Category: A Fisherman’s Tale

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13 Big VR Games To Look Out For This Fall

13 Big VR Games To Look Out For This Fall

Can you believe it’s nearly September already? It seems like it was only yesterday that we were looking ahead to 2018 and imagining all the great VR gaming we were going to be doing. Now most of it’s behind us.

Fortunately, though, 2018 has saved the best for last. We’ve rounded up 13 games!

Firewall Zero Hour
Platforms: PSVR
Release Date: Out now

A hugely anticipated competitive shooter from First Contact Entertainment, Firewall pits two teams of four against each other in attack and defend game modes. It’s been compared to Counter-Strike and Rainbow Six, and we’ve fallen in love with it each and every time we’ve played it. Pick up a PlayStation Aim controller for the best way to play.

Bow to Blood
Platforms: PSVR
Release Date: Out now

We weren’t going to put Bow to Blood on this list until we actually played it. Turns out Tribetoy’s PSVR debut is a winning mix of strategic micromanagement and arena-based combat. You pilot flying ships in a televised tournament and must forge unlikely relationships in order to prevail. This may be a sleeper hit for PSVR.

Torn
Platforms: Rift, Vive, PSVR
Release Date: Out now

An intriguing new puzzle game and the first internally-developed project from Aspyr. Torn sees you explore an enormous mansion as you gather the memories of as renowned inventor. Puzzles ask you to complete circuits by locating symbols fitted to random objects and putting them in the correct place. It’s a mad scientist of a VR game and definitely worth your time.

Zone of the Enders 2: The 2nd Runner – MARS
Platforms: Rift, Vive, PSVR
Release Date: September 4th

First announced at Tokyo Game Show last year, this is a full remaster of Konami’s cult classic, Zone of the Enders 2, with full support for VR putting you inside the cockpit of Jehuty for the first time. The entire original game can be played inside your headset, and what we’ve played of it is promising, if a little confusing.

Transference
Platforms: Rift, Vive, PSVR
Release Date: September 18th

The next VR game from Ubisoft is developed in partnership with Elijah Wood’s Spectrevision. It’s a psychological thriller that mixes CG and live action elements to create a mysterious and disturbing exploration of the mind. There’s a free demo out right now on PSVR, and what we’ve played of the main game is hugely promising.

Creed: Rise to Glory
Platforms: Rift, Vive, PSVR
Release Date: September 25th

Raw Data and Sprint Vector developer Survios is back with what’s sure to be another knockout. Creed is based on the recent films spinning out of the Rocky franchise and has you using two motion controllers to box your way to the top. Survios’ new Phantom Melee Technology is promising a more immersive, convincing boxing system than we’ve seen so far in VR.

Astro Bot: Rescue Mission
Platforms: PSVR
Release Date: October 2nd

One of the surprise success stories from PSVR’s launch back in 2016 was a small platforming minigame in the free Playroom VR collection. Now, Sony Japan is building that experience out into a full game akin to Lucky’s Tale. Expect inventive use of VR as you make your way through several levels saving your adorable robo buddies. This is sure to be a great addition to your PSVR library.

Evasion
Platforms: Rift, Vive, PSVR
Release Date: October 9th

Archiact, the developer of Waddle Home (yes, Waddle Home) is trying its hand at making the next big VR shooter. Evasion features co-op bullet hell gameplay in which you fight your way through an alien planet-trashing just about everything in sight. PS Aim support on PSVR is sure to make the experience more immersive.

Defector
Platforms: Rift
Release Date: 2018

Don’t forget about this hugely promising spy game from Wilson’s Heart developer Twisted Pixel, which last we heard was still coming this year. It’s as cinematic as VR gets, mixing stylish gadget-based gameplay with exciting shootouts and massive setpieces that will have you skydiving and more. Expect big things from this.

Prey: Typhon Hunter
Platforms: TBA
Release Date: 2018

Another one that might have slipped under your radar – Prey is getting VR support! Well, sort of. It’s actually an escape room-style DLC expansion in which you have to solve puzzles. There’s also going to be a multiplayer component in which players become shape-shifting mimics and disguise themselves in a room before a human player seeks them out. Verdict’s still out on this one.

Echo Combat
Platforms: Rift
Release Date: 2018

An expansion to the excellent Echo Arena was promised at Oculus Connect last year and it looks like it’ll be launching soon. Echo Combat brings gunplay into the series’ excellent zero gravity arenas. There’s already been several promising betas for the game, so expect this to be one of the big Rift games of the next few months.

A Fisherman’s Tale
Platforms: Rift, Vive, PSVR
Release Date: 2018

Firebird: La Peri developer Innervision is getting much closer to a game with its latest VR project, which has some incredibly inventive puzzles on offer. You play as a fisherman that has a scale model of his lighthouse inside his room. Look into it, and you’ll see a small version of yourself, while a bigger version can be found outside your window. Things get trippy fast.

Space Junkies
Platforms: Rift, Vive
Release Date: 2018

Ubisoft has a competitor to Echo Combat also coming this year. Space Junkies is another zero gravity shooter in which you grab power-ups and dual-wield weapons as you fling yourself around space, blasting other players. It’s a decidedly more arcadey take on the genre, and we can’t wait to see if it manages to build a community of its own.

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Preview: A Fisherman’s Tale – Enough Twist to Impress Even Lewis Carroll

Areas like the Indie Arena Booth in Gamescom 2018 can be a veritable hive of undiscovered talent, with small developers looking to showcase their work amongst the hustle and bustle of a tightly packed crowd. One virtual reality (VR) developer doing just that was Innerspace VR – the studio behind Firebird: La Peri – which is currently working on a bit of a mind-bending puzzle experience called A Fisherman’s Tale.

A Fisherman’s Tale

Certainly going in a different direction to its previous immersive content, A Fisherman’s Tale is a multiplatform experience that was being demoed on Oculus Rift. The story goes that you play a lighthouse keeper named Bob. Living quite happily in his little cabin Bob suddenly hears a storm warning over the radio and needs to rush to the top of the lighthouse and switch it on. However, all is not what it seems.

A Fisherman’s Tale starts off fairly innocuously, putting you inside a fairly compact cabin which has a table in the centre with a model of the lighthouse plus various other items dotted around the perimeter. This room is the first chapter – and the only one being demoed – with each subsequent chapter essentially following an escape room style design.

Yet this is no ordinary lighthouse, or cabin it seems, as if coming from one of the pages of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, once a couple of puzzles have been solved things begin to turn a little surreal. Not in a bright colourful or twisted way like Alice’s Lullaby, more just a play on scale and Bob’s place in reality.

A Fisherman’s Tale

After opening a blocked window and taking the roof off of the model you’ll then find you can access the same room you’re in, just as a larger version of yourself. You know when you put two mirrors in front of one another and you get that infinite repetition, well it’s kind of like that. The puzzles then utilise this to great effect by having you either take tiny items out or resize larger objects.

There’s a point at which you have to help a very talkative crab which Innerspace VR explained would continue through each level, just with a different character and possible central puzzle mechanic change. The studio also mentioned that depending on a player’s experience, there would be a couple of modes available. One would give you no help whatsoever, while the other would give out hints and tips after a certain duration to keep the gameplay and narrative moving.

The narrative plays an important part in this puzzle adventure as there’s a lot of talking going on as Bob tries to figure out what the hell is going on. Much in the same way as Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives, A Fisherman’s Tale is very much a grab everything kind of title, with the room-in-a-room feature elevating it above others.

Even with this brief demo A Fisherman’s Tale offers an enticing concept and novel change to the usual puzzle mechanic found in VR. Featuring a charming visual design all the mechanics have been created to be accessible for players of all ages. This really is a videogame VRFocus wants to see more of, and definitely comes high on our list of titles played at Gamescom 2018.

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Gamescom 2018: A Fisherman’s Tale Completely Blew My Mind

Gamescom 2018: A Fisherman’s Tale Completely Blew My Mind

Remember when you were a kid and would make shadow puppets, projecting a massive finger onto your ceiling that you’d pretend to prod yourself with? Or how about when you stare at a map of your country and imagine squashing yourself with your own fist? Fisherman’s Tale lets you do that in VR, and it’s one of the most mind-boggling experiences I’ve had inside a headset.

Announced last week, A Fisherman’s Tale is the latest experience from Innerspace VR, a studio behind two of VR’s most thoughtful apps, Firebird: La Peri and Firebird: The Unfinished. It’s the closest to an actual game the team has gotten so far, with genuinely brain-churning puzzles and a high degree of interactivity. But, crucially, it also doesn’t lose sight of what makes Innerspace’s earlier work so memorable, fusing the two together for an experience that promises to make the absolute best of VR.

In A Fisherman’s Tale you embody, well, a fisherman. But you’re puppetized, made of wood and confided to controlling strings, like a Pinochio that never got to become a real boy. Withdrawn in a reclusive lighthouse, you have to venture out to reach the top of the tower and turn on the light in order to safely warn boats. The way you go about doing that is quite fasincating.

The first minutes of the game’s first chapter is fairly straight-forward; clear a barred window and then open it with the use of objects around you. I’m told Fisherman’s Tale didn’t graduate from the LucasArts school of puzzle-solving, so I look around for logical ways to remove nails from boards and quickly discover a crowbar. When you do open the window, though, you see something you weren’t expecting – yourself.

Or rather, a bigger version of yourself, peering out of the same window, imitating your every move to perfection. What?

Turn around and you’ll see a scale model of the building you’re in sitting on the table with, yes, the same window open. Peer in and you’ll see mini-you. Lift the lid off of the set and big-you will be peering down from above. It’s about as surreal as VR gets and a moment of ecstatic discovery.

What to do with this new-found power? Well, what I said at the start of course. I completely lost any degree of professionalism as I proceeded to point down through the ceiling and witness my enlarged finger appear from above in VR. I stared up, slack-jawed as I attempted to poke myself in the face with my own wooden finger and cackled with laughter at the sight of mini-me trying to do the same down below. Trippy doesn’t even being to describe it.

This mechanic has inventive uses within puzzles, too. A giant anchor blocks the door to your exit, for example, so you just reach into the model world and take it out. A tiny crustacean, meanwhile, desires a captain’s hat. The one you find is obviously too big for him, but by throwing it out of the window, a smaller version of the same hat suddenly flies out of the same place in the miniature land, dropping onto the floor. You simply pick it up and hand it to the little guy.

A Fisherman’s Tales puzzles seemed to strike a great balance between entertaining challenge without leaving me too frustrated, though I did have a developer guiding me through the first chapter. Still, Innerspace says that there will be a mode that provides plenty of hints for those who don’t want to struggle with the puzzles, which is a great idea considering that this is shaping up to be a VR story everyone should get to experience. They also reassure that they’re not going to overuse the game’s novel core mechanic, and that later chapters will have other ideas.

As expected with Innerspace, though, it’s the story that really intrigues me with A Fisherman’s Tale. I only get hints of it on the bustling show floor of Gamescom but, from what I can tell, the puppet figure is something of a recluse, and the journey to turn on the lighthouse will no doubt get more and more existential with every step. That’s promise enough to draw me in.

Overall the team is developing four main chapters with a prologue and epilogue to boot, all of which it reckons will take at least two hours to see through. I feel like sharp-minded gamers will be able to run through it even faster than that, but the quality of the experience and its puzzles will more than make up for it. They say brevity is the soul of wit and, in the case of A Fisherman’s Tale, I’m pretty confident that’s going to be the case.

A Fisherman’s Tale will be releasing on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR later this year.

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Hands-on: ‘A Fisherman’s Tale’ is a Charming & Intuitive VR Puzzle Adventure of Mind-bending Proportions

A Fisherman’s Tale is an upcoming puzzle-adventure from Innerspace VR and ARTE, the Franco-German TV network, that aims to get you thinking outside the box—or rather outside the tiny lighthouse as you try to escape a number of rooms on your way to the top.

Playing as an ex-fisherman named Bob, you find out one day that a large storm is brewing, and it’s up to you make it to the top of the lighthouse and turn on the light. After finding a tool to pry the nails off the boarded windows, that’s when you notice that things aren’t as they appear in the cute, charming world of Bob.

Looking out the window, you see a giant version of yourself in an infinite recursive loop. With A Fisherman’s Tale, it really is turtles all the way down.

Image courtesy Innerspace, ARTE

This isn’t just a cool effect, but it immediately becomes an important game mechanic for object interaction.

Looking out the window, I toss a bottle, and quickly whip around to the dollhouse to catch a miniature version of it. In this case, it was a useless bottle, but soon I have to fetch a tiny hat for a talking crustacean buddy, but I only have a regular-sized hat at my disposal. Second example: there’s a giant anchor in the way to a door, and removing the barrier is as simple as picking it up out of the dollhouse, of course watching as a giant version of your hand comes down to scoop it up.

Some tracking related issues notwithstanding, the game’s object interaction is very promising. You can practically manipulate any object you can touch, which leads to some inevitable fun moments such as shrinking everything in the room, or trying to shrink an object until you can’t even pick it up anymore. If you drop an item, a handy extender arm, activated with a button press, lets you pick it back up without having to bend over. If you toss out an important key item (like a key), it will automatically respawn after a few ticks.

Image courtesy Innerspace, ARTE

I only had the opportunity to play the first chapter, which took around 15 minutes, but Innerspace VR CEO Hadrien Lanvin told me that it will typically take users between two and four hours to complete the entire multi-chapter game. Even then, I felt my 15 minutes in where a bit rushed, as the game is very object-centric and requires you to rummage around the room looking for the right puzzle piece so you can escape each successive room. Thankfully there’s a difficulty slider that lets you turn off all hints at its most difficult, or keep them in so even a child can play.

Completing a room also prompts a cutscene, which is said to explain more about Bob, and why he quit his life as a fisherman. If it has anything to do with the image below, well, we may have our answer.

Image courtesy Innerspace, ARTE

A Fisherman’s Tale is slated to arrive by the end of 2018, first releasing on PC VR headsets, then PSVR at a later point. Supported PC VR headsets include HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows VR headsets. While co-developed by Innerspace VR and ARTE, the game is being published by Vertigo Games, the minds behind Arizona Sunshine (2016) and Skyworld (2017).

Check out the announce trailer below to get an idea of what A Fisherman’s Tale will have in store.

We have feet on the ground at Gamescom 2018, so check back for all of the VR/AR news and hands-on articles of this year’s up and coming games.

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VR-Puzzle-Abenteuer A Fisherman’s Tale für PC-Brillen und PSVR angekündigt

Die beiden Entwicklerstudios Vertigo Games (bekannt für Arizona Sunshine) und Innerspace (bekannt für Firebird – La Peri) haben sich zusammengetan, um gemeinsam an dem neuen VR-Rätselabenteuer A Fisherman’s Tale zu arbeiten. Der VR-Titel soll noch innerhalb dieses Jahres für Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows-VR-Brillen und PlayStation VR (PSVR) erscheinen.

A Fisherman’s Tale für Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows-VR-Brillen und PlayStation VR (PSVR) erscheint noch 2018

Das VR-Puzzle-Abenteuer A Fisherman’s Tale lädt euch auf eine fantastische Reise durch surreale Geschehnisse ein. In der Rolle der Angler-Puppe Bob werdet ihr eines Tages von einem herannahenden Sturm bedroht, weshalb ihr euch auf den Weg an die Spitze des Turms begeben müsst. Eine schwierige Aufgabe, denn bisher beinhaltete eure Welt nur die eigenen Vier Wände eurer kleinen Hütte. In dieser führte die Puppe ein zurückgezogenes Leben.

Als ihr an einem verhängnisvollen Tag erwacht, müsst ihr feststellen, dass sämtliche Türen und Fenster verbarrikadiert wurden. Es gilt also einen Lösungsweg zu finden, um der kniffeligen Situationen zu entgehen. Zum Glück stehen euch einige skurrile Helfer zur Seite, denn nur durch die Erleuchtung der Turmlampe kann das drohende Unheil abgewendet werden.

A-Fishermans-Tale-Oculus-Rift-HTC-Vive-PlayStation-VR-PSVR-Windows-VR

Beim Verlassen eurer sicheren Zuflucht macht ihr allerdings eine verhängnisvolle Entdeckung: Die Außenwelt unterscheidet sich komplett von euren Erwartungen. Auf eurem Weg an die Spitze erwarten euch deshalb seltsame Geschehnisse in einer neuen, eigenartigen und surrealen Realität. Diese gilt es zu drehen und zu wenden, um die zahlreichen Rätsel auf eurem Weg zu lösen und dadurch fortzuschreiten.

Bisher sind leider noch keine weiteren Informationen zum kommenden VR-Titel zugänglich.

A Fisherman’s Tale soll noch 2018 für Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows-VR-Brillen und PlayStation VR (PSVR) erscheinen.

(Quellen: PlayStation Blog DE | Upload VR | Video: PlayStation Youtube)

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