‘Rick and Morty’ VR Game is Releasing on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive April 20th

Rick and Morty are finally making their way to VR in Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality. Coming to HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets on Steam and Oculus Home, you can take part in the dimension-hopping adventure starting Thursday, April 20th for for $29.99.

Created by Adult Swim Games and Owlchemy Labs, makers of the tongue-in-cheek VR game Job Simulator (2016), Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is said to be a “fast-paced, chaotic VR adventure.” So expect plenty of puzzles and multi-dimensional missions as you, a clone of Morty, navigate and rummage through Rick’s garage and the Smith house for interactive items abound.

Road to VR‘s Michael Glombicki got a hands-on with an early version of the game, saying it’s “full of the same absurdist sci-fi humor that fans of the acclaimed Rick and Morty show know and love.”

In the game, you take control of a Morty clone, ostensibly created for the sole purpose of doing chores for Rick. The first task Rick gives you is to wash his dirty laundry by placing it in the washing machine and turning it on. It’s a very simple task, but everything about it, from placing the dirty underwear in the machine to turning the knobs, felt like a activity in Job Simulator. The reason for the similarity is that Owlchemy built the game using version 2 of their VR interaction system and so they were able reuse a lot of the same technology that powered Job Simulator.

 

image courtesy Adult Swim Games

Show creator and principal voice actor Justin Roiland has already published a VR experience through his newly created studio Squanchtendo that’s delivered a mix of his signature brand of bizarre and absurdity called Accounting.

Roiland has however had his eye on VR since at least late summer 2015 as he and Owlchemy Labs’ studio head Alex Schwartz (via the official Owlchemy Labs twitter) exchanged a few choice tweets discussing the possibility of collaboration.

Owlchemy Labs has developed and published over 20 games spanning desktop and mobile, including Aaaaaculus! (2011), one of the first games with Oculus DK1 support on Steam. As a launch title on HTC Vive, PSVR and Oculus Touch, the motion control-focused Job Simulator has not only garnered critical acclaim since release, but has reportedly surpassed over $3million in sales earlier this year and making it one of the most financially successful VR games to date.

“We really believe fans are going to lose their minds at what we’ve developed,” says Owlchemy Labs CEO Alex Schwartz. “It’s been an incredible experience to develop for one of our favorite shows and see the joy on players’ faces when they get to explore Rick’s garage in VR, physically step through portals, and interact naturally with their hands in the world they’re already so familiar with. Players are interacting with the world of Rick and Morty in a way only possible in virtual reality, and they love it!”

Check back for a full hands-on with the Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality game on April 20th.

The post ‘Rick and Morty’ VR Game is Releasing on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive April 20th appeared first on Road to VR.

‘Rick and Morty Simulator’: Making Narratives More Plausible through Interruption

alex-schwartzWhen Owlchemy LabsAlex Schwartz saw that Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland was a fan of their Job Simulator VR experience, then he reached out and met up with Justin in Los Angeles. They came up with the idea of creating an interactive Rick and Morty Simulator VR experience that would combine the mechanics of Job Simulator within the setting of Rick’s garage.

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When Alex started adding narrative components to the and discovered a big problem that would immediately break presence. Every character and action needed to be interruptible in order to maintain the plausibility illusion within the experience. Matching expectations is the biggest challenge for creating a highly interactive VR environment, and interacting with real humans means that they should have an appropriate reaction if you try to interrupt them. One of the most complicated new systems that Owlchemy Labs had to develop was a framework that could account for all different types of interruptions.

The result is that Rick and Morty Simulator is one of the most advanced interactive narratives that I’ve seen so far. Their interrupt system seamlessly blends highly dynamic interaction within a narrative structure that keeps the overall experience moving forward in what ends up feeling like a complete adventure within the Rick & Morty universe. There’s still a lot of work to be done in having the characters directly respond and react to your physical presence and action directed at them, and Alex says that this is one of the biggest open problems that they’re working on.

I had a chance to catch up with Alex at PAX West where we talked about how the Rick and Morty Simulator project came about, the importance of interruptions in interactive narratives, maintaining presence within VR, their workflow for writing and collaborating with Adult Swim and Justin Roiland, and some of the open problems that they’re working to solve.

Here are some tweets that document how Alex and Justin first got together.

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The post ‘Rick and Morty Simulator': Making Narratives More Plausible through Interruption appeared first on Road to VR.