Studio Alta, the developer behind open-world RPG A Township Tale (2021), announced it has a new title in the works, this time focusing on a “dark fantasy game” exclusive to VR headsets.
The studio hasn’t said much about the game, which for now is simply codenamed ‘Project 2’, however Alta says it will be showing regular updates on its new YouTube channel from start to finish.
Check out the channel trailer below to get a peek at some possible early prototype features:
At least from what we can tell from the trailer, the studio’s second project looks to be a multiplayer dungeon crawler of sorts, which puts heavy emphasis on sword and sorcery melee.
Considering the studio’s work on A Township Tale, which features a ton of object-based interactions and immersive upgrade pathways, we’re hoping ‘Project 2’ turns out to be just as thoughtful and expansive. For now, there’s no telling which platforms the game is targeting, however if A Township Tale is any indication, a good bet would be Quest and PC VR support.
You can follow Project 2 by joining the studio’s Discord (invite link), which will no doubt eventually allow some sort of alpha access, as Alta Studio seems pretty intent on engaging the community for feedback.
It looks like a PSVR version of A Township Tale could be on the cards after developer Alta raised $12.4 million.
The funding round was led by Makers Fund and Andreessen Horowitz, with contributions from Pioneer Fund, Boost VR and more. In a press release, Alta said the money would be used to expand its team and “position the game for new platforms.”
A few months ago, we reported that the studio was looking to raise money so that it might bring the game to PSVR. Given A Township Tale is already on Quest and PC VR headsets, it seems likely that this is the next destination for the co-op title. Fingers crossed that includes a version for Sony’s newly-named PSVR 2 headset on PS5, too.
In a prepared statement, Aldin CEO Tima Anoshechkin added that the studio will “continue to develop world-class technology whether with VR or other platforms. Whenever and wherever you are playing, our experience will always be engaging, seamless and fun.”
A Township Tale is one of our favorite VR releases of the past few years, tasking players with restoring a ruined town by gathering resources across a vast world. “A Township Tale is a VR great in the making,” we said in our review. “I know that because, well, it’s already great. It’s impeccably rich in almost every one of its many disciplines.”
The launched in early access on PC a few years ago and came to Quest last summer. Alta continues to update and add to the game.
Do you want to see A Township Tale on PSVR? Let us know in the comments below!
Australia-based Studio Alta, the developer behind A Township Tale, today announced it has raised a $12.4 million seed investment to expand its studio and accelerate development of the game.
Studio Alta had been quietly developing its brilliant co-op focused VR game A Township Tale for years on PC as a small indie team. Though it was loved by many who played it, the title remained something of a sleeper, likely due in part to the fact that the studio has only ever distributed it independently rather than through storefronts like SteamVR or Oculus PC.
Through an impressive effort the studio managed to port A Township Tale to Quest where it seems the game has found the right conditions to thrive. The studio says the game spent “seven weeks at #1 on the Oculus charts” and “produced historical engagement metrics for the platform […]” at its debut.
And it would seem investors took notice. The studio today announced it has raised a $12.4 million seed round… and not just from any old investors either; the round was co-led by Makers Fund and Andreessen Horowitz, the latter being a well known name in the venture capital space—with nearly $20 billion in assets under management—and an early investor in Oculus. The round also saw participation by Pioneer Fund, Boost VC, muru-D, and Thomas Rice.
Image courtesy Alta
Alta says it plans to use the funds to “further develop proprietary content and IP, expand the team, and position the game for new platforms.”
“Alta started out with a single quest: to create worlds that bring people together,” said Tima Anoshechkin, CEO and co-founder of Alta. “This funding helps us expand that vision beyond just growing our flagship game, and allows us to expand the team, create new opportunities and partnerships to collaborate with, and continue to develop world-class technology whether with VR or other platforms. Whenever and wherever you are playing, our experience will always be engaging, seamless and fun.”
Road to VR further spoke with Anoshechkin in to learn more about the studio’s priorities and aim for the future, including a hint that the game could come to PSVR or PSVR 2.
Q: What’s the biggest focus for A Township Tale development in 2022?
A: We have accumulated a lot of technical debt. The goal is to clean everything up, so we can release features faster to the community and bring A Township Tale to as many platforms as possible. Also we are really focusing on onboarding experience and explaining the game to the new players in a very friendly way.
Q: What’s the long-term vision for A Township Tale?
A: Our long term vision to create a unique experience where there is always reason for players to stay. I don’t like to use metaverse as much, but if we can deliver a unique world experience to each user that they have agency over, can share with their friends and visit their friend’s world seamlessly that would be a worthwhile goal to build towards.
Q: What’s the long term plan for the studio (plan to work on multiple projects or focus solely on A Township Tale)?
A: For now focus is solely on A Township Tale.
Q: What can you tell me about the game’s reception on Quest?
A: We can’t share many metrics as we in preparation for our next round, but studio is cash flow positive and definitely there is enough users in VR space to support mid size studios.
Q: How large is the studio?
A: More than two-dozen and growing. We can’t provide exact number, as a lot of people have joined, but still in on-boarding phase or just waiting for their notice periods to end. But studio tripled in size since the game launch.
Q: Do you expect A Township Tale to come to PSVR / PSVR 2?
A: We would love to.
Q: What are you long-term plans for in-app purchases (IAP) in A Township Tale?
A: We are pretty much open to everything as long as the game is not P2W and our community is on board with IAP strategy.
Q: What’s the most surprising/interesting thing you’ve seen players do in A Township Tale?
A: I am still surprised by number of people in VR ecosystem that only have mobile and Quest devices. As a result it really forces you to re-examine how games are build and how to onboard players. For a lot of this people Quest is their first high end gaming device, which is mind boggling to me.
Alongside the announcement Alta says it is actively hiring. While it will take time for the studio to ramp up, we’d expect updates to A Township Tale to expand in scope going forward. The Quest version is missing some major parts of the game compared to the PC version, so there’s some catching up to do before genuine progress is made to move both versions forward. The studio has also said previously that it hopes to add cross-play support with PC players eventually.
What a year it has been for the Oculus Quest 2, sorry, Meta Quest 2, with that name change being one of the more defining – and confusing – moments. Whatever you want to call it, the Quest 2 has had a stunning year when it comes to content, with some truly huge videogames making their way to the platform. So if you’ve just picked one up or were very good this year and got one as a present, then these are just some of the titles you should be adding to your library.
Apart from being awesome, one critera for VRFocus’ favourite Quest videogames meant that all of them had to be natively available on the Oculus Store. So titles like Lone Echo II that require a PC connection won’t make this selection.
The Best Meta Quest Games of 2021
Resident Evil 4
Let’s start with probably the biggest exclusive that hit the standalone headset this year, Capcom’s Resident Evil 4. Rebuilt by Armature Studio specifically for the Quest 2, this version of Resident Evil 4 – and there’s been a couple – is the definitive version by a mile. Whether you already love the Resi franchise or are completely new to it, this puts you in the heart of the survival horror, with plenty of accessibility options to cater to all players.
Resident Evil 4 takes you to a remote region of Europe as Leon S. Kennedy who’s on a mission to rescue the U.S. President’s daughter from a dangerous cult called the Los Illuminados. All the action from the original is there, whether that’s dealing with rabid villagers, monstrous mutations or taxing boss fights. Plus all the puzzles and Quick Time Events (QTE’s), the latter is the only real annoyance.
There’s lots of new stuff too. You can physically grab and reload guns, dual wield to mix weapon combinations up, and interact with the environment, opening doors and pushing stuff out the way. Oh, and it’s now entirely in first-person, for that fully immersive experience.
For those that love survival adventures that offer hours of entertainment and a proper bang for your buck game look no further than 17-BIT’s Song in the Smoke. The first VR title from the Japan-based team, Song in the Smoke takes place in a mystical, primordial wilderness where you’re given only basic tools and an understanding of how things work before being let loose.
While there are mysterious, magical elements at play, the gameplay is heavily survival-based, so you’ll need to forage or hunt for food so you don’t starve, make weapons to defend yourself, make cloths so you don’t freeze, and most importantly of all, gather resources to build fires and make it through the night, because when darkness comes the jungle wakes up.
Song in the Smoke is made up of eight biomes, ranging from lush forests and ancient valleys to frozen peaks. Each more inhospitable than the last, it’s easy to get lost in the experience, you can be so engrossed in surviving that unlocking the narrative almost plays second best.
Time for a far more chilled and relaxing VR experience. After a stint on Oculus’ App Lab, Puzzling Places arrived on the official store in September, offering a tranquil slice of 3D jigsaw gameplay.
With 16 puzzles to complete, you can up the difficulty from 25 pieces to 400 pieces for each puzzle. Whilst 400 may not sound a lot compared to traditional jigsaws, the three-dimensional element further helps to scale that difficulty. The charm of Puzzling Places also comes from the fact that each puzzle is a realistic, scanned location using photogrammetry with plenty of detail. And to aid immersion, they each have audio tracks make the setting even more lifelike.
So if you’re looking for a more modern take on a classic, then check out Puzzling Places.
Time for some multiplayer action with Resolution Games’ turn-based board game Demeo. This is a dungeon crawler where up to four players choose their characters and then battle monstrous foes, think D&D but in VR.
Taking on the roles of characters like the mystical sorcerer who can summon area-of-effect (AOE) spells or a knight with loads of armour, each has their own particular specialities to aid the quest. You can pick up your player piece to move the character around the dungeon whilst utilising ability cards to attack opponents.
Originally released in May 2021 with one dungeon, the studio has now expanded that to three, Roots of Evil arriving in December, taking players above ground for the first time. And don’t worry if your mates are busy, Demeo can be played solo to get some practice in before the next team meetup.
Another big blockbuster title that made its way to Quest 2 in 2021 – but not the original Quest at the moment – After the Fallis a co-op shooter in a similar vein to videogames like Left 4 Dead.
From Vertigo Games, the same team behind Arizona Sunshine, After the Fall is set in a dystopian future where a climate disaster has taken place and Los Angeles is now a winter hellscape. Just to make things worse, a large chunk of the population has turned into horrific monsters called Snowbreed, and they’re less than friendly. The core gameplay revolves around going on Harvest Runs to collect valuable supplies to upgrade weapons and such. Up to four players can team up – AI bots fill in if there’s not enough – with the main hub enabling up to 32 players to socialise before each Harvest Run.
Out in the field, it’s a non-stop action fest as you cull hordes of Snowbreed before encountering at least one of four special mutations that can do some serious damage. Or if you want a different challenge, After the Fall has a competitive PvP mode where you can fight other players instead.
Another great title if you have a few buddies into VR.
A Township Tale
Looking for an entirely different multiplayer experience from those previously mentioned? Well, take a look at A Township Tale by Alta. Taking the idea of building a fully-functioning village where everyone can specialise in a particular task, A Township Tale makes co-op gameplay an essential component to truly unlock its potential.
Up to eight friends can team up on one virtual server to build their town and head out on quests. Choose to become a blacksmith, woodcutter, miner, archer or warrior, each essential to the running of the town and to the success of quests. While you can mix and match, professions like the blacksmith require a lot of work, becoming easier if some players collect resources whilst others build tools or other items.
Then you can explore, heading into the forests or mines to collect new, rare resources to craft enhanced weapons to deal with the various monsters you’ll encounter on route. Or you can try and tackle A Township Tale solo, which is when you’ll realise how much there is to the experience. One to lose hours and hours in.
Schell Games’ original puzzler I Expect You to Die has become a VR classic and its 2021 sequel is no different. Continuing the narrative where you step into the shoes of a secret agent trying to save the world from an evil villain, you don’t need to have played the first to enjoy what’s on offer here.
I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy And The Liar is all about foiling the evil plans of Dr. Zor and his Zoraxis empire across six deadly six missions. The title is very literal in its description that death is expected and expected frequently, as any wrong move can result in an instant, elaborate death. Poison gas, explosives, giant swinging axes, a suspicious sandwich or simply just getting shot, death is around every corner, sometimes you can take your time but there are moments where quick reflexes are essential.
Whilst each mission has a plethora of primary and secondary objectives, what makes I Expect You To Die 2 an essential VR experience is the fact that any player should find it accessible. There’s no locomotion whatsoever, so you can play it seated or standing (best seated) with everything within arms reach, ideal for those new to VR but with enough difficulty for veteran gamers.
Resident Evil 4 might be on this list but if you want to really feel chills down your spine then Cosmodread is the place to be. From the indie studio behind Dreadhalls, Cosmodread is a sci-fi horror that evokes atmospheric movies such as Aliens or Event Horizon.
You’re stuck on a dying spaceship completely alone, which you have to explore to find and fix critical systems in a bid to get home to Earth. The only problem, an alien entity is aboard the ship transforming the crew into monsters. Armed with one weapon initially, scouring the ship for resources will unlock new items, oxygen to keep you alive and crafting resources.
However, Cosmodread is a roguelite VR experience just like In Death: Unchained or Until You Fall, where death means returning back to the start. You might be a little wiser but the levels are procedurally generated, so the environment, item locations and enemy spawn points alter for each run. If you love a good scare then give Cosmodread a try if you dare.
Want a gorgeous looking VR videogame for your new Quest 2 as well as a physical workout? That’s where Crytek’s The Climb 2 comes in. Expanding upon the 2016 original with new locations and features, The Climb 2 for those who love extreme sports but maybe not the death-defying climbing so much.
With locations taking you atop beautiful snowy vistas, up towering skyscrapers, and sun-soaked mountain ranges, The Climb 2 challenges you to find small cracks and ledges to grab hold of and work your way up. You’ll need to chalk your hands to maintain grip and as the levels progress you’ll be offered multiple routes to the top, so you can choose your own route each time.
To make the climbing experience even more realistic, new features include dynamic objects like ropes, containers, ladders, and climbing equipment that react to your weight. There are also customisation options with 32 gloves, 25 watches, and 36 wristbands to unlock along the way. A visually sumptuous VR experience that’ll give your arms a nice workout.
You can’t own a VR headset without owning at least one rhythm action title. One of the best to arrive in 2021 for the Meta Quest was Ragnarock. With a Viking theme, Ragnarock puts you at the helm of a Viking longboat, hammering away at a set of four drums to inspire your crew to row. The faster they row the more likely you are to achieve a gold medal.
Another VR project that arrived by way of Oculus App Lab, Ragnarock’s gameplay is delightfully simple, hit the drums in time with the music to unlock speed boosts and speed those rowers up. Developer WanadevStudio went for a far more rock-themed rhythm action game in comparison to others, with songs from Alestorm, Gloryhammer, Saltatio Mortis, Wind Rose and more.
Offering both solo and multiplayer modes, solo you can race against your ghost once you’ve completed a song. Multiplayer pits you in a race against five other players to the finish line across various difficulty levels.
Its mix of Celtic rock and metal tracks alongside that drumming action makes Ragnarock a compelling VR experience that’s hard to put down.
What a year it has been for the Oculus Quest 2, sorry, Meta Quest 2, with that name change being one of the more defining – and confusing – moments. Whatever you want to call it, the Quest 2 has had a stunning year when it comes to content, with some truly huge videogames making their way to the platform. So if you’ve just picked one up or were very good this year and got one as a present, then these are just some of the titles you should be adding to your library.
Apart from being awesome, one critera for VRFocus’ favourite Quest videogames meant that all of them had to be natively available on the Oculus Store. So titles like Lone Echo II that require a PC connection won’t make this selection.
The Best Meta Quest Games of 2021
Resident Evil 4
Let’s start with probably the biggest exclusive that hit the standalone headset this year, Capcom’s Resident Evil 4. Rebuilt by Armature Studio specifically for the Quest 2, this version of Resident Evil 4 – and there’s been a couple – is the definitive version by a mile. Whether you already love the Resi franchise or are completely new to it, this puts you in the heart of the survival horror, with plenty of accessibility options to cater to all players.
Resident Evil 4 takes you to a remote region of Europe as Leon S. Kennedy who’s on a mission to rescue the U.S. President’s daughter from a dangerous cult called the Los Illuminados. All the action from the original is there, whether that’s dealing with rabid villagers, monstrous mutations or taxing boss fights. Plus all the puzzles and Quick Time Events (QTE’s), the latter is the only real annoyance.
There’s lots of new stuff too. You can physically grab and reload guns, dual wield to mix weapon combinations up, and interact with the environment, opening doors and pushing stuff out the way. Oh, and it’s now entirely in first-person, for that fully immersive experience.
For those that love survival adventures that offer hours of entertainment and a proper bang for your buck game look no further than 17-BIT’s Song in the Smoke. The first VR title from the Japan-based team, Song in the Smoke takes place in a mystical, primordial wilderness where you’re given only basic tools and an understanding of how things work before being let loose.
While there are mysterious, magical elements at play, the gameplay is heavily survival-based, so you’ll need to forage or hunt for food so you don’t starve, make weapons to defend yourself, make cloths so you don’t freeze, and most importantly of all, gather resources to build fires and make it through the night, because when darkness comes the jungle wakes up.
Song in the Smoke is made up of eight biomes, ranging from lush forests and ancient valleys to frozen peaks. Each more inhospitable than the last, it’s easy to get lost in the experience, you can be so engrossed in surviving that unlocking the narrative almost plays second best.
Time for a far more chilled and relaxing VR experience. After a stint on Oculus’ App Lab, Puzzling Places arrived on the official store in September, offering a tranquil slice of 3D jigsaw gameplay.
With 16 puzzles to complete, you can up the difficulty from 25 pieces to 400 pieces for each puzzle. Whilst 400 may not sound a lot compared to traditional jigsaws, the three-dimensional element further helps to scale that difficulty. The charm of Puzzling Places also comes from the fact that each puzzle is a realistic, scanned location using photogrammetry with plenty of detail. And to aid immersion, they each have audio tracks make the setting even more lifelike.
So if you’re looking for a more modern take on a classic, then check out Puzzling Places.
Time for some multiplayer action with Resolution Games’ turn-based board game Demeo. This is a dungeon crawler where up to four players choose their characters and then battle monstrous foes, think D&D but in VR.
Taking on the roles of characters like the mystical sorcerer who can summon area-of-effect (AOE) spells or a knight with loads of armour, each has their own particular specialities to aid the quest. You can pick up your player piece to move the character around the dungeon whilst utilising ability cards to attack opponents.
Originally released in May 2021 with one dungeon, the studio has now expanded that to three, Roots of Evil arriving in December, taking players above ground for the first time. And don’t worry if your mates are busy, Demeo can be played solo to get some practice in before the next team meetup.
Another big blockbuster title that made its way to Quest 2 in 2021 – but not the original Quest at the moment – After the Fallis a co-op shooter in a similar vein to videogames like Left 4 Dead.
From Vertigo Games, the same team behind Arizona Sunshine, After the Fall is set in a dystopian future where a climate disaster has taken place and Los Angeles is now a winter hellscape. Just to make things worse, a large chunk of the population has turned into horrific monsters called Snowbreed, and they’re less than friendly. The core gameplay revolves around going on Harvest Runs to collect valuable supplies to upgrade weapons and such. Up to four players can team up – AI bots fill in if there’s not enough – with the main hub enabling up to 32 players to socialise before each Harvest Run.
Out in the field, it’s a non-stop action fest as you cull hordes of Snowbreed before encountering at least one of four special mutations that can do some serious damage. Or if you want a different challenge, After the Fall has a competitive PvP mode where you can fight other players instead.
Another great title if you have a few buddies into VR.
A Township Tale
Looking for an entirely different multiplayer experience from those previously mentioned? Well, take a look at A Township Tale by Alta. Taking the idea of building a fully-functioning village where everyone can specialise in a particular task, A Township Tale makes co-op gameplay an essential component to truly unlock its potential.
Up to eight friends can team up on one virtual server to build their town and head out on quests. Choose to become a blacksmith, woodcutter, miner, archer or warrior, each essential to the running of the town and to the success of quests. While you can mix and match, professions like the blacksmith require a lot of work, becoming easier if some players collect resources whilst others build tools or other items.
Then you can explore, heading into the forests or mines to collect new, rare resources to craft enhanced weapons to deal with the various monsters you’ll encounter on route. Or you can try and tackle A Township Tale solo, which is when you’ll realise how much there is to the experience. One to lose hours and hours in.
Schell Games’ original puzzler I Expect You to Die has become a VR classic and its 2021 sequel is no different. Continuing the narrative where you step into the shoes of a secret agent trying to save the world from an evil villain, you don’t need to have played the first to enjoy what’s on offer here.
I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy And The Liar is all about foiling the evil plans of Dr. Zor and his Zoraxis empire across six deadly six missions. The title is very literal in its description that death is expected and expected frequently, as any wrong move can result in an instant, elaborate death. Poison gas, explosives, giant swinging axes, a suspicious sandwich or simply just getting shot, death is around every corner, sometimes you can take your time but there are moments where quick reflexes are essential.
Whilst each mission has a plethora of primary and secondary objectives, what makes I Expect You To Die 2 an essential VR experience is the fact that any player should find it accessible. There’s no locomotion whatsoever, so you can play it seated or standing (best seated) with everything within arms reach, ideal for those new to VR but with enough difficulty for veteran gamers.
Resident Evil 4 might be on this list but if you want to really feel chills down your spine then Cosmodread is the place to be. From the indie studio behind Dreadhalls, Cosmodread is a sci-fi horror that evokes atmospheric movies such as Aliens or Event Horizon.
You’re stuck on a dying spaceship completely alone, which you have to explore to find and fix critical systems in a bid to get home to Earth. The only problem, an alien entity is aboard the ship transforming the crew into monsters. Armed with one weapon initially, scouring the ship for resources will unlock new items, oxygen to keep you alive and crafting resources.
However, Cosmodread is a roguelite VR experience just like In Death: Unchained or Until You Fall, where death means returning back to the start. You might be a little wiser but the levels are procedurally generated, so the environment, item locations and enemy spawn points alter for each run. If you love a good scare then give Cosmodread a try if you dare.
Want a gorgeous looking VR videogame for your new Quest 2 as well as a physical workout? That’s where Crytek’s The Climb 2 comes in. Expanding upon the 2016 original with new locations and features, The Climb 2 for those who love extreme sports but maybe not the death-defying climbing so much.
With locations taking you atop beautiful snowy vistas, up towering skyscrapers, and sun-soaked mountain ranges, The Climb 2 challenges you to find small cracks and ledges to grab hold of and work your way up. You’ll need to chalk your hands to maintain grip and as the levels progress you’ll be offered multiple routes to the top, so you can choose your own route each time.
To make the climbing experience even more realistic, new features include dynamic objects like ropes, containers, ladders, and climbing equipment that react to your weight. There are also customisation options with 32 gloves, 25 watches, and 36 wristbands to unlock along the way. A visually sumptuous VR experience that’ll give your arms a nice workout.
You can’t own a VR headset without owning at least one rhythm action title. One of the best to arrive in 2021 for the Meta Quest was Ragnarock. With a Viking theme, Ragnarock puts you at the helm of a Viking longboat, hammering away at a set of four drums to inspire your crew to row. The faster they row the more likely you are to achieve a gold medal.
Another VR project that arrived by way of Oculus App Lab, Ragnarock’s gameplay is delightfully simple, hit the drums in time with the music to unlock speed boosts and speed those rowers up. Developer WanadevStudio went for a far more rock-themed rhythm action game in comparison to others, with songs from Alestorm, Gloryhammer, Saltatio Mortis, Wind Rose and more.
Offering both solo and multiplayer modes, solo you can race against your ghost once you’ve completed a song. Multiplayer pits you in a race against five other players to the finish line across various difficulty levels.
Its mix of Celtic rock and metal tracks alongside that drumming action makes Ragnarock a compelling VR experience that’s hard to put down.
Need better gear in A Township Tale? Then you’ll need to visit the Blacksmith. Get started with our A Township Tale Blacksmith guide!
Where Is The Blacksmith In A Township Tale
Like a lot of areas of the game when you first start out, the Blacksmith is actually locked. To get access, you need to donate resources into a box off to the left of your town when you first enter it. Meeting the requirements will build a set of stairs you can take up to the Blacksmith.
How To Unlock The Blacksmith In A Township Tale
Specifically, the Blacksmith requires 200 chunks of wood and 25 clumps of dry grass. The grass is easy – you can find plenty of it where you first spawned in the map and also in front of the mines, which you can find by following signs and heading uphill at the back of the town.
Wood chunks are harder to come by, as you need to unlock another area first to find trees you can chop. Before you enter your town, you can find another resource box off to the left, under the arch next to a river. It asks for 250 sandstones to build a bridge. You can get sandstones in a few locations, but it’s best to start with the rocks immediately around you. Make sure to mine the yellow-ish stones, not the grey colored ones (those are normal stones and can’t be used). Don’t forget you can make a simple pickaxe very quickly by finding flint on the floor around the edges of town and attaching it to a twig from a tree.
If you need more sandstone, turn around, head up the hill opposite the box, take a right up another hill until you reach an enclosed area with lots of stones.
Once you’ve mined this area, you’ll probably need more sandstones. You can get some from mining rocks outside the mines. Once you’ve gathered 250, head back to the box and drop them in to build the bridge. From here, walk directly over the first field, cross another bridge and you’ll find some of the first trees to properly chop.
You’ll need a good axe to chop and proper process – don’t just waggle your hands but make good, strong swings. Thick logs turn into chunks whilst branches split into twigs. There are also tree-like enemies here that will turn into chunks upon defeat too, though their ranged attack hits hard so don’t just dive into combat. You might need to make a few trips for supplies, but you’ll eventually get enough wood to drop in and make the stairs to the Blacksmiths.
How To Use The Blacksmith And Make Ingots In A Township Tale
There are two main parts to being a Blacksmith in A Township Tale. Firstly, there’s the process of turning metal ingots into the right shape of weapon or tool, and then bashing the end result into shape using a hammer and the furnace.
First, to make ingots, you need ores. There are several types of ores in the game, starting out with common copper ores and graduating to iron and other types later on, but we’ll start with these two. A certain amount of ore will give you one ingot. To make an ingot, you need to empty your ore into the dish on the upper left side of the furnace inside the Blacksmith. Next, head to the middle of the machine and put in either wood chunks or twigs as fuel. With fuel inserted the process of turning ores to ingots should start automatically, but you can speed it up by operating the fan to the right of the fuel area. As they’re completed, ingots will drop into the trough to the right of the furnace.
When it comes to weapons and tools, you’ll need molds (more in that in a second) which will produce a thick version of your desired item. Take that out back to the fenced area and throw it into the forge. Eventually, you’ll see it start to sparkle with gold streaks. Retrieve it and then use a hammer to bash the tool or weapon into shape. It’ll start to thin out and you’ll eventually see the sparks disappear when the item is complete (you might need to reheat it one or two times depending on the quality of your hammer and your skill with one). After that, it’s just a case of attaching your tool or weapon head to a handle.
How Use Molds To Make Weapons And Tools Via The Blacksmith In A Township Tale
You can’t just immediately start making swords and arrows once you’ve found the Blacksmith. To know what you want to make, the Blacksmith needs the corresponding mold. You’ll find molds at random out in the world – largely in chests and crates hidden down in the mines and in other areas you’ll unlock as you play. They’re large, square slates that depict the item they create and the number of ingots needed to forge them. Every time you find a mold make sure to safely stash it in your inventory (if you have space) and bring it back to the Blacksmith, where you can store it at the back of the room. If you run out of rack space, you can build more. You can also find more than one type of the same mold, so make sure to remember which you have already.
When you want to make a certain type of weapon or tool head, grab the corresponding mold and place it in the designated area on the left of the furnace, near where you pour in the ores and ingots. You can use any type of ingot to make any type of weapon, but different metals provide different properties. Making a copper sword is a good start, for example, but eventually, as you reach deeper into the mines you’ll start finding more iron, which produces sharper and more durable blades. Make sure to put in the exact amount of ingots the mold requires, otherwise you might waste some or make more of an item than intended. After you’ve made the item and bashed it into shape, you’ll need a handle to connect it to.
If you don’t have one of those to hand, you’ll need to fashion one with carpentry. That’s a whole different kettle of fish.
How To Make Weapon And Tool Handles Via Carpentry In A Township Tale
Carpentry isn’t quite as complicated as the Blacksmith, but it does still require some exploration and skill. To carve a handle, you’ll first need to find its instruction page. Much like the molds, you’ll locate these out in the world. The beauty of pages, though, is that you just need to pick them up and let them go. You’ll then see an animation, indicating the page has been added to the corresponding book back in town. Once you’ve found some handle instructions, head back to the Carpentry building.
Find the book under the stairs, find the page for the desired tool and rip it out. Then place it in the holder next to the work bench. It’ll tell you how many chunks of wood you first need to put into the holder, which will start to form one larger block. Once you have enough wood, it’s time to chisel.
Though you can get dedicated tools for chiseling (you might’ve found a rusty chisel somewhere), you can also just used a piece of flint and a basic twig/rock combo for a hammer. You need to angle the chisel as indicated and hit calmly and smoothly. Hit off the mark too much and you might end up making something entirely different.
Did you find our A Township Tale blacksmith guide helpful? Did you miss anything? Let us know in the comments below!
A Township Tale is still under construction. But even this early on, you can tell it’ll be a VR great. More in our A Township Tale review!
Note: Our A Township Tale review is based on the Quest edition of the game. It’s still in Early Access on PC and the Quest version is essentially the same experience. However, as Facebook doesn’t label games as Early Access on the Quest store, we’re giving it a full review that we’ll update as new features arrive for the title.
It takes a heck of a long time to really ‘get’ A Township Tale, especially enough to pass any sort of judgment on the game. In part, that’s because Alta’s online adventure is staggeringly deep, aflood with intricate interactions, resources to plunder and lands to explore to a degree few other native VR games can match. It’s also because the developer plays its cards close to its chest in hopes of surprising you at every turn.
Mainly, though, it’s because the game is absolutely awful at helping you find your way through it. Even several years in from Early Access launch this town-building sim is laying down the tracks just ahead as it steams forward, and that’s as frustrating to watch as it is fascinating.
Welcome To Town
Township is already a rich online RPG with thrilling eight-player design, but it’s also an uncontextualized one. Every time Alta adds something new there are several other layers of gameplay affected by it, making it hard for the studio to convey direction. The enormous community of dedicated professionals and intrepid explorers collaborating both in-game and through online wikis has been nurtured as much out of necessity as it has passion. I suspect Alta, just as much as its fans, doesn’t really know what Township will even look like a year from now. Adding proper tutorials would be like keeping up with IKEA instructions as the shelving unit gets two new pieces added to the parts pile while you’re looking at it.
A Township Tale Review Review – The Facts
What is it?: A VR town-building sim for up to eight players. Platforms: Quest, PC VR Release Date: Out now Price: PC: Free with IAPs. Quest: $9.99 with in-game currency.
Getting into Township at this early-ish stage is an interesting one, then. For my money, it’s probably one of the most satisfying and worthwhile purchases you can make on Oculus Quest (it’s free on PC with in-app purchases via virtual currency, while the Quest version comes with some of that currency equal to the game’s price), even as you wrestle with that learning curve and come to accept its environments constantly shifting and morphing to run as best they can on limited hardware. This really is getting in on the ground floor, not just because Township isn’t finished but also because it really can’t be until standalone hardware can match the PC experience.
Big caveats to consider but, if you come to the game with that understanding, you’re in for something special: A Township Tale is one of VR’s most ambitious, rewarding and immersive games yet.
At its heart, the game’s about community and discovery, a fact that feeds every facet of its design. Township lets you build out a town using resources discovered out in the wilds, level up your character with specific classes via shrines you’ll happen upon and, ultimately, craft the best gear for the given job as you find rarer items by pushing out further into the world. It tells you none of this; there are no objectives, waypoints or hints.
Just as Alta is hesitant to provide proper tutorials in an ever-changing world, it’s also determined to sustain a sense of the unknown and the illumination that comes from finding new things. Even the central town you’ll spawn in is an old, decrepit ruin you stumble upon rather than a fresh plot to start anew from. Well over 20 hours in, I’m still finding windows with vines that need clearing out.
You can probably tell by now that I could go on for hours about Township’s hypnotic mysticism. It’s equal parts enrapturing and infuriating. But, once you get a grasp of the game’s core loop, it’s actually pretty simple: gather, craft, explore, repeat.
Daily Grind
Though you’ll get starting items like rusty swords and hammers, everything you can obtain in Township has to be earned, and it’ll take a long time to earn it. You’ll first want to use your hand-me-down gear and makeshift tools (you can literally make a hammer by holding a rock to a twig, or a torch from wood, dry grass, and two flints), to open up the basics of the town. Getting the blacksmith up and running takes a few hours of mining which, in turn, gives you more things to mine. If you want to make a sword you won’t just need the proper resources but you’ll need the mold to make the blade, which you’ll only discover in chests hidden out in the world and the recipe to craft the handle which, again, you’ll have to find.
And then there’s food to consider as well as other areas of the town that need an intense number of resources to develop, and the game often won’t even tell you what you’re building, making it tough to prioritize.
A Township Tale Review – Comfort
Township has a lot of options to customize your experience, but it’s still a fairly physical and demanding game. You can either walk or teleport and adjust settings for the former, but there’s a lot of leaning down and working on the ground to start fires and gather materials. Maybe stretch before playing.
Very soon you’ll find yourself establishing a complex mind map of what you want to achieve and the path to doing that. This is where multiplayer really comes in handy; support for up to eight players per server allows you to either delegate tasks or drastically increase the speed of resource gathering and the chances of surviving monster encounters. The skill trees you’ll discover late into the game, meanwhile, allow each player to really embody a profession in a meaningful way. Yes there are fighter classes that help out in the field but it’s just as handy to have someone toiling away at smithing with faster, more efficient skills to keep the supply of breakable weapons and tools going.
Exploration can be similarly confusing. Along with locked areas that require hours of resource gathering to access, Township’s world is filled with threats that will happily send you straight back home with just a few attacks. One of the game’s main areas is a network of caves that basically never ends (some players have ventured over 100 floors deep). But there’s no lighting in the first few levels, making limited-time torches a necessity, or you’ll be wandering alone in the dark.
And, look, I know all this sounds exhausting. And, in truth, it often is, especially if an untimely death at the bottom of the mines means losing hours of grinding resources unless you venture back there to retrieve them. But what keeps Township engaging even as it asks so much of you is its constant progression.
The game requires commitment and that commitment is rewarded in really satisfying ways, like opening up all-new areas with plenty of supplies and new recipes to discover or earning a rarer metal type that can help you forge stronger, more powerful weapons. This goes just as much for when you’re outside the game as when you’re in it; after a month of play I only just found out about metal alloys that push your gear even further and that’s thanks to lunchtime wiki reading. It’s safe to say Alta’s carrot and stick approach works well.
More importantly, though, you’ll want to stick with Township based on the strength of its mechanics.
Off To Work We Go
Almost every interaction possible in A Township Tale is deeply thought out. Though you can, in places, waggle your way to victory, the game’s best elements place an emphasis on realistic motions and believable responses. Axes won’t chop trees with a series of unfocused blows but must instead be carefully aimed and leveraged, slicing into the same point time and again. Lighting a fire, meanwhile, requires you to knock two bits of flint together over dry grass.
In many cases, you need to consider the angle and speed of your approach. Swing a hammer at the wrong angle when crafting and you can hit nails in the wrong direction or even break materials. Chiseling away at wood needs just the right touch or you might end up making a soup ladle by accident. Think the resource collection of Minecraft mixed with the attention to detail of a simulator game.
A Township Tale Review – Quest vs PC
Keep in mind that this review is strictly aimed at the Quest version of the game and some of the criticisms we have here don’t apply to the PC version. On PC, a Township currently has much better performance and extra features like enemy variety. Currently there’s no cross-play between the two versions, though it could be added in the future. The PC version is also free to try so, if you’re able, we recommend starting there.
At first, this feels incredibly fiddly. Like other games with a physics-driven focus, you need to acclimatize to Township’s rules. The game’s also not as accessible as it could be, with lots of tiring leaning down to scoop items up (there is a distance-based grab option though it’s nowhere near as smooth as this option in other games).
The only area in which mechanics really underwhelm is combat, where Township could use a good bit of work. Again, we’re not quite in the realm of full-on waggleware here, and your swords and axes will make a satisfying impact on the given creature, but it’s not half as developed as the game’s other interactions. A flurry of blows from any direction will see off most of the game’s enemies and the only thing that adds in challenge is the fact your foes hit so darn hard.
You can at least add some personalization to how you fight; I fashioned a knife to hold backwards and found that gave me a lot of leverage in some encounters and there are hundreds of other options based on the hype of blade and handle you forge. Still, it’d be great to see later versions of the game that offered the physics-driven combat of Blade & Sorcery or Gorn. Just, y’know, probably without the impaling and dismemberment. The Quest version is in dire need of more enemy variety too, though there are more creatures to battle on PC.
The Friends You’ll Make Along The Way
A Township Tale can be stubborn and unruly, then. For every moment of triumph, there’s 10 more spent wondering exactly what an item you’ve found deep in the caves is and if you need to make space for it, or trying to decipher the wordless, confusing crafting recipes (and I still have no idea what many of the things I’ve found actually are). But it’s an absolute testament to the strength of the game that a flourishing community has not only endured these elements but embraced them.
And that’s really the key point here. All of Township’s many hiccups and obscurities? There’s a player out there that knows about them and wants to talk about them. Heck, they might even want to jump in and give you a tour around them. This is a VR game with a genuine sense of community, and every element of the experience is enhanced by playing with friends. One day I did a grueling 6+ hour solo grind so that the next time the rest of my friends joined in I knew they’d have good items and weapons waiting for them. We could then use that gear to journey further afield than we have in the past, keeping the spirit of adventure alive in a game I’ve already played a huge amount of.
Bugs Galore
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Township in its current state, though, is the bugs. Again, it’s an early access release and we can hope to see a lot of these smoothed out over time, but the game is plagued with technical issues that won’t make the experience unplayable but are likely to hinder your progress at one point or another. I’d have hours of progress disappear when my backpack inexplicably vanished after a death with all of its precious items following. The distance-grab, meanwhile, can haphazardly send other objects flying off if they come into contact, meaning you can count on losing a few of the resources you’ve mined if you’re trying to pick up something from a pile. I’d sometimes find items I’d accidentally catapulted on the other side of the map hours later.
Granted it’s a small miracle Alta’s got the game onto Quest at all, but the aggressive pop-in employed to get consistent performance underscores that the best standalone version of the game is probably another one or two hardware generations away. In its Alpha state, it’s easier to accept these flaws, but be warned that Township is by no means a smooth experience.
A Township Tale Review – Final Impressions
A Township Tale is a VR great in the making. I know that because, well, it’s already great. It’s impeccably rich in almost every one of its many disciplines. For starters, there’s fantastic, VR-first interaction that has you really engaging with everything from forging a sword to chopping down a tree. Its world is also huge and full of meaningful discoveries to make, and the game not only facilitates eight-player co-op, but makes the space for each of those players to have a unique purpose in its world. If the loop of gathering resources, crafting and then venturing further out into the wilds on your own steam appeals to you, you’ll spend endless hours discovering every nook and cranny here.
But, even years into the journey, Township is still early, with bugs to iron out, combat to improve and more content to introduce. Oddly, the best version of Township is likely at least a generation beyond even Quest 2’s capabilities; it sacrifices a lot to run well and yet still pulls off some incredible feats. But, given the game’s in-progress nature (and the fact this one purchase now will carry through to those future headsets), that’s an understandable reservation. Like so many others, I’m now in it for the long haul and, as long as Alta keeps busying itself with the back-and-forth of adding resources and spending them to improve A Township Tale, I will too.
For more on how we arrived at this rating, read our review guidelines. What did you make of our A Township Tale review? Let us know in the comments below!
Alta, the developer behind the popular online VR game, A Township Tale, wants to see the game come to PSVR.
The team’s Boramy Unn said as much in a recent interview with MCV. “We would love to release A Township Tale on PSVR and other VR platforms/storefronts,” the developer said.
Township released on Quest 1 and 2 last month, so a PSVR version certainly seems plausible. We’d definitely like to see the online RPG come to the upcoming PS5 VR headset, where it could take advantage of the console’s improved horsepower, too.
Unn also revealed that Alta wants to raise between $1.5 million to $3 million to release a fully finished version of A Township Tale. Since the project started in 2016 (and first released in 2018), Alta has been constantly adding new features and content to the game. It’s not yet clear what a ‘finished’ version of A Township Tale would look like, though.
We’re still working on our review of A Township Tale (trust me, it’s still coming). The game sees players start out discovering the ruins of an old town and then slowly restoring it to life by gathering resources and crafting better gear. With eight-player co-op and physics-driven gameplay, it’s one of VR’s most ambitious titles today. On Quest the game now has over 2,000 user reviews. The experience costs $9.99 on the standalone headset but is free to play on PC. The former version comes with in-game currency equal to that of the price you paid, though.
Would you like to see A Township Tale come to PSVR? Let us know in the comments below!
When it comes to the sheer amount of content available, being able to sink hours and hours into a videogame, Alta’s recent release of A Township Tale for Oculus Quest is hard to beat. It’s all about building and exploring your own world with friends and this weekend VRFocus is giving you a chance to win a copy for yourself.
A Township Tale gives you your own virtual server where you and up to seven others can team up, master professions and then go on adventures together. You can choose to become a blacksmith, woodcutter, miner, archer or warrior, each vital to the ecosystem as you recover crafting materials to make new equipment and improve your gear.
You can try by yourself but there’s so much to do and explore that bringing a few friends along for the ride makes it a whole lot easier. From chopping wood, mining the caves or cooking up new recipes, there’s plenty to learn, all of which require vital resources, some of which are in dangerous locations. And it’s all highly interactive, whether you’re lighting a fire or making a backpack, there’s no automation here.
In VRFocus’first impression of this massive videogame: “It’s an impressive achievement getting this massive open-world to work on Oculus Quest considering its hardware limitations. There are no loading sequences that I could find, run into a fort or go explore some dark and dingy caves and it’s all smooth and effortless, making A Township Tale truly feel immersive.”
So onto the competition. VRFocus has several Oculus Quest codes for A Township Tale to giveaway. There are multiple ways to enter the giveaway with the standard prize draw entry rules applying: Follow us (or already be following us) on Twitter (@VRFocus) or alternatively, visit our Facebook page or YouTube channel to get an entry for each. The competition will be open until 11.59 pm BST on Monday, 2nd August 2021. The draw will be made shortly thereafter. Best of luck.
A new patch for A Township Tale on Oculus Quest addressed some issues, bugs and concerns brought up after the game’s recent launch.
The biggest change comes to the game’s tutorial, which is now optional and can be exited at any time. I tried out the tutorial personally last week and found it to be quite confusing and oddly structured. This change will no doubt be a welcome one for those players who want to dive right into the deep end. Here’s what the developers had to say about the changes to the tutorial on Quest:
We’ve recognized [the tutorial] as the biggest pain point for new players coming to A Township Tale and trying to get into the game. We’ve decided that even if the Tutorial was perfect (which it isn’t), it should still be optional. This lets players of different adaptability start their adventure in the main game’s world whenever they wish. The tutorial can be returned to in the Main Menu at any point if certain details elude players. We still recommend doing the Tutorial, though.
Accessibility features have also been improved in this patch (which the team felt needed to be addressed given the expanding player base following the Quest release) in the form of adjustable player height. The developers say that ways to access belt docks will be expanded in a future update. Changes have also been made to the nutrition and fullness systems, as well general bug fixes and improvements.
You can read the full list of patch notes here. The update is available now for Quest users, with these changes to mechanics coming to PC VR “in the near future.”
