New York-based indie developer DreamSail Games recently announced its first virtual reality (VR) project in the form of The IOTA Project for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. As destructive mech videogame, the studio has now released the first gameplay trailer.
The pre-alpha footage showcases some of the early design ideas and gameplay mechanics players can look forward to when piloting a massive city crushing robot. Weapons range from simply using fists to destroy enemies and buildings, to rockets and swords for maximum damage. There are three secondary weapons on hand, activated by pressing one of the three red buttons located in the cockpit. These will fire off a head-mounted laser beam, an artillery barrage, and a radial EMP type blast.
VRFocus spoke with The IOTA Project’s producer Kevin Porras regarding the title and how it came about. “One of those projects that I really wanted to make was, I really love mechs, I love anime, I love just giant robots in any sort of form. So we all wrote up these pitches and my pitch was ‘hey I want to make a giant mech game that was like purple space programme paired with Evangelion.’ And so we did a lot of campaigning in the office, I tried to see who was interested in my idea, and I got a lot of people on board with mine. So we went a prototyped it, it seemed fun, so we went into the whole process of trying to make the first version that we could share with people to see if other people found it interesting.”
That’s not all DreamSail Games has revealed. If you like the look of the video you’ll soon be able to play a demo for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. The team plans on releasing a taste of The IOTA Project in approximately two weeks, with a more concrete date to be announced closer to the time.
There are several mech style videogames currently available for VR headsets, such as Archangel, an on-rails shooter, or VRobot, another destructive, city destroying experience.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of The IOTA Project, reporting back with the latest updates.