Award-winning Brighton-based studio The Chinese Room – best known for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture – has announced its first virtual reality (VR) title, a science-fiction fairy tale called So Let Us Melt for Google Daydream.
Featuring a story that spans ten million years, So Let Us Melt is about a living machine called Custodian 98 who, together with its sisters and brothers is given the task of making a world. Deep below the ice in Polar City, the sleepers are waiting whilst the Custodians create a paradise for them – living machines made to sculpt a perfect garden. Over these millions of years, 98 wakes and goes to work, alongside its friend Drone, to create clouds, tend the ecosystem, measure the rain, gently preparing the planet for the wakening. Until the day a new star is spotted in the sky and everything changes.
So Let Us Melt is like an interactive animated film broken up into chapters which The Chinese Room said on its blog should last around 5-7 minutes each, coming in at about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Dan Pinchbeck, Creative Director at The Chinese Room, said in a statement: “People have been telling us for the last couple of years we ought to be making a VR game, so we’re delighted to say we have… Daydream really feels like a great platform for us, as it’s got a broad appeal where you don’t need complicated, expensive kit to engage with really engaging and immersive stories. We’ve loved working on So Let Us Melt – we see it as like an interactive animated movie that starts with a simple science-fiction premise but really it’s all about universal human themes. This is a game about friendship, and parenthood, and what we leave behind, about being lost and getting found again. And fundamentally, it’s about a little machine that goes on a big adventure, and we’re really proud of it.”
The title is available today through Google Play for Daydream. For any further updates keep reading VRFocus.