After revealing a launch date for its upcoming puzzle-solver Red Matter last week, indie developer Vertical Robot let VRFocus get some early hands-on time with the videogame. And of course we recorded some gameplay footage for our readers to enjoy.
Purely for Oculus Rift, Red Matter is a story-driven VR puzzle adventure experience set during a dystopian sci-fi Cold War. You play a secret agent, code named Epsilon, working for the Atlantic Union. You’ve been dispatched to an abandoned base on Rhea, one of Saturn’s moons, run by the People’s Republic of Volgravia to find top-secret information concerning the research being carried out there.
Having previously created surreal puzzle title Daedalus for Samsung Gear VR, Vertical Robot is turning its VR ambitions up a notch with Red Matter. The videogame is a far bigger and more involved experience than the studio’s first project, whilst still keeping with the puzzle genre its known for.
The gameplay video only shows a couple of areas as VRFocus wasn’t allowed to go too far into the videogame and spoil every before release. So you get a quick intro to the backstory, and then it’s planet side to begin the adventure. Both the Oculus Touch controllers have been mapped into the title, helping aid that sense of immersion that what you’re holding is what you’re actually seeing.
One of the neat little features in Red Matter is the movement system. As you’ll see it mixes teleportation with low gravity locomotion. So you can pop from point to point with air time sped up or decreased depending on how comfortable you are in VR. As this is only a early introduction to Red Matter the puzzles are expectedly easy to easy players in to the mechanics.
As for the rest of the videogame VRFocus can’t say anymore just at this moment. Be rest assured that a review will be coming soon.