first version as an internal Unreal Engine demo. The prototype provided room to work with VR mechanics while building a science-fiction environment that could showcase both technical and artistic work.
The concept kept developing. A small experiment turned into a pitch for a complete game, and work moved beyond the boundaries of a conventional internal demo. A dedicated team was eventually formed under the Immersmind name to take the project into full production.
Meta also became involved during development, providing technical support and guidance for the project.
That history separates Discovery: Rogue Planet from a game conceived from day one around a fixed commercial brief. Several parts of the final experience can be traced back to experimentation rather than a predetermined formula.
Rogax Was Built Around Its Own History
The game takes place on Rogax, a remote planet where the player works as a bounty hunter. Its setting avoids the familiar polished corridors and space-station interiors found in plenty of science-fiction shooters.
Rogax is dry, hostile and filled with traces of an environment that no longer exists.
The developers imagined the planet as a place once covered by water. Its oceans disappeared long before the events of the game, leaving behind landscapes shaped by that history. Dried seabeds, unusual rock formations and vegetation resembling coral help sell the idea without requiring lengthy explanations.
That approach is particularly useful in VR. Environmental details can carry more weight when players are free to examine locations at their own pace and perceive their scale through a headset.
The Ukrainian roots of the team also appear in smaller details throughout the project. They are not treated as the central subject of the game, but can be found in names, visual elements and music. Ukrainian musician Gordiy Starukh contributed to the soundtrack, bringing the sound of the hurdy-gurdy into the game's sci-fi setting.
Designing a Shooter for a Headset
Building a shooter for VR involves problems that are easy to overlook when designing for a conventional screen.
Fast movement can make a player uncomfortable. Interface elements have to remain readable without constantly pulling attention away from the environment. Weapons and objects need to feel convincing when the player can inspect them from almost any angle. Even the perceived size of a room or enemy changes when it is viewed at human scale rather than through a monitor.
The team tested ideas that never reached the released game.
Plans at different stages included an underwater sequence, vehicle gameplay and more complicated drone mechanics. Those features were dropped as production progressed. The final version instead concentrates on exploration, shooting, missions and story progression.
Cutting mechanics is an ordinary part of development, but VR makes the decision particularly important. Adding more systems does not automatically produce a better experience when every new interaction also has to work naturally with motion controls and remain comfortable inside a headset.
Immersmind Takes the Project to Release
As the project moved closer to becoming a commercial product, its organizational structure changed as well.
Immersmind emerged as the dedicated team behind Discovery: Rogue Planet. On the Meta Horizon Store, Immersmind Studio is listed as the game's developer and publisher.
The distinction matters because the finished title should not simply be described as a current Stepico release. Its connection to Stepico lies in where the project began and how it developed before becoming a separate product initiative.
The game finally launched on August 13 for Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest 3S.
Its release completed a development path that started with an internal prototype and ended with a publicly available standalone VR game.
Stepico Is Testing Game Technology Outside Traditional Releases
The VR project is also connected to a broader area of work at Stepico.
During 2026, the company has been putting more attention on serious games and interactive simulations. These projects use familiar game-development tools but are created for purposes such as training, education and professional simulation.
In June, Stepico took part in an IGEA webinar devoted to practical applications of serious games. Topics included the use of simulations in enterprise learning, education, manufacturing and defence-related training.
Stepico co-founder and CEO Andrii Titov returned to the subject in September during a guest lecture at the University of Technology Sydney. One of the points addressed was the difference between gamification and a serious game.
The two terms are often mixed together, although they describe different approaches. Gamification can add elements such as rewards or progression to an existing process. A serious game is an interactive product in its own right, built around a learning, training or simulation goal.
For a development team, that still requires many of the disciplines used in entertainment games: 3D environments, animation, gameplay programming, UI, level design and real-time rendering. The difference is what the finished experience is expected to achieve.
From Portfolio Experiment to Finished Product
The story behind Discovery: Rogue Planet is arguably more interesting than treating the release as another addition to a studio portfolio.
It began without the certainty of becoming a commercial game. The first objective was experimentation. Once the prototype showed enough potential, the scope changed, a dedicated team appeared and the project moved toward a standalone release.
That route is difficult to plan in advance, which is precisely what makes internal development projects useful. They give developers room to test technology and design ideas without forcing every early experiment into the structure of a finished product.
In this case, the experiment survived that process.
Discovery: Rogue Planet is now a released Meta Quest title, while Stepico continues working with VR, game production and serious-game applications. What started as an Unreal Engine demo ultimately became something much more concrete: a game that players can actually put on a headset and play.