Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. Today we’re talking about No Man’s Sky VR.
We’re smack dab in the middle of summer which means that the big Beyond update for No Man’s Sky should be dropping very soon. The Beyond update is of course the big overhaul that will include a revamp of its online offerings as well as full VR support for the native game on both PSVR and PC VR headsets.
Yes, that means you do not need to buy a separate VR version of the game (looking at you Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR, Borderlands 2 VR, etc) and you will be able to play online with non-VR players across the same universe and same save files. In fact, according to Sean Murray, over one million existing No Man’s Sky players have VR headsets ready to go.
We’ve gone hands-on with the VR update on both a Vive Pro and PSVR (you can read about those impressions here) as well as briefly on a Valve Index. Needless to say we’re extremely excited to play this game in VR and we’ve thought it fit the format perfectly ever since its original launch back in 2016.
With such an anticipated new release fast approaching (although we still don’t have a date other than Summer 2019) we need to know: What do you plan on doing first in No Man’s Sky VR once it launches? Are you eager to fly around exploring the stars or do you want to complete the journey to the center of the universe? Are you excited to meet up with friends in VR or do you just want to build bases across planet surfaces?
Let us know what you’re most excited to do down in the comments below!
Overwatch will be getting its own Lego sets. Blizzard made the announcement alongside a video of a small Tracer mini-figure that came to life in front of game director Jeff Kaplan.
The first time I played the Genesis port of Peter Molyneux’s Populous, one of the very first-ever God games, I really fell in love with the genre. The Black & White games followed after that and even though I severely lack the strategic insight to excel at real-time strategy epics like Total War, I appreciate the intimate management of city building games all the same.
It’s a big reason why the metropolitan creation of Sim City and army management of Heroes of Might & Magic dominated so many of my weekends as a kid. There’s something magical about lording over an area, telling tiny people what to do, and watching your plans come to wondrous fruition.
At the core of a game of Kingdoms and Castles is that desire to build a castle and expand across regions, but there’s also a medieval flair that helps set it apart and resemble the likes of the Stronghold series. You can see in the trailer below that in addition to building cities and castles, you’ll have to contend with ravaging Viking factions — similar to the Barbarians found in the early phases of Civilization games.
Kingdoms and Castles is being created by Lion Shield, an indie group made up of Peter Angstadt and Michael Peddicord. When it first launched its funding campaign on Fig, asking for just $15,000, VR wasn’t in the minds of the developers at all yet — that wasn’t added until the $55,000 stretch goal. They’re currently designing the game with optional VR support enabled with the Vive and its motion controllers in mind.
“We both love all the great city builders both old and new (like SimCity, Caeser III, and Banished) and wanted to add our own take to running a little world, specifically where building a castle would be important and meaningful,” said Angstadt in an email interview. “It’s a holistic kingdom experience – you grow your town over many hours, but also build castles to defend it. The bond you build with your town and the threats you must protect your people from are what make the best part – building castles – really meaningful.”
Part of the appeal of playing a game like this will be the ability to lean in and inspect areas, pick up and interact with things using your hands, and to look up at the sky or down the landscape at other areas. Since the camera isn’t locked into a fixed top-down angle, it will be much more immersive and flexible to move around the environment in VR.
“VR support for this project is a bit of an experiment,” explained Angstadt. “City-building hasn’t been done yet in VR, and we’re excited to see what can be achieved and how the gameplay can be improved with a VR option. From our preliminary development with VR in Kingdoms and Castles, the sense of immersion is unmatched compared to any city sim game we’ve ever played before. We want our players to feel connected to the world they are building and the people that they govern. Bringing the top down builder to VR seems like a natural and yet very exciting next step. Standing in the Kingdoms and Castles world with birds flying around, clouds overhead, and people at your feet – it’s fantastic.”
For those unfamiliar, Fig works a lot like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter, except you’re not just pledging funding, you’re also acting as real investors in the project itself, complete with potential returns on that investment. The platform is also specifically focused on funding only games, which makes it unique.
“We chose Fig because they are focused purely on funding games and offer a lot of direct support in making the campaign successful,” said Angstadt. “Since we’re a two-person team it’s great to have allies in helping the game get made.”
One of the other aspects you might notice immediately is the striking low-poly art style. The design is growing in popularity as of late, especially among indie studios, but it’s not something we’ve seen in city builders much. Typically these sorts of games seem to adopt a modern art style with actual buildings or a more traditional fantasy aesthetic due to the inclusion of castles and melee-wielding soldiers.
That’s not the case with Kingdoms and Castles. “The low-poly look is definitely making a renaissance,” said Angstadt. “I think it just takes time to percolate through all the different genres, especially those that are more difficult to make (like simulation games).”
Kingdoms and Castles is currently expected to release later this year with both VR and non-VR support. You can keep up with development by following the game on Steam Greenlight, Twitter and visiting the official website.
Last month we created a list of the five Oculus Rift and HTC Vive games we wanted to see head over to PlayStation VR. Today, one fifth of our wishes came true.
Fantastic Contraption, Northway and Radial Games’ wonderful building experience that can be traced all the way back to a 2D browser game, is making its way to PS VR next spring. PlayStation Move support will be included (you can see the controller models in the trailer below), as will all of the original 50 levels.
One interesting aspect of bringing any Rift/Vive game over to PS VR is tracking. While PS VR and two Move controllers offer pretty good tracking when facing forward, occlusion becomes an issue if you turn around, as the system only has one camera to refer to your position with. In the past, Fantastic Contraption has made a great showcase for room-scale tracking — it was one of the free launch games for Vive — but how does that translate to Sony’s headset?
“Room-scale doesn’t work on PSVR because of the single camera; turns more than 90 degrees or so can easily cause occlusion as well,” wrote Radial Games developer Andy Moore in an email to UploadVR. “Because PS VR users will play seated, standing, in close quarters, or in an open living room, we had to allow the player to move, position, and scale the island to make maximum use of their space. The further back from the camera you stand, the more you can expand your work area.”
A version of the game was shown at the PlayStation Experience conference recently, and Moore said “players were playing about 10 feet back from the camera and had slightly less than 2 yoga mats worth of play space in front of them; at another station we set up a chair and people played with the entire game contained in their lap.”
Critically for Fantastic Contraption’s jump to PS VR, the developers recently introduced the “Kaiju Update” that allowed for resizable levels. The update adds a ton of flexibility in how the game is played.
“All these configurations have their pros and cons, but thankfully at these smaller sizes controller occlusion isn’t as big a deal as we first thought it would be,” Moore wrote. “We’ve attained flexibility here, but it still is more fun the bigger you can make it.”
We look forward to seeing how the game works on PlayStation VR. They’ve certainly got some time to keep working on it and refine the experience before launching in Spring 2017.
Do you remember how you kept your LEGO blocks? For me, I stored all of them in a big box, unsorted and in complete chaos. Every playtime I would tip this box out and cause an almighty mess. I wouldn’t think about the pain of clearing it away until it was time to do so, at which point I would sigh and whine as I scooped up my inventions with two hands and dropped them back into the container to be forever forgotten as they drowned in a sea of plastic.
LEGO Brickheadz reminds me of that box. I open it up and virtual bricks tumble out of it. I can build what I want and cause as much mess as I please, only at the end there’s no tidy up time. On one hand, it’s like my childhood dream come true, though it ultimately can’t replace the real thing. At least not yet.
Released on Daydream last week for free, Brickheadz is very different to the LEGO games you’re used to seeing on games consoles. Rather than a themed adventure, this fully embraces the spirit of building toys to play with. The main experience is set in a vibrant bedroom in front of a space that toys — themselves based on the LEGO Brickheadz line of bulkier characters — come alive in. From a menu, you pick figures and objects and drag them down into the world with the Daydream controller.
In the main game, you’ll need to unlock more creations by solving simple puzzles that usually involve taking a certain character, giving them a certain item and a certain mood (which you can change by placing them on a portal), and putting them next to a certain object. The fun comes from experimentation; what happens when you give a lion a sword and set him loose on a scene? What if I introduce this magician to this woman looking lonely over here? There’s a playful invention here that adds a bit of Toy Story to the block building.
Where Brickheadz is best enjoyed, though, is with that building. At any point you can point to a frame to head into a creation mode, either following instructions to make your own figures, or tossing out the rule book and constructing whatever you please. You choose from sets of blocks that rain down from above and then use the Daydream controller to pick up individual pieces and place them on a mat. It’s a pretty small space, so what you can build is inevitably pretty limited itself, but there’s still plenty of room for playing around.
Daydream’s controller does an adequate job of simulating playing with LEGO blocks, though it’s a little too restricted. I often found myself longing for two position-tracked controls so that I could really stick these blocks together myself. Without them, sticking pieces together is more finicky. Still, it’s functional, and I could make things with relatively few mistakes. The sheer joy of playing with building blocks is still enough to make this the better half of the game.
Any good LEGO creation is built on a solid foundation. You usually have to start from within and build out, and you’re not sure how you’re going to get to your ultimate goal. I feel the same about LEGO Brickheadz in its current state. I want it to be the foundation for things to come, working toward a high-end game where I can easily build models much bigger and more ambitious than anything I could have put together from my box.
LEGO Brickheadz can be downloaded for free on Google Play.
