One of the best virtual reality (VR) titles to arrive in 2021 for Meta Quest, Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR was 17-BIT’s epic survival adventure Song in the Smoke. The first VR experience from the Japan-based studio, it seems the complexities in creating an immersive videogame as well as global factors have dampened the teams desire to build upon Song in the Smoke at the moment.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, 17-BIT CEO Jake Kazdal was very honest when it came to the question of launching the videogame last year: “It’s a perfect storm of shit, to be frank.” Having previously built Skulls of the Shogun and 2016’s Galak-Z, Kazdal explained that part of the issue was not enough player feedback due to the lack of events: “Normally, with Skulls of the Shogun and Galak-Z, we’re showing at multiple PAXes, TGS, E3, and all these shows. We’re getting tons and tons of feedback. We’re watching 1,000 people play the first hour of the game. We’re getting so much great feedback on where the game is at.”
With the pandemic restricting movement and events going online (or closing entirely), this made the development process and Song in the Smoke’s refinement even harder. “With VR, it’s a lot harder on a good day because it is such a solitary thing… And then you couple that with this whole COVID bullshit and no trade shows. And even if there were, it’s not like people are going to be willing to put on a headset that’s been on 1,000 other people’s faces. We had so little user feedback moving into this that it was really difficult for us,” he said.
This meant 17-BIT had to spend longer polishing the title, no bad thing considering what the team accomplished. But this has led to the studio playing down the idea of another VR title. “I don’t think we’ll be exploring VR in the short-term again. There’s some fatigue for sure in the studio.”
Even so, Kazdal still has a lot of love for VR and the opportunities it affords gamers: “I think in terms of interactive media, there’s not much higher to shoot for than something really engaging in VR. It really is an incredible next step as a gaming medium.” And like every VR gamer passionate about the tech, the slow consumer adoption is still surprising: “I kind of can’t believe how long it’s taking to get going. It’s stunning and it surprised me it didn’t take the world by storm in the way I thought it would because I was so absolutely blown away by it on day one.”
That continued belief in VR’s ability to entertain audiences in new ways has kept the industry going for many years, it has also claimed many a victim with poor sales. 17-BIT hasn’t released any figures just yet so maybe Kazdal will reconsider VR development if they’re good. However, he notes the team are: “excited about the next project, but it is a radical departure again.”
For all the latest VR updates, keep reading VRFocus.
One of the best virtual reality (VR) titles to arrive in 2021 for Meta Quest, Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR was 17-BIT’s epic survival adventure Song in the Smoke. The first VR experience from the Japan-based studio, it seems the complexities in creating an immersive videogame as well as global factors have dampened the teams desire to build upon Song in the Smoke at the moment.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, 17-BIT CEO Jake Kazdal was very honest when it came to the question of launching the videogame last year: “It’s a perfect storm of shit, to be frank.” Having previously built Skulls of the Shogun and 2016’s Galak-Z, Kazdal explained that part of the issue was not enough player feedback due to the lack of events: “Normally, with Skulls of the Shogun and Galak-Z, we’re showing at multiple PAXes, TGS, E3, and all these shows. We’re getting tons and tons of feedback. We’re watching 1,000 people play the first hour of the game. We’re getting so much great feedback on where the game is at.”
With the pandemic restricting movement and events going online (or closing entirely), this made the development process and Song in the Smoke’s refinement even harder. “With VR, it’s a lot harder on a good day because it is such a solitary thing… And then you couple that with this whole COVID bullshit and no trade shows. And even if there were, it’s not like people are going to be willing to put on a headset that’s been on 1,000 other people’s faces. We had so little user feedback moving into this that it was really difficult for us,” he said.
This meant 17-BIT had to spend longer polishing the title, no bad thing considering what the team accomplished. But this has led to the studio playing down the idea of another VR title. “I don’t think we’ll be exploring VR in the short-term again. There’s some fatigue for sure in the studio.”
Even so, Kazdal still has a lot of love for VR and the opportunities it affords gamers: “I think in terms of interactive media, there’s not much higher to shoot for than something really engaging in VR. It really is an incredible next step as a gaming medium.” And like every VR gamer passionate about the tech, the slow consumer adoption is still surprising: “I kind of can’t believe how long it’s taking to get going. It’s stunning and it surprised me it didn’t take the world by storm in the way I thought it would because I was so absolutely blown away by it on day one.”
That continued belief in VR’s ability to entertain audiences in new ways has kept the industry going for many years, it has also claimed many a victim with poor sales. 17-BIT hasn’t released any figures just yet so maybe Kazdal will reconsider VR development if they’re good. However, he notes the team are: “excited about the next project, but it is a radical departure again.”
For all the latest VR updates, keep reading VRFocus.
Song in the Smoke is a prehistoric-flavored survival game that puts a clever, but not incredibly deep crafting system at its core. Far from damning, this introduces the sort of gameplay friction that will always leave you with just enough useable resources to move forward, but never enough to be comfortable as you explore the game’s one-way trip through an interesting and complex set of bespoke levels. Combat is a little lackluster and visuals feel muddy at times, but Song in the Smoke still manages to charm you even as you’re being hunted by a giant ethereal beast bigger than an SUV.
Song in the Smoke Details:
Available On: Oculus Quest, Oculus PC, PSVR Release Date: October 7th, 2021 Price: $30 Developer: 17-Bit Reviewed On: Quest 2
Gameplay
Song in the Smoke features a string of self-contained levels, each of which includes a few standard objectives you need to accomplish before you can summon a level boss and continue onward. You need to hunt around for three hidden ‘Song Stones’ in each level to unlock the otherworldly beast, which is oftentimes able to kill you in just two or three shots if you’re not careful. Along the way you experience dream sequences, which feel more like a jolt into a waking reality than your current otherworldly realm, and help unfold the mystery of what’s going on. Scrounge, craft, eat, sleep, search for easter egg health upgrades, and fight your way through till the end.
Now for the nitty gritty. Like most survival games, there’s a crafting element to Song in the Smoke which I would describe as wide, not extremely deep—but always satisfying. There’s only around a 15 or 20 main items to make by hand, and a few other directly supporting bits like feathers for fletching, stone for arrowheads, etc. Each successive level has harder rocks and wood, which make for basically the only weapon upgrades you’ll be able to craft.
Here’s me making your bog-standard health potion with an scavenged herb, which you need to do by physically muddling the herb with a mortar and pestle. Stuff like whittling at sticks and attaching stones and other bits feels surprisingly rewarding, and adds a touch of manual labor to the whole survival affair that will really make you miss those lost arrows, and pay more attention to the health of your weapons before you have to roll out your inventory and repair stuff by hand.
Before all of that though, you’ll have to go on the hunt for adequately-shaped sticks that all do very specific tasks—if you can grab them all that is. The amount of times I got that big red ‘NO FREE STORAGE SLOTS’ warning as I supermarket-swept my way through the level to get enough firewood for the night still haunts my dreams. There’s usually enough laying around for one night, but never enough room to store it all.
Sticks of any size can be burnt in a fire pit, which requires you to toss in ample amounts of all stick types to make sure it stays lit throughout the night. The fire’s full meter fills up and slowly goes down to nothing, so you better stay on top of it. You can cook hunted meat on the fire, which is one of the best one shot hunger-killing meals in the game.
Depending on their size, sticks can also be fashioned into devices like tanning racks for making clothes or drying racks for preserving food, but they can also be made into hand-held tools or weapons with your trusty stone knife. A large stick can be whittled into a club for defense, an extra larger for a bow, a small stick becomes an arrow shaft, medium sticks become torches—the search for the right type of stick for the job at hand is truly a never-ending pursuit. Those tools let you eek out a pretty meager existence amidst a world filled with things designed to kill you.
Grinding for basic items is such a big part of the game that there’s truly little rest for the ill-prepared, and only slightly more rest for those that get into the rhythm of prioritizing the best methods of battling against hunger, cold, fatigue, and all manner of things that go bump in the night.
And you’re always hungry and tired. Balancing your inventory to make sure you have a ready supply of food and potion supplies on hand, alongside enough firewood to make a fire before the sun goes down and you’re attacked in your sleep by a pervasive demon called ‘The Darkness’, is fundamental.
The first time I naively went to sleep without a big enough fire was a harrowing experience, as you’re awoken by the two-headed creature screeching and floating towards you. The only recourse is lighting another fire if you happen to have supplies on hand, or running into the night for more, where other danger likely awaits. Combat is pretty basic and not a super involved experience, and I talk more about that in the Immersion section below.
Outside of dying in a multitude of ways, one of the biggest friction points is undeniably the game’s inventory, which although can be grown to include more slots and a camp-based storage satchel, is always painfully limited. This is exacerbated by some stability issues at current which scatters (or outright despawns) your neatly stacked supplies on the ground when you move between levels, which made me rely entirely on my inventory/satchel combo. I think if I could trust the ground to hold my things, I would have a lot less to say about inventory.
There are some other artificial boundaries set on the player. You’re only allowed to construct three campsites per level, which act as both places to sleep out the night beside the safety of the fire and places to save your progress. Get killed, and you’re given the option to either start from your last save, or to load another save state from your list of three save slots.
In the end, it took me around 14 hours to finish the game. That’s entirely dependent on your play style though, as I took time to grind out basics and build camps in each level in effort to ease some of the constant worry of health, hunger, etc. The developers say it can take anywhere between 12 – 20 hours, since there’s no variable difficulty.
Immersion
As you’d imagine, all of these outside pressures make you feel a gnawing sense of dread every day. Even when the grind becomes second nature, and you learn to adequately plan where to get a good source of firewood so you have enough to sleep a night or two without the threat of the evil Darkness spirit, there’s still the fear the next day that you’ll lose all progress by dying and get sent back to your last manual save point (re: no automatic saves).
All of the word’s beasts function on a basic AI, which can be hit and miss at times when you’re hunting a prey animals like a deer, or trying to fend off a predator like a giant car-sized panther. Here’s a level boss that took me an unreasonably long amount of time (and ready supply of clubs) to kill. The cool cosmic pain job tells he means business.
Anyway, I came across moments when the AI bugs out and a crowd of deer, feathered raptors, lions, and panthers all populate the same area and summarily ignore each other as they either gang-attack you or sprint away from you in a mixed heard of predator and prey. Harder levels offer a greater range of animal types, so I found this happening more often than not in the later half of the game, but I never saw wildlife interact with each other, like a panther hunting a deer or something.
Fighting is very much an ‘unga bunga’ experience when it comes to battling beasts. Once an animal has locked on and decides to engage, they’ll rear up into a fight animation that can be blocked by hitting a large red hit-marker with your club that will translate to a hard blow on the enemy. There’s no heath bar or any other real indication that you’re near to felling any of the beasts, so it’s mostly a game of ‘smack them until they’re dead’. The other main weapon is the bow, but I found this really only helpful in hunting prey beasts rather than using it as an actual offensive weapon since it does comparatively less damage.
As far as visuals go, much of the game’s textures feel a bit dark and muddy, which offers depressingly little visual contrast. It’s a shame, because level design provides engaging multi-level pathways to an objective which really feels like true exploration, and the general vibe of the world is nearly worth admiring when you take a pause. Granted, I haven’t seen the game via PC VR yet, as I played on Quest 2, but that’s how it was for me. Environmental effects like rain and fog are a fine touch, which complement the day-night cycle.
Comfort
The game requires teleportation to climb and descend steep ledges, which is unavoidable since there’s no direct climbing involved. Default movement in Song of the Smoke is based on smooth forward motion and snap-turning. Check out the full spectrum of movement options below.
In any case, it was easy for me to play Song in the Smoke for hours at a time thanks to these variable comfort options. Some users may find the speed and frenetic nature a little more intense than say, a room-scale only game, but I’d still consider it exceedingly comfortable from even a beginner’s standpoint.
Song in the Smoke Comfort Settings – October 7th, 2021
Turning
Artificial turning
Smooth-turn
Adjustable speed
Snap-turn
Adjustable increments
Movement
Artificial movement
Smooth-move
Adjustable speed
Teleport-move
Blinders
Adjustable strength
Head-based
Controller-based
Swappable movement hand
Posture
Standing mode
Seated mode
Artificial crouch
Real crouch
Accessibility
Subtitles
Languages
English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese
Cold, wet and with a suspicious-looking mushroom you’ve only just picked off a fallen tree your only source of nourishment, your survival isn’t looking good unless you can make it back to your campfire and get it lit before the sunlight fades. Even then, your safety isn’t guaranteed because if that flame goes out whilst you sleep or you’ve chosen a really poor location for your campfire, making it through the night becomes a nightmarish journey that’s as scary as any horror videogame. Welcome to Song in the Smoke, one of the toughest VR adventure’s out there.
The very first virtual reality (VR) title from Japanese developer 17-BIT wastes no time in offering you some hard truths, this is a videogame about patience and determination. In this beautiful primordial world, everything is trying to survive and you become both hunter and hunted as the landscape unfolds, with evermore expansive and twisting environments just begging to be explored.
Song in the Smoke gives a short sharp introduction to the continual process of trying not to die, showing you how to make a knife, use a pestle and mortar to crush certain plants and most importantly of all, making fire. It can’t be overstated enough how vital the campfire is to make it through each and every day. This is where you can find warmth, sleep, cook food and make other useful kit like a drying rack to put animal skins on. Oh, and one other thing, this isn’t an experience for those that don’t like hurting animals, there’s a lot of killing as their skins are vital for survival.
So Song in the Smoke is all about that hunter-gather lifestyle, surviving from day to day. But, interwoven with this is a far more mysterious narrative that helps drive the gameplay forward and out of the safety of your cave. There’s a really weird bird creature you encounter along the way, it’s weird because it has three crow heads and a human face on its chest. Nevers says anything, just occasionally squawks. Each biome has glowing purple rocks to locate. Find them all and you’ll then be instructed to hunt a special spirit animal. Kill it and a portal to the next area unlocks, giving you access to new resources and new creatures.
There’s no rush to anything in Song in the Smoke, you can spend as many in-game days as you like foraging, hunting and collecting those stones. In the latter stages, it’s almost too easy to spend hours exploring all the nooks and crannies of the environment as there are hidden secrets like health bar increases or skull pots with random goodies inside. But doing leads to a lot of repetition, especially where the campfire is concerned, constantly looking for wood and making sure you’ve got enough to last the night.
Most of the experience is based around fairly realistic physics and interactive gameplay. You have to bash small rocks to make arrowheads or use your knife to slice up some kindling. It’s all very physical, hence why you have a stamina bar and have to sleep eventually. This means you need that fire to burn all night so you’re safe, building it up with kindling, then small sticks, medium sticks and large sticks. These all burn differently, with a big indicator circling the fire so you know what burns when and how long you’ve got – like the train scene from Back to the Future: Part 3. If the fire burns out too early and you’re out of wood then welcome to darkness…and the dangers that lurk within it.
Only three campfires can be made per level so a great deal of thought needs to go into where you hunker down. On the top of some cliffs is good, stops the animals getting to you but then if it rains that’s your fire destroyed. This simple idea is even tougher when you first enter an area as the map on your chest is blank until you uncover some of the environment. This seemed to be where you become most vulnerable, with numerous deaths occurring from wild animals (panthers, wild boars, lions) whilst trying to get a feel for the landscape. What makes it more frustrating is the complete lack of checkpoints.
Going through to a new area or locating all three stones you might think that an autosave might be dropped in. Oh no, all saving is manual at the campfire so you have to remember to save, save and save some more. Suddenly realising you’re close to death and you haven’t saved for an hour isn’t great. And there are numerous ways to meet your end, not just being lunch for a stealthy predator. Cold, bleeding out, hunger, fatigue, they’ll all have an effect on depleting your health. Keeping an eye on your inventory is critical so you’ve got food and other resources, adding another layer to Song in the Smoke long list of things to keep you busy.
Whilst there is plenty to do, see and interact with, providing an amazingly rich VR experience that you can get lost in, there are a couple of mechanics that don’t make sense; breaking the finally crafted immersion. These are made instantly apparent in the tutorial and are two of the key features in Song in the Smoke, eating and climbing. With so much work on the intricate crafting mechanics, why is it that when anything is eaten a big scroll wheel appears to show you’re chewing? Instantly breaking that sense of immersion, made worse by the fact that you have to regularly eat, constantly popping up in your face. Definitely not a fan of that.
And when it comes to climbing the only option you have is teleporting, with a little green indicator having to momentarily charge up before you can jump/climb up or down a ledge. Song in the Smoke has plenty of physicality to it but no climbing? Plenty of VR titles utilise physically grabbing ledges as a means of grounding you in their worlds, to bypass a mechanic like that just seems odd. It means even if your settings are on full immersion (smooth locomotion and turning) you still have to teleport. Likewise, all the usual comfort settings are there so most players should find a happy medium.
Even with all that said, Song in the Smoke is thoroughly engrossing to play. The level design is magnificent and becomes a real challenge the deeper in you get. Every day feels fresh and new, a mixture of joy when a new area is discovered and dread when a menacing growl suddenly appears from behind you. It’s a huge experience that you can get lost in, spending hour upon hour taking it all in. Song in the Smoke looked like it was something special and it is, one of the best VR games of 2021.
Last week a Japanese event called “asobo Indie Showcase 2021” featured a lot of videogame announcements, one of which was 17-BIT’s upcoming virtual reality (VR) title Song in the Smoke. The showcase mentioned a release date for this month, 18th September to be precise, but it seems that was jumping the gun as 17-BIT has confirmed that the date was incorrect.
The studio took to Twitter saying: “We’re so excited that people are SO EXCITED about the upcoming release of Song in the Smoke! Unfortunately our dates have been liquid and the previously announced release date was incorrect, but the final date should be just a few weeks later.” So not exactly an official delay but a longer wait nonetheless. 17-Bit does also note that: “The release date will be a few weeks after the previously announced date, so not long now!” With that information, it looks like Song in the Smoke won’t arrive until October at the earliest.
That 18th September date was a little unusual considering it is a Saturday, a very rare day for developers to release projects. Launches tend to be more midweek, both in VR and non-VR circles. But with 17-BIT’s dates being ‘liquid’ the studio might not reveal anything until the very last minute.
Song in the Smoke is the studios’ very first VR title, aiming to be quite the epic adventure by the looks of things. Droppin players in a primordial wilderness the title is described as “part survival game and part mysterious adventure,” where players can explore a world made up of eight biomes, ranging from lush forests and ancient valleys to frozen peaks.
Featuring art by famed illustrator Katsuya Terada (The Legend of Zelda, Blood: The Last Vampire, The Monkey King), Song in the Smoke will pit players against fantastical creatures – and more familiar stylised ones – as they try to survive the deadly wilderness. Stalk and hunting prey with a trusty bow or getting in closer with a melee weapon, they’ll need to listen out for creatures that may be hunting them.
Song in the Smoke is currently listed to support Oculus Quest, Rift and PlayStation VR when it does finally get a release date. When that happens, VRFocus will let you know.
One of the most promising looking virtual reality (VR) titles to appear this year has been 17-BIT’s Song in the Smoke, a big survival adventure with a mysterious narrative. A multiplatform launch had been slated for this year, today seeing confirmation that it’s not far away, taking place in a couple of weeks.
The announcement was made as part of a Japanese event called “asobo Indie Showcase 2021” featuring a multitude of videogames, with Song in the Smoke appearing very close to the start. Other than the launch date no new information was shared regarding the upcoming project.
Originally revealed during March’s PlayStation Spotlight, Song in the Smoke is the first VR experience from 17-BIT, which is helmed by founder and creative lead Jake Kazdal (Skulls of the Shogun and GALAK-Z). Kazdal has previously commented that: “Song in the Smoke is unlike anything we’ve done before, and it’s our most ambitious title yet.”
Players will be able to explore a world made up of eight biomes, ranging from lush forests and ancient valleys to frozen peaks. Their survival will depend on acquiring resources to craft weapons so they can hunt and defend themselves from the local wildlife. 17-BIT has paid special attention to how the animals behave and react to a players presence, trying to make them as lifelike as possible. So depending on whether they’re hungry, afraid or tired, they may be more likely to attack or run away.
All the controls will be tailored to immersive VR gameplay, like using a bow to hunt or striking flint to make a fire at night. Song in the Smoke will also feature a magical storyline that’ll unfold whilst uncovering this prehistoric world’s secrets.
17-BIT will release Song in the Smoke for Oculus Quest, Rift and PlayStation VR on 18th September 2021 (still no mention of Steam support). The whole showcase can be seen below and if there are any further updates VRFocus will let you know.
One of the surprises revealed during March’s PlayStation Spotlight was 17-BIT’s Song in the Smoke, a mystical survival adventure coming to PlayStation VR and Oculus headsets. For the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2021 this week the studio has released a behind the scenes documentary called The Call of the Wild – this is the unabridged version – giving some backstory to the teams’ first virtual reality (VR) project.
Created by Japanese gaming documentarian studio Archipel, the video features 17-BIT founder and creative lead Jake Kazdal as he talks about the challenges of making the VR experience over the past three years. Having previously created Skulls of the Shogun and GALAK-Z with a tight-knit team who usually all work in the same room, Kazdal discusses the challenge everyone is all too aware of, remote working, and how that affected production.
But you also get to see more of Song in theSmoke, it’s beautiful environments as well as learning about some of the gameplay elements like the wild animals. The team wanted to created creatures that lived and behaved like real wild animals, so they’ll be hungry, afraid and tired, likely to attack or run away.
“Song in the Smoke is a colossal departure from our previous work,” said Kazdal in a statement. “When I first tried VR I was instantly struck by how utterly immersive it is, which opened up a whole new world of possibilities. I’ve always been moved by exploring nature, with its overwhelming mix of majesty and danger, where you’re constantly reminded of both how expansive the world is and how small you are. With VR’s all encompassing presentation, I felt like I could actually make a world that captures this quietly beautiful feeling of aliveness. Where nothing is canned and everything feels organic. Song in the Smoke is the result of this.”
Featuring art by renown illustrator Katsuya Terada (The Legend of Zelda, Blood: The Last Vampire, The Monkey King) Song in the Smoke is part survival adventure and part mysterious narrative. You’ll be able to hunt with bows and axes, forage for resources to craft new items whilst uncovering this prehistoric world’s secrets.
Song in the Smoke is coming to PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift later this year. Take a look at the documentary below and for further updates from 17-BIT, keep reading VRFocus.
17-BIT, the studio behind Galak-Z: The Virtual (2018), had previously mentioned that its upcoming VR survival adventure game Song in the Smoke was coming to Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, and PSVR on September 18th. Now the studio says that date wasn’t correct, and that it will release a little later than planned.
Update (September 6th, 2021): 17-Bit announced via Twitter that its September 18th release date for Song in the Smoke was incorrect, and that it was “much more liquid” than previously communicated in its Japanese language reveal during the asobu Indie Showcase. Now the studio says it’s coming “a few weeks later.”
The original article detailing its initial announcement follows below:
Original Article (March 5th, 2021): Song in the Smoke puts you head-first into a world filled with prehistoric beasts where you’re tasked with crafting, scrounging, and hunting to survive. If the trailer is any indication, it looks like you’ll be doing a fair bit of fighting with wild animals too.
The game is said to feature eight stages, including forests, valleys, and frozen terrain.
1 of 3
Image courtesy 17-BIT
Image courtesy 17-BIT
Image courtesy 17-BIT
In a PS blogpost, 17-BIT producer Rich McCormick says the game’s first priority “is always survival.”
“That means hunting and scavenging for food to stave off hunger, and it means choosing safe campsite locations to sleep at to avoid exhaustion. It also means concocting antidotes and healing tonics for poison and injuries, as well as staying warm, crafting clothes and building fires as I move from forests, through plateaus, to frozen peaks.”
To create its characters, 17-BIT is working with Katsuya Terada, who is known for his artwork featured in The Legend of Zelda, Blood: The Last Vampire, and The Monkey King.
In an Oculus post, the game’s creative lead Jake Kazdal calls Song in the Smoke “unlike anything we’ve done before, and it’s our most ambitious title yet.”
There’s no launch date yet outside of “sometime this year” (see update), however we at least know that PS Move is supported.
So PlayStation Spotlight has already served up Doom 3: VR Editiontoday and for the second PlayStation VR announcement, Japanese developer 17-BIT has unveiled Song in the Smoke, expected later this year.
From the team behind Skulls of the Shogun and GALAK-Z, Song in the Smoke is going to be a mystical survival adventure set in a prehistoric world full of an assortment of beasts to fend off whilst crafting, foraging and hunting through its lush environment.
Song in the Smoke will offer a world set across 8 biomes, from lush forests and ancient valleys, through to frozen peaks. Players will have to gather materials to make their own tools, weapons – such as clubs and bows – clothing, medicine and even shelter.
“At 17-BIT we love to create fresh takes on existing genres, from our lighthearted turn-based strategy game Skulls of the Shogun, to the modernized space shooter GALAK-Z. With Song in the Smoke, we dove even deeper into unknown territory: a VR survival adventure, with all new rules, in a completely new medium,” says 17-BIT founder and creative lead Jake Kazdal in a statement.
The videogame will feature art by illustrator Katsuya Terada (The Legend of Zelda, Blood: The Last Vampire), offering stylized scenery that helps to create an eerie, otherworldly vibe.
“Song in the Smoke is unlike anything we’ve done before, and it’s our most ambitious title yet,” Kazdal continues. “The experience is so completely immersive and engaging, the forest is alive all around you in the extra dimension provided by VR. We’re thrilled to be offering an intense adventure that couldn’t be captured in any other way.”
Song in the Smoke is slated for launch later this year, supporting PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift. Check out the first trailer below and for further updates on the title, keep reading VRFocus.
