Croteam’s The Talos Principle (2014) is making its way to headsets soon in a separate VR version, supporting HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The studio now has a Steam page, including an October 17th launch date. And if you already own the PC version of the game? Croteam has decided to sweeten the deal with the promise of a discount to owners of the flat screen version.
After one Steam user mistakenly purchased the PC version of the game, which is separate from the standalone VR title, Croteam responded with the promise of an “appropriate discount” for anyone who already owned the flat version.
It’s uncertain at this time just how much previous owners will save as they make the jump into the VR version.
We got a chance to go head-first into Talos VR at this year’s Gamescom, and I walked away feeling that, although it’s decidedly a slower, more plodding experience in comparison to the flat screen version, that the game played remarkably well in VR, almost as if the game had finally come home to where it belonged.
This isn’t the first Steam Dev Days Valve has decided to skip though, so we’re hoping this isn’t the end of the conference as we know it. Valve famously skipped 2015’s Dev Days, which was one year after the conference’s inauguration and first showing of Valve’s VR headset prototype. Had Dev Days 2015 taken place, it would have come only a few months after Valve unveiled its first version of the HTC Vive.
Image courtesy Cloudhead Games
Last year’s Steam Dev Days saw a new controller prototype, Knuckles, that has since shipped out to select VR developers, but still isn’t in the hands of consumers.
A second-generation Lighthouse basestation was also teased last year, which is planned to work with newer devices VR headsets. Valve has said the hardware will be lighter, quieter, cheaper, more reliable, and require less power, but won’t work with current HTC Vive headsets on the market now. The improved 2.0 basestations are said to ship in “production quantities” in November 2017.
Valve is typically low-key when it comes to announcing these sorts of hardware updates, and very rarely uses Dev Days like it might with consumer-driven conferences. The lack of a Dev Days doesn’t mean the company isn’t interested in engaging the dev community, it just may mean they don’t have any substantial updates, VR or otherwise, to show developers at this time.
Interactive theater is all about breaking the fourth wall, removing the barrier between the viewer and the play at hand. Traditionally this is done by getting the audience involved, usually in the guise of a dinner murder mystery party which oftentimes harks back to classics like the board game Clue (aka Cluedo) and literally anything by Agatha Christie. Tequila Works‘ upcoming VR experience, The Invisible Hours, doesn’t remove this barrier as such, but rather mobilizes it, letting you observe unnoticed as every aspect of the period piece unfolds before you.
To accomplish this, The Invisible Hours gives you the power to control time. With a game clock on your left hand and locomotion controls on you right, it effectively lets you explore every thread in the story in room-scale and follow all of the seven suspects across the experience’s remote mansion, located on an island where you try to figure out who killed world-renowned engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla.
Maybe it was the tortured and endlessly womanizing Thomas Edison? Maybe it was the oil magnate’s son who has a death wish? The French actress who lies for a living? Everyone has their secrets, and everyone has dirt on someone, so there’s no telling until the very end.
A quick note:The Invisible Hours will support Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR, and includes support for respective motion controllers. If you’re not into teleportation and snap-turn ‘VR comfort mode’ controls, this may not be for you.
Getting a chance to play the first chapter (of four in total), my initial instinct was to let the story play out like a film; no stopping time and only following the main beats. It wasn’t long until a rough Cockney character slunk into the murder scene that I felt the indelible pull the power of time control now had over me. I had to retrace his steps to see what he was up to before all of this. I had to set back the clock.
image courtesy Tequila Works
Only a few minutes into the mystery, I rewound (shown in Benny Hill-esque real-time) to the point before you’re dropped into existence beside the first character to whom you’re introduced, the Swedish detective Gustav Gustav. This time, instead of restarting at the docks with Gustav, I followed the suspicious Cockney character to a side room to find him speaking to someone who wasn’t there. Was he praying? Was he insane? I couldn’t tell.
I sniffed around the entire house for clues, read every diary, listened to every bit of dialogue, and replayed the chapter over and over piecemeal until I had a full picture of what was transpiring—not only out of duty to cover this for the purpose of a written preview, but because I was honestly engaging with the story. That said, it took me an hour and a half to play through the first chapter, which would take you a real-time 15 minutes once through, an impossible task with just how interesting each character appears.
image courtesy Tequila Works
Although characters are safely on the near-side of the Uncanny Valley, they’re still imbued with humanity thanks to excellent voice acting and natural posturing. Speaking with Tequila Works’ CEO Raúl Rubio, he told me that script writing and motion capture made up a big portion of The Invisible Hours’ development time, which in his words “is not a game, or a movie, it’s immersive theater.”
Rubio told me that although requiring a lengthy 2-year development period, the studio is interested in producing more immersive theater experiences in the same vein, possibly covering more genres like sci-fi now that they’ve created a viable mold. When asked if 7 characters was the limit for a production like this, Rubio told me that adding, say, double the characters didn’t really double the work to be done, but rather made it an exponential task.
image courtesy Tequila Works
There’s also a question of how space is used. In The Invisible Hours, the story is constricted to a small island with a single mansion. While the house is fairly large (larger than you might think), it’s intentionally designed to allow for a good mix of friction between characters as to drive the story forward. Rubio told me it’ll be some time until we see immersive theater pieces covering larger areas, say the size of a city, and that ultimately it isn’t really possible in the short-term while maintaining the same production value.
There’s no firm launch date yet, but I’ll be charging head-first into the full game soon, so check back for our review sometime in the near future.
Oculus announced its digital marketplace will now include automated refunds for games purchased on both Oculus Rift and Gear VR platforms—effective immediately and across the entire world.
Oculus says they will refund many Rift content purchases made on their store “for any reason if the request is made within fourteen days of the purchase date and you have engaged with the content for less than two hours.”
Gear VR has a decidedly much shorter three-day window for refunds, giving you thirty minutes of interaction time before refunds are no longer viable through the automated system.
The new automated refund system puts the Rift side of the Oculus Store on par with Steam’s refund policy, which also includes a 14 day, 2 hour trial period.
For Rift and Gear VR, its carte blanche refund policy includes games, apps and many experiences. Not included however is movies, bundles, content purchased as part of a bundle, or content downloaded or purchased inside of apps like DLC and in-app purchases.
Oculus says refunds typically take “no more than five days to review, verify, and process refund requests,” although it could admittedly take longer for the cash to hit your original purchase method. Also important to note is that returns have to be made via the original device you bought the content through, meaning if you share your password with a Rift/Gear VR-owning friend, they won’t be able to request a refund on your behalf.
Ruffian Games, a Dundee, Scotland-based game studio, recently announced their long-awaited hot-seat multiplayer VR party game, RADtv, finally has a release date.
Update (July 4th, 2019): It’s been a while since we last reported on RADtv, and while we thought the innovative (and admittedly pretty rad-looking) social VR party game had gone by the wayside, Ruffian Games recently tossed out a new announce trailer, bringing with it a launch date of August 2nd, 2019.
Along with it comes a brand new announce trailer, linked above and at the bottom of the article.
You can wishlist the game on Steam here. RADtv is priced at £6.99/$9.99/€7.99, and will also be available through the Oculus Store for the Rift platform.
Original Article (September 26th, 2017): RADtv features 2-6 multiplayer, letting you and a group of friends play any one of its 25 madcap games, which if the trailer tells us anything, are mini-games in the vein of the Mario Party franchise.
Ruffian Games animator and UI artist Gary Whitton told us RADtv has been developed on the Oculus Rift, but will “ideally [target] every major platform.”
According to Ruffian, the game delivers a fast and fun ‘hot seat’ experience including a challenge mode, 25 sets of unlockable player customizations, and even unlockable feet and hands. Brilliant.
There’s also supposedly a premise to all of this, although considering how fast-paced and fun it looks, it’s hard to say if it really needs one. Here’s what the studio has to say:
You and your friends are sucked into a sentient TV – transporting you into a virtual world of weird and wonderful challenges where your mental and physical skills are tested in 25 hugely varied rapid-fire games.
From hurling old records at Zombies to Quick Draws against Cowboys to flying Drones through checkpoints to speed eating burgers – the situation changes as quickly as surfing TV Channels.
There’s no specific launch date yet, although the studio says on their website they’ll be launching “maybe 2017-ish” (see update).
The biggest update ever to EVE: Valkyrie (2016) is launching today. Called ‘Warzone’, the expansion brings with it a number of big features including support for PC and PS4, new maps, and a whole reworking of ship classes and abilities that essentially makes it feel like the popular team-based shooter Overwatch (but in space).
Since its initial release in March 2016 on Oculus Rift, EVE: Valkyrie has gone on to support cross-play between Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR. Following five major updates that helped flesh-out Valkyrie’s maps and game modes, the Warzone update looks to populate the servers like never before with the healthy glut of PC and PS4 players.
Players looking to pop in immediately may have to wait though, CCP says via the Valkyrie forum page. Servers are scheduled to go down today at 10AM ET (your local time), remaining offline for “a few hours” until the new build is pushed and the Warzone update is in effect.
What’s Different About Warzone?
While CCP calls Warzone an expansion, created in line with updates like Carrier Assault, Groundrush, and Wormholes, the update is more of a refresh as it decisively pivots gameplay with a few key elements common to modern team-based first-person shooters like Overwatch.
The first big feature update: launch tube selection is now long gone, now letting you go straight for any one of the available ship classes without requiring lengthy progression with basic ships like the Wraith. According to CCP, the ‘open hangar’ approach will better allow pilots to experiment and find the ships that best fit their playstyle within only a few matches.
image courtesy CCP Games
As for ships, Warzone is whittling down the game’s 23 flyable ships to just a few basic loadouts covering roles like sniper, heavy, medium-level assault, etc. Fans of Team Fortress 2 will definitely appreciate the newest addition ‘Covert’, a super secret spy ship that lets you use a temporary cloaking device.
Warzone also includes a new modular progression system, which CCP says gives you more control over how you evolve your ships and choose ultra abilities. I got a chance to demo Warzone at this year’s Gamescom, and although it was on a flatscreen, I found the game’s ultras added an element that helped keep the limited ship classes interesting. To charge these unique ultras, you now use Salvage collected after a kill—an item once used as both currency and mod-crafting supply.
image courtesy CCP Games
Two new maps are also coming as a part of the update too; ‘Fleet’, a Sisters of EVE space station, and ‘Outpost’, a mysterious Drifter base. A new gamemode is coming called ‘Extraction’, which mixes combat and navigational challenges, forcing pilots to use the environment to their advantage.
The Valkyrie League is taking a brief hiatus for Warzone, as CCP says a “new and vastly improved version” will come in subsequent updates.
Check out CCP’s full list of changes coming alongside Warzone, including some interesting shifts in how Gold, Silver and Implants have been tailored to fit the update’s altered gameplay style.
There wasn’t any mention of Samsung getting into the Windows ‘Mixed Reality’ program when it was announced last year, which saw OEMs like Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo tapped to create VR headsets around the same reference design. A recent leak however, showing a rendering of a Samsung-built VR headset emblazoned with a “Windows Mixed Reality” symbol, suggests otherwise.
Twitter user WalkingCat, known for diving into patents and leaking information on tech companies, tweeted out the picture today with no other information attached.
If the images can be believed, Samsung will be the first to offer Rift-style integrated audio, a departure from other ‘Mixed Reality’ headset manufacturers as all of them currently offer models (launching holiday season) with AUX-in so you can bring your own audio. Integrated audio is supposedly from AKG, the Austrian microphone and headphone manufacturer owned by Samsung, lending credence to the images.
With as many Windows ‘Mixed Reality’ headsets there are available, the revelation that Samsung is making one too isn’t that far-fetched either. As a display manufacturer and producer of Gear VR, the company has been in the VR game for long enough for something like this to make sense.
We knew that Google was working on adding VR capabilities to its mobile version of Chrome since last year. Now with the release of Chrome 61, Daydream VR users can browse websites and also continue to enjoy the quick and easy VR experiences delivered via WebVR.
Chrome team member François Beaufort released the news on Google+, saying that the first set of VR features is now available to try out in Chrome 61, the latest stable build of the company’s mobile browser.
“So far this allows users to view and interact with any website in VR, follow links between pages, and move between 2D and immersive viewing for sites that support WebVR,” he said. Beaufort maintains the new VR Chrome function is “just the beginning for web browsing in VR so stay tuned, there’s more to come!”
Daydream’s VR Playstore, image courtesy Google
Daydream View headsets owners can try it right now by navigating to any site in Chrome and then simply putting the phone into their Daydream View headset.
WebVR was officially launched on a Daydream-accessible, stable branch of Chrome earlier this year, marking a major milestone in VR as the Daydream platform inevitably grows to include more devices.
Google’s Chrome browser joins Samsung Internet and the developer preview of Oculus Carmel as WebVR-capable Internet browser, both of which are exclusively run on Samsung Gear VR.
Current Daydream VR supported handsets include Google Pixel, Samsung S8/S8+, Samsung Galaxy Note 8, Asus ZenFone AR, Motorola Moto Z/Z2 Force, Huawei Mate 9 Pro, ZTE Axon 7, LG V30, and a pair of unnamed stand-alone VR headsets yet to arrive from Lenovo and HTC.
Monster of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV fishing game for PSVR just got a new English language teaser trailer. The Japanese version was teased on stage at the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) this past week.
The Final Fantasy VR experience lets you head out on a fishing expedition with Noctis and his crew across a number of picturesque locations in Eos. Comprised of a ‘free fishing’ mode and a story mode that features a showdown with a fishy menace that lurks in the deep.
Releasing 21st November 2017 as a stand-alone downloadable game separate from Final Fantasy XV, the fishing game first took form as a first-person shooter add-on to FFXV. The shooter has since been scrapped and replaced with the fishing simulator, likely due to its poor reception at E3.
ARK Park, the VR multiplayer adventure game based on the world of ARK:Survival Evolved (2017), was originally slated for a December release on PlayStation VR, but then production studio Snail Games delayed the game as it was “still in development.” Now, the studio says ARK PARK is officially slated to arrive on PSVR, Rift and Vive on March 22nd.
Update (02/08/18): Snail Games tweeted recently that ‘ARK PARK’ is slated to launch on March 22nd simultaneously on PSVR, Rift and Vive.
Original Article (09/25/17): ARK Park bills itself as an experience promising to be a veritable Jurassic Park (1993), filled with all makes and model of dinosaurs from the ARK universe. We got a hands-on at this year’s GDC earlier this year with the demo built for HTC Vive, and while you can’t really call it educational—there are a number of fictional creatures mashed in alongside your bog standard Brontosaurus and Triceratops—it certainly delivers what you could call ‘sheer wow factor’ with its well-rendered dinos and interesting scenery.
ARK Park focuses on exploration-based ‘Excursions’ through a number of biomes where you collect fragments of dino-DNA. These fragments can be used to unlock new crafting blueprints and new maps. Production studio Snail Games says collecting them all “will require a combination of puzzle-solving logic, quick reflexes, a trained eye, and careful resource management to bag the genes from the rarest and most prized creatures.” You can also collect and incubate eggs to raise your own virtual dinosaur pets that you can ride once they reach adulthood.
The game will be launching with ten freely-explorable maps, including both solo play or online multiplayer.
Although we didn’t get a chance to experience the game’s battle mode during our demo, Snail Games says its offering a mode where you defend your base from rampaging dinosaurs with weapons that you forge yourself during your exploration of the park. Strategically choose your weapons from a selection of melee, ranged, and specialized combat items to conquer each level.
ARK Park will support both controller and PlayStation Move, and supports English, Chinese, and Japanese voiceover and subtitles.
An HTC Vive version of the game is also currently listed on Steam with an unspecified 2017 launch date.
