Yee haw cowboys! Pistol Whip’s new wild west-themed campaign, Smoke & Thunder, drops as a free update this summer for Quest and Rift platforms.
Smoke & Thunder is wild west-themed and will be the second in a series of new narrative-driven mini campaigns added as free updates for Cloudhead Games’ rhythm-based shooter. It follows on from the epic Terminator-themed 2089 campaign that was added last December.
Just like 2089, Smoke & Thunder features five new ‘scenes’ (Pistol Whip’s name for a level or track) and will tell “the tale of two sisters set in the Wild West where trains, tech, and explosions set the scene for some exciting surprises.”
In addition to Smoke & Thunder, the update will also include The Concierge campaign, which was meant to launch in late 2020 but was then pushed back to 2021. There’s not much info on what to expect from The Concierge, but here’s how it’s described on the Oculus blog:
This update will release alongside The Concierge, which will unlock total customization for Pistol Whip players. Whether you prefer bottomless burst pistols or dodging through levels as a no-ammo pacifist, seemingly endless combinations of weapons and modifiers for every level will allow you to truly hone your play style. Compete in the ever-changing featured styles with multi-platform leaderboards, or dive in and build your own. The Concierge always has what you need.
Both Smoke & Thunder and The Concierge will drop in the same update for Pistol Whip, coming this summer. Keep an eye out for more details soon.
During the Game Developers Conference (GDC) back in March, Cloudhead Games’ CEO, Denny Unger teased details of Pistol Whip’s next campaign, indicating that it could be set in the Wild West. That’s very much the case with the studio confirming Pistol Whip: Smoke & Thunder will be coming to Oculus Quest and Rift during the summer.
Just like Pistol Whip: 2089, this new action-packed campaign will be set across five scenes (stages) with the storyline involving a pair of sisters. Few other details have been released so far, but expect to encounter plenty of explosions, trains and, of course, some pistol-whipping in what could be Pistol Whip’s least neon-drenched experience yet.
The launch of Pistol Whip: Smoke & Thunder will also herald the arrival of The Concierge update Cloudhead Games originally mentioned last year. While Pistol Whip does feature gameplay modifiers and gun customisation options, The Concierge is set to take those options to a whole new level. “Whether you prefer bottomless burst pistols or dodging through levels as a no-ammo pacifist, seemingly endless combinations of weapons and modifiers for every level will allow you to truly hone your play style,” notes a blog post. In addition to the customisation options, you’ll be able to compete in the multi-platform leaderboards which will have ever-changing featured styles.
For the sound of it, Pistol Whip: Smoke & Thunder and The Concierge will be Pistol Whip’s biggest content update to date, greatly rounding out the experience for new and seasoned players. The Pistol Whip 2089 campaign was free DLC so that could well be the case again, VRFocus expects Cloudhead Games might do the same again.
The rhythm action shooter has been a big success for Cloudhead Games since the initial launch in 2019. VRFocus thoroughly enjoyed playing Pistol Whip, saying in its review: “Pistol Whip is huge amounts of fun even on the easiest difficulty setting, suitable for VR players no matter their skill level.”
Pistol Whip: Smoke & Thunder is part of the Oculus Gaming Showcase, the first time Facebook has held such an event, mainly due to events such as GDC unable to take place. Summer 2021 is going to be a big one for the Oculus platform so keep reading VRFocus for all the latest updates.
Similar to the previously released Pistol Whip ‘2089’ expansion, the game is due to get another free expansion called ‘Smoke & Thunder’ which will bring five new levels tied together by a short narrative with a Wild West vibe. The update will also bring ‘The Concierge’ which is said to drastically expand the game’s modifiers, allowing players to come up with new and more challenging ways to play.
Launched earlier this year, Pistol Whip‘2089’ was a free, five-level expansion to the game which also brought new gameplay ideas and a light narrative illustrated with graphic-novel style art. Check out our review here.
Pistol Whip ‘Smoke & Thunder’ will be a similar expansion, with five new levels that follow a different narrative, in which “trains, tech, and explosions set the scene for some exciting surprises,” says developer Cloudhead Games. The studio revealed a teaser today for the upcoming expansion during the Oculus Gaming Showcase.
In addition to the ‘Smoke & Thunder’ expansion, the update will also bring ‘The Concierge’, which the studio says will “unlock total customization for Pistol Whip players.” The Concierge will seemingly rework the existing modifier options while introducing new ones.
“Whether you prefer bottomless burst pistols or dodging through levels as a no-ammo pacifist, seemingly endless combinations of weapons and modifiers for every level will allow you to truly hone your play style.”
Further, it sounds like ‘The Concierge’ will present pre-made modifier sets which will have their own leaderboards, and those sets will rotate on a regular basis, giving players fresh competition to chase.
Both Pistol Whip ‘Smoke & Thunder’ and ‘The Concierge’ are set to launch this Summer.
Cloudhead Games posted a video on its YouTube account showing a full playthrough of an alternate ending for Aperture Hand Lab.
Aperture Hand Lab launched in 2019 as an on-boarding experience for Valve’s new VR controllers. It was a collaboration between Valve Software and Cloudhead Games, the latter of which had been reaching out to companies to talk about building a VR project in the years leading up to Hand Lab’s release.
Pre-Hand Lab, Cloudhead’s pitches for VR experiences didn’t seem to land with many of the large companies they were talking to. However, Valve was the exception and Cloudhead was brought on board to develop what would became Aperture Hand Lab. This week, almost two years after it’s release, Cloudhead CEO Denny Unger said the company had got permission from Valve to post a video of this unfinished, alternate ending to the game.
The alternate ending is called Nutritional Information and involves handling different types of food and placing them into a “ballistic feeding device” as ammunition. You then use the device to shoot food into the mouth of a creepy giant animatronic face. Each of the foods has different requirements that use the Index controllers in different ways — walnuts need to be crushed in your hand, eggs need to be delicately handled to be delivered whole and the lemons need to be squeezed directly into the ballistic device.
Now that we've revealed the secret alternate ending of Aperture Hand Lab, the trash in the basement of failed experiments might make more sense There are other experiments gone wrong down there too! pic.twitter.com/tClvLeTBAK
— Denny Unger @CloudheadGames (@DennyCloudhead) April 19, 2021
There’s even a nice reference to the infamous cake from the Portal series, when the user has to open some cake mix and pour it into the ballistic device so that they can shoot cakes at the giant face.
A lot of the assets in Nutritional Information are incomplete as the ending was abandoned and never finished, but it was still clearly enough of the way through development to be shared with the world in video form two years later.
Every weekend VRFocus gathers together vacancies from across the virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) industry, in locations around the globe to help make finding that ideal job easier. Below is a selection of roles that are currently accepting applications across a number of disciplines, all within departments and companies that focus on immersive entertainment.
Don’t forget, if there wasn’t anything that took your fancy this week there’s always last week’s listings on The VR Job Hubto check as well.
If you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s feature. Details should be sent to Peter Graham (pgraham@vrfocus.com).
We’ll see you next week on VRFocus at the usual time of 3PM (UK) for another selection of jobs from around the world.
Today during a GDC Showcase digital event talk, Cloudhead Games CEO Denny Unger revealed that Pistol Whip is getting a new story-based campaign similar to Pistol Whip 2089, except this time it will “revolve around the past” instead.
New Pistol Whip Story Mode
Unfortunately the talk is not publicly available yet, but if you have a GDC Showcase registration it aired today at 9AM PT during the ‘Developer Spotlight’ segment of the “Future of Gaming: Quality and Connection” fireside chat.
Here is what he had to say, the relevant announcement details are bolded:
We have plenty of updates we’re doing to Pistol Whip…but something we’ve always wanted to do is a thing called Labs, it’s a division of Cloudhead that lets us experiment more deeply with VR as a technology.
Back in December 2020 we released our first cinematic campaign and it was called Pistol Whip 2089 and it was set in the future. It had a snappy story mode tying it all together with new weapons, new modifiers, a boss battle, and it was really well-received. We’re working on another one, no surprise there. Again it’s five scenes, new modifiers, new weapons, new bosses, and it takes us into the past. It revolves around the past and it’s gonna be a ‘Wild ride!’ and you can infer whatever you want from that.
We’re also working on ‘concierge’ which is a system that dives really deep into modifiers and making Pistol Whip an even more accessible experience with a ton of different ways to play the game. We have so much more to push into Pistol Whip over the next year, and likely beyond that, that’s one great thing we’re seeing about the VR market in general is that when titles do well they do well for a really long time if they’re well-supported.
It certainly sounds like Pistol Whip isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. At the end, Unger mentioned there are other projects as well that he cannot discuss yet.
Cloudhead Games’ rhythm-shooter Pistol Whip was an excellent virtual reality (VR) title that the studio continued to improve by way of cinematic campaign Pistol Whip 2089. This week is the online Game Developers Conference (GDC) with Cloudhead Games CEO, Denny Unger, taking part in one of the sessions. During which he revealed that another campaign was in development and that it would take place in the past.
Most of Unger’s session focused on how Cloudhead Games had got to where it is today and what the team had learnt – which was interesting in itself – yet it was his teasing mention of what’s to come for Pistol Whip which should get fans excited.
“We’re working on another one, no surprise there,” he smiles. “Again five scenes, new modifiers, new weapons, new bosses. And it takes us into the past. It revolves around the past and it’s gonna be a wild ride [in a cowboy accent] and you can infer whatever you want from that.” Whilst saying “wild ride” Unger also makes a double hand gesture suggesting holding the reins of a horse. Now, this could be a bluff on his part but it certainly seems like Pistol Whip will be heading to the Wild West at some point. No dates on that just yet.
Given Pistol Whip’s striking visual art style with pulsating colours and a tendency towards very geometric shapes, going with this particular theme will certainly create a Wild West like no other. Yet it makes sense, strolling down a dusty street shooting faceless bad guys in doorways and on rooftops easily fits with Pistol Whip’s gameplay.
Expected far sooner after being initially revealed in 2020 is the “Concierge” update. Originally slated to arrive around the same time as the campaign, the update is now expected this Spring. Solid details on what it’ll include haven’t been released, just that it’ll feature an Arcade mode and that modifiers will play an important role.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Pistol Whip and Cloudhead Games’ latest VR advancements, reporting back with further updates.
Pistol Whip 2089 deviated from previous Pistol Whip releases in the sense that it added a “cinematic” campaign mode rather than just individual song tracks like it had before. This mode still features the iconic neon-soaked aesthetic and borrows heavy influence from the likes of Terminator.
The story is delivered via narrated dialog and comic book-style artwork between moments of gameplay. It’s a really good format that we hope to see other non-traditional VR games adopt or iterate on going forward. You can read more about the development process here.
I can tell you that, personally, when I first played the release version of Beat Saber after spending time with Early Access and saw a single player campaign option, my mind immediately hoped for something like this rather than just nodes on a map with objectives.
People probably don’t play games like Pistol Whip for the story, but it certainly does offer something unique and engaging in a way that “just another” music track never could. It would be great to see Cloudhead continue down this path with more structured, narrative content in Pistol Whip if for no reason other than we get to enjoy them flexing their story muscles once again while we wait for updates on The Gallery Episode 3.
Have you tried out Pistol Whip 2089? Do you plan on checking it out now that it’s coming to PSVR? Pistol Whip 2089 is a free update. If you’d like to buy the game itself, it’s available on PSVR, PC VR, and Quest for $24.99.
Pistol Whip’s blend of music and shooting is an addictive experience found nowhere else, hence why it has been so popular. Cloudhead Games went a step further by releasing free DLC campaign Pistol Whip 2089 for PC VR and Quest last year and now PlayStation VR players can get in on the action.
The cinematic campaign is essentially five Pistol Whip ‘scenes’ woven together, with animated cut scenes linking them all together. As such there’s a suitable sci-fi narrative to follow where you play a guy called John Asimov who tries to shut down a plague of killer androids which has overrun an off-world colony.
Pistol Whip 2089 provides players with not only new songs, environments and enemies to destroy but also a new gun to wreak your vengeful carnage. This offers some multi burst goodness so taking down scores of robots becomes even more exhilarating. As for how long it’ll take you: “The entire campaign is a little under thirty minutes in length, which is a few minutes longer than the first Time Crisis, Cloudhead Games notes over on the PlayStation Blog.
Those new songs come from Black Tiger Sex Machine, Draeden, Processor, as well as an exclusive remix from Magic Sword. The studio also answers an important question regarding all the new content: “yes, all of 2089, including scenes and mechanics, will be available in Arcade mode with our next massive update, Concierge.”
Previously described as a ‘game-changing update’, Concierge was revealed during last summer when the studio unveiled its Pistol Whip roadmap. Details of its features have yet to be revealed but its currently stencilled in for a Spring 2021 release.
Everyone who plays Pistol Whip seems to enjoy its rhythm-action gameplay with VRFocussaying in its review: “Pistol Whip is huge amounts of fun even on the easiest difficulty setting, suitable for VR players no matter their skill level.”
As further details regarding the next update appear, VRFocus will let you know.
Having started production on its first title even before the original Oculus Rift DK1 development kit was sent to developers, Canada-based Cloudhead Games is one of the world’s most veteran game studios dedicated to virtual reality. The studio has staked its very existence on its ability to build compelling VR games. With three prior games under its belt, Cloudhead poured its hard-won expertise into its latest, Pistol Whip, which has propelled the studio new levels of success.
The 2016 launch of Cloudhead’s first game, The Gallery – Episode 1: Call of the Starseed couldn’t have been under more ideal conditions. The studio was among a handful of developers which received access to early to HTC Vive development hardware, allowing the game to launch side-by-side with the headset. Call of the Starseed was lauded and promoted at the launch of the Vive by Valve and HTC as one of the first VR titles to take true advantage of VR’s capabilities.
Image courtesy Cloudhead Games
Critics praised Call of the Starseed’s polish and scope as a departure from other early VR titles which felt more like demo games. In the following years, Call of the Starseed and its sequel, Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone (2017), would see regular mentions in discussions of top VR games.
Despite the praise and momentum, the success of Cloudhead’s latest title, Pistol Whip (2019), has positively dwarfed what the studio earned from its early entries in VR.
Data courtesy Cloudhead Games
On top of this exclusive look at the studio’s relative revenue, Cloudhead also shared that its sales in December 2020 were up 60% over December 2019. Further, the number of users that have played the studio’s games increased by 131% from 2019 to 2020.
Cloudhead CEO Denny Unger tells Road to VR that Pistol Whip’s success has come from both by a growing VR market and a major pivot in the studio’s approach to VR design, which was driven by Cloudhead’s hard-won VR expertise and the frightening state of VR in 2018—when the studio came uncomfortably close to being forced to abandon VR altogether.
The Storm
Art promoting Pistol Whip’s ‘2089’ update | Image courtesy Cloudhead Games
“2018 was a really terrible year for VR. Most of the major OEMs were waffling on what they were going to do, the [performance] numbers weren’t great, a lot of our peers were closing up shop […]. That [period] coincided with a bunch of decision making about what our next project would be,” he said.
“We had a really short [financial] runway at that time and we had to look at what was working on market. We knew it had to be accessible. It had to be really easy to share and compete with friends. You had to look good while playing it—we thought about how influences would look while playing it. It had to have high replayability, it needed to be a games-as-a-service model, and, really importantly, it had to be targeted toward the Quest.”
Pistol Whip was thus conceived and launched, at a pivotal moment for Cloudhead and the industry as a whole.
“At this time we knew three things: we knew Quest was coming, we knew that Valve Index was coming, and we knew that Half-Life: Alyx was coming. […] if those three things did not drive a turning point in the VR market, then nothing would. And at that point then we would have to pivot away from VR.”
The turning point the studio was betting on finally came, largely driven by Quest in 2019 and bolstered further still by Quest 2 in 2020. In relatively short order, the studio has gone from staring down the end of its financial runway to laying down strategic plans years into the future.
“This, to me, is definitely a turning point in the market—a serious one—this is not a ‘maybe’ thing. It’s the first time, over the last eight years, that […] we’re now profitable to the degree that I can confidently say that we’re gonna be here for a few years,” Unger said. “And we’re a 25 person studio—that’s no small thing—I don’t actually think many VR studios can say that. We don’t have VC funding, we don’t have a board of directors, we’re completely running on our own steam. A big portion of [this success] is coming from the Quest market.”
Cracking the Code
Art featured in Pistol Whip’s ‘2089’ update | Image courtesy Cloudhead Games
A growing market is great news for all VR developers, but few apps are seeing Pistol Whip levels of success. What’s different about it?
“Retention and time played have both been really important metrics [for Pistol Whip], and we’ve seen massive spikes in that with Quest and Quest 2. People keep coming back, over and over and over again,” said Unger. “[…] Oculus made a point of letting us know how amazing that specific aspect to our game was, that it just has this really sticky quality that keeps people playing, and that it’s not slowing down.”
Compared to The Gallery, Pistol Whip is a radically different kind of game. Rather than a linear narrative adventure, Pistol Whip is a replayable shoot’em up which couldn’t be easier to pick up and play. Unger said that while Cloudhead still has ambitions to build the third episode of The Gallery, Pistol Whip was built for the needs of the VR market as it exists today.
In deciding on the pivot, the studio reasoned that the breakdown of consumer interest in various genres—shooters, platformers, simulation, strategy, narrative adventure, etc—is roughly the same in VR as it is outside of VR. So to build a VR game in a genre that’s already niche outside of VR would be building a niche in a niche—not a recipe for success.
That meant setting aside the narrative adventure of The Gallery, and picking something with wider appeal. At the same time, the studio made a conscious choice to focus on ease of use.
“[…] one of the pillars for Pistol Whip was that we want to engage the ‘lizard brain’—the reactive mind. Not the mind that has to be deeply analytical about things. And the way we do that is we put you in a situation that’s threatening, and you just react. So there’s a lot of movement that happens in Pistol Whip—physical movement—that’s just driven by these underlying subconscious systems,” Unger said. “And that was a really important breakthrough for us. Like, ‘how do we tease out people moving or behaving in this specific way’ without them even having to think about it? And I think that’s where players get a lot of enjoyment out of Pistol Whip, because they’re active, they’re moving around in the environment, and they’re only focused on shooting and survival.”
Interestingly, the realization that ease-of-use should be a key pillar actually came from fizzled business pitches between Cloudhead and Hollywood studios.
“[Development of Pistol Whip] came off the tail of doing—god I don’t even know how many—pitches with Hollywood. They were really desperately trying to wrap their heads around how they could utilize VR,” said Unger. “[…] even though most of those things fell apart—and Hollywood kind of dropped the ball on VR in general—the benefit of doing that exercise for us was that we really had to ask ourselves some tough questions about how complicated you can really make a VR experience for Joe Blow consumer. And that led us to some assumptions about about what we had to nail on Pistol Whip.”
One of those tough questions was how the game should handle locomotion. While The Gallery, and plenty of other VR games, have ported basic stick-based movement from the non-VR games that came before, Cloudhead had other plans for Pistol Whip.
“[…] one of [our key lessons] was recognizing […] that actually locomotion is something that kind of needs to ‘go away’ in VR. And I don’t mean that you stand in a room and just stand there—that’s not what I’m talking about. The cognitive load of thinking about how you have to move needs to go away,” said Unger. “[…] It should still happen in an experience, but you need to totally remove that cognitive load from the user so they can focus on the other things they’re doing in the virtual environment.”
The same concept of ‘low cognitive load’ carried into the game’s interaction design too.
“[…] this is a bit old school but, in a way I don’t like that there’s so many buttons on modern VR controllers. I actually appreciated the [trackpad on the original Vive controllers] because it forced designers to think more VR-centric… like ‘how do I make my hands do the thing in the experience [instead of using a button]’? For me it’s going back to simplified input. Again, the user shouldn’t have to think about how to do a thing. It should just be a natural organic thing that they already know how to do.”
There are other experiments gone wrong down there too! 
