Waltz of the Wizard (2019), the single-player spellcasting experience for SteamVR, Quest, and the original PSVR, is bringing its magical exploration and dungeon crawling to PSVR 2 next month.
Waltz of the Wizard started out life as a casual exploration game that put you at the top of a very Hogwarts-inspired castle spire. There, you combine arcane ingredients into a boiling cauldron with the help of an ancient talking skull, unleashing spells upon a fully interactive and mysterious world using technologies like voice interaction and gestures.
Introduced later in the ‘Natural Magic’ expansion, Waltz of the Wizard essentially tacked on a pretty substantial dungeon crawling game that tasks you with mastering arcane spells so you can also take on a dungeon of baddies.
New to the list of features is the addition of PSVR 2’s eye-tracking as an input method. We haven’t seen exactly what the studio has up its sleeve there, but it seems like it will at very least allow you to visually select baddies before blasting them to bits with your magical spells. There’s also set to be asymmetric co-op on PS5, letting you team up with a non-VR player to let you take on dungeons.
The studio says its PSVR 2 version includes:
Cutting-edge voice, eyes- and gesture interaction abilities
Large campaign with storyline, combat and challenges
Hundreds of voice interactions (English)
Infinite level generation mode for endless fun
Eye-tracking interactions with characters and magic
Dozens of unique haptic effects (rumble, trigger, head)
Team up with a friend in asymmetric co-op!
Aldin Dynamics says Waltz of the Wizard is coming to PSVR 2 October 3rd, 2023. You can wishlist it on the PlayStation Store here.
The Natural Magic expansion is available now for Waltz of the Wizard on Oculus Quest and SteamVR.
The update is free for existing owners of Waltz of the Wizard at launch. After launch, developers Aldin Dynamics confirmed that Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition will be renamed to Waltz of the Wizard: Natural Magic and see a price increase from $9.99 to $19.99.
According to Aldin Dynamics, the Natural Magic expansion uses a new “magic physics engine” that leverages “natural movements, gestures and mic input” to simulate magic actions that manipulate the environment and cast spells:
The foundation of Natural Magic is built upon a unique magic physics engine that’s entirely new to VR, where magic is conjured and controlled through natural movement as if it were real. Venture into a 40-level fortress to recover lost artifacts from beings that harness magic to control time and space – or discover strange oddities and secrets in a friendly wizard tower and mysterious courtyard.
Natural Magic is not the end of the road for Waltz of the Wizard content either — Aldin Dynamics says it is still working on “new technologies, content and features” for the game that will be released as an update in a similar fashion to Natural Magic.
Waltz of the Wizard is set to see a major free expansion called ‘Natural Magic’ which will add a new “simulated magic” system to expand player capabilities alongside a dungeon for players to plunder and battle new enemies.
Waltz of the Wizard is a long-running VR title that’s been in continuous development by developer Aldin for years now. What started as a sort of VR sampler platter is evolving with a larger magic-based sandbox and a brand new dungeon for players to conquer. This is all coming in the free ‘Natural Magic’ update that’s now set for a July 6th release date.
While the current version of Waltz of the Wizard lets players experiment with various magical abilities, potions, and more, ‘Natural Magic’ is promising to expand the game with a “unique simulated magic system with intuitive controls and temporary power-ups that change how it works.”
Image courtesy Aldin
Beyond the expanded magic system, there’s a large courtyard for players to experiment in, along with a fortress with enemies that players can take on once they’ve learned the ins and outs of their abilities. Inside the fortress, developer Aldin says players will be able to find artifacts that tell a story, and on the whole, the studio says the expansion adds “hours of entertainment” to the game.
Image courtesy Aldin
The expansion will be free for players who already own the game (currently $10), though the studio says the base price will increase around the launch of the expansion. Waltz of the Wizard: Natural Magic is set for a July 6th release date on Quest, Rift, SteamVR.
Hrafn Thorisson, the CEO of Aldin Dynamics, has said that the team is holding off on updates for the PSVR version of Waltz of the Wizards until Sony talks more about the future of VR on the PlayStation platform.
Aldin Dynamics is best known for Waltz of the Wizard, which is available across most VR platforms, including PC VR, Quest and PSVR. However, while the game has seen regular updates on all platforms, Thorisson and co won’t keep investing in the PSVR version until they has an idea about what’s coming down the line for PlayStation and VR.
You can see the tweet here, or read a full transcription below:
Sony apparently isn’t hellbent on keeping 1st gen PSVR away from PS5, but question remains what they’ll do next. I think they should do PSPVR (PS5 connection option).
We’re holding off on further VR product updates on PS (including Natural Magic) until Sony talks what’s next.
Thorisson refers to the upcoming Natural Magic expansion as a specific example. Set to launch in 2021, Natural Magic is the first full expansion for Waltz of the Wizard and will give users new forms of magic to try out and new areas to explore. While the update was set to release on all platforms, Thorisson’s latest tweet indicates that the team will not work on the update for PSVR until Sony talks more about future plans for VR on the PlayStation platform.
PSVR hardware is supported on PS5 through PS4 backwards compatibility, however new PS5 games cannot use the PSVR hardware — only PS4 titles can support PSVR on PS5 through backwards compatibility.
Aldin Dynamics is planning a major expansion to Waltz of the Wizard on Steam and Quest that’ll add “Natural Magic” alongside large new areas.
The update is planned for early 2021 and Aldin is likely to raise the price for the game with release. So if you have a PC VR headset or a Quest and don’t have Waltz of the Wizard yet, now might be a good time to pick up the groundbreaking title so you get the Natural Magic update when it arrives.
Aldin Dynamics was founded in 2013 and Waltz has been the studio’s flagship game since shipping it in 2016 as an early example of room-scale PC VR with tracked motion controllers. The developers consistently expand and update it, with the extended edition available on Steam and Quest version being one of the few titles with controller-free hand tracking supported throughout. If you haven’t tried it already, Waltz of the Wizard’s finger-based slingshot is a must see on Quest.
Natural Magic
The Natural Magic expansion is described as Aldin’s first full expansion for Waltz of the Wizard with new forms of magic for users to control and new places to see. In particular, the new castle courtyard is triple the size of the main room from Waltz of the Wizard while still being jam-packed with interactivity throughout. There’s also a procedurally generated labyrinth filled with traps as well as “easter eggs and hand-sculpted events to add variety to the experience,” according to Aldin CEO Hrafn Thorisson.
The new magic system is pitched as a natural force in Aldin’s virtual world that’s connected to other forces like gravity and wind. “Your natural gestures control those energies, making magic feel and work more as if it’s real. Only the most skillful wizards will fully unleash their mystical powers,” the studio explains.
The expansion will also add challenges and achievements while featuring “improved visual fidelity on Oculus Quest 2.” There’s an official Aldin Discord group where you can join for a chance to be a part of the invite-only beta later this year.
“Visit the new castle courtyard and find the mysterious ritual circle to travel to new worlds – starting with the labyrinth,” the studio teases. “Adventurous wizards will explore its depths to recover forbidden knowledge and artifacts of the Observers, a race of interdimensional beings that have learned to harness magical energies to power strange gadgets and modify the fabric of space and time.”
Thorisson says they are exploring eye tracking and multi-user modes that might come into play eventually, depending on how things work out with the Natural Magic expansion. While the studio started its journey with Waltz of the Wizard on PC VR, Aldin seems to be experimenting the most — and finding very good sales — on Oculus Quest. So I asked Thorisson how he thinks the PC VR market stands relative to Quest.
“We think it’s very important to have SteamVR as an open alternative in the industry…we were one of the first roomscale developers, with one of the broadest features at launch for Index controllers and one of few with optimizations for 144hz,” Thorisson explained in an email. “That said, we think Quest is offering features that are vital for bringing VR to broader audiences and for what we are trying to accomplish. Standalone functionality, fully articulated handtracking and a more user-friendly consumer experience is something we continue to urge our friends at Valve and SteamVR partners to pursue.”
Waltz of the Wizard (2016) is a exceptionally well-built VR experience from Iceland-based studio Aldin Dynamics. As one of the pioneering demos to heavily feature object interaction back at the birth of consumer VR, it always felt like the curiously magical prologue to something much larger. And although Aldin hasn’t promised as much today, the studio is continuing on with development of Waltz of the Wizard in a new ‘Extended Edition’, heading to PC VR headsets next week.
Set to launch on July 10th, Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition will be a paid experience that Aldin says will help them continue to maintain Waltz of the Wizard as a “fun showcase of the potential of virtual reality.”
Essentially, the Extended Edition is a remaster of the original which adds new spells, interactions and secrets. Performance optimizations and new options are also in tow to “help keep the experience an excellent showcase introduction to VR,” the studio says.
Aldin says on the experience’s Steam page (linked above) that they’ve included things like a roomscale-only locomotion option and also ‘reach-assist’ to make the experience more accessible for showcasing VR. The new experience also features Valve Index controller support too.
The studio says they can’t commit more resources to the free version while in the midst of their next (still unrevealed) project, however they’re using the Extended Edition as a way for them to continue providing support and updates to Waltz of the Wizard, while helping fuel development of new products.
The free 2016-era version will remain free for the foreseeable future, the studio says, although content updates will focus on the Extended Edition moving forward.
Aldin has set the Extended Edition’s price at $10 (with a 40% launch discount). Although a bulk of the experience can invariably still be experienced for free, this is actually the first way VR users will be able to support the studio and their future projects; you might well look it as a way to help fund one of the smaller studios that has not only gathered the hard-won knowledge on how to make magical and immersive VR experiences, but a studio that helped pioneer VR as we know it today.
Update (9:00 AM ET): Aldin reached out to us to clarify that Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition is actually set be priced at $9.99, with an added 40% launch discount. We’ve corrected this in the body of the article.
VR veterans Aldin, the indie studio behind Waltz of the Wizard and other early and innovative VR titles, has announced the closure of a $1 million Seed investment. The money will be used to support the studio’s next project which aims to create “believable virtual realities” by fusing VR and AI to push the boundary of interactive storytelling.
Based in Reykjavik, Iceland, Aldin is an indie VR studio which has been an early innovator in the VR game development space with its first two titles, Trial of the Rift Drifter and Asunder, developed well before the first major VR headsets were launched in 2016. The studio’s latest and most successful title is Waltz of the Wizard, launched in May 2016, which is a magical playground of sorts, with lots of satisfying item interactions to experiment with. The title is one of the top rated VR games on Steam, and Aldin says it’s seen more than 250,000 downloads—a success in the world of VR, though certainly helped by the fact that the game is free.
But beyond content, Aldin has also worked on underlying VR technology, like the studio’s ‘Ghostline‘ VR analytics suite, which distils players behaviors into useful data that can aid in improving VR game design. The studio has also developed its own VR locomotion technology called Telepath, which it describes as a “more immersive substitute for teleporting.”
Today Aldin announced that it has raised a $1 million seed investment, led by Crowberry Capital, with participation by Investa and the Icelandic Technology Development Fund.
The studio says its next step is to “develop believable virtual realities” by fusing VR and artificial intelligence to create new levels of character interaction and storytelling. As part of the investment announcement the studio is teasing a forthcoming, but still unannounced, VR title.
“Aldin’s next title will let users step into a fantastical world and become acquainted with a character in ways that could only happen in VR, powered by XR AI systems that help form personal connections with characters beyond what’s possible with screenbound entertainment,” the studio writes.
Aldin plans to reveal the new title by the end of 2018.
It’s been sometime since VRFocus heard much about Icelandic virtual reality (VR) software developer Aldin (previously called Aldin Dynamics), the creator of Waltz of the Wizard for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Today, the team has revealed a successful seed funding round, securing the studio $1 million USD of investment.
The funding round was led by Crowberry Capital and joined by angel fund Investa and the Icelandic Technology Development Fund. Aldin will use the investment to produce new consumer VR entertainment products and to further develop the company’s technologies to make more believable VR worlds.
“The ability of old entertainment formats to astound and amaze is fading because we’ve seen it all before. We are ready for something new and completely different,” said Hrafn Thorri Thorisson, CEO & co-founder of Aldin in a statement. “Believable reality experiences are unlike anything that’s been possible in the past, offering the accessibility of movies and interactivity beyond conventional games. Since nothing can play on our emotions like reality, believable virtual realities are set to become the most emotionally engaging format in entertainment history.”
Aldin is currently developing a new VR title which it says will: “let users step into a fantastical world and become acquainted with a character in ways that could only happen in VR, powered by XR AI systems that help form personal connections with characters beyond what’s possible with screenbound entertainment.”
The new experience unites the elements of Aldins past products, Trial of the Rift Drifter, Asunder and Waltz of the Wizard, with further details and release dates set to be announced in the latter half of 2018.
“We’ve been at the forefront of VR since 2013, focusing on content and technologies that bring immersion and presence to the level that justifies VR and gives people a reason to want it,” adds Gunnar Steinn Valgardsson, CTO & co-founder of Aldin. “We are humbled and thankful for the amazing response to our earlier work. We’re now at the next frontier and we are going to deliver experiences that place users in worlds that are only possible in VR.”
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Aldin, reporting back with its latest announcements.
