Submissions for the annual Viveport Developer Awards (VDA) 2019 began back in November, looking to celebrate content on the retail platform across four PC categories and three mobile. This week has seen the PC nominees revealed ahead of the official winner announcement later this month.
A total of 11 virtual reality (VR) titles have been chosen with two nominees for each PC category. While the mobile (Vive Wave) winners have already been selected.
Entertainment – PC
- Blind | Tiny Bull Studios & Fellow Traveller
- Apex Construct | Fast Travel Games
Education – PC
- VR Regatta – The Sailing Game | MarineVerse
- VR Frog Dissection: Ribbit-ing Discoveries | VictoryVR
Arts & Culture – PC
- MasterpieceVR | MasterpieceVR
- Claude Monet – The Water Lily obsession | Lucid Realities & Arte, Camera lucida, Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie
Arcade – PC
- Summer Funland | Monad Rock
- Shooty Fruity Arcade | nDreams Limited
Entertainment – Mobile
- Bait! | Resolution Games
Education – Mobile
- Star Chart | Escapist Games Ltd.
Arts & Culture – Mobile
- PAINT VR | COSKAMI LLC
The most popular category Entertainment has two well known – yet polar opposite – VR titles from 2018, Blind and Apex Construct vying for the win. Blind is an eerie puzzle experience from Tiny Bull Studios. Players are completely blind and ‘see’ by making noise – much like echolocation – illuminating the world around them for brief moments. Securing a decent four-star rating in VRFocus’ review we said: “With the likes of Torn on the market and Twilight Path still to come, Blind can certainly hold its own with its design and gameplay mechanics. The echolocation system isn’t unique but it does provide a way for the studio to make a non-horror experience especially chilling.”
Apex Construct, on the other hand, is a far more action-oriented experience set in a futuristic world where you play the last ever human caught in a struggle between two AI’s. Rather than an assortment of weapons the title focuses on one, the bow. While a bow is generally seen as old-fashioned, the one in Apex Construct certainly isn’t featuring a deployable shield as well as a formidable selection of arrow variations. Achieving full five-stars in VRFocus’ review, we said: “Apex Construct is the standard by which future VR titles will be judged, and an indicator that VR has stepped up its game.”
The winners of the VDA’s 2019 will be announced Monday, 18th March during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. For those announcements, keep reading VRFocus.