Some of VR’s groundbreaking developers blazing a new trail with early VR releases are providing a lower-priced bundle on Steam.
The “VR Pioneers” bundle costs around $123.94, or 20 percent off, for a set of incredible games. Normally it would cost more than $150 to get all the games included in this bundle. I-Illusions’ Space Pirate Trainer, Cloudhead’s The Gallery Episodes 1 & 2, Survios’ Raw Data and Sprint Vector and, of course, Owlchemy Lab’s Job Simulator can be purchased together in the VR Pioneers bundle on Steam starting today. If you’ve already got some of these games the 20 percent discount should still apply to the remaining titles. This should allow VR headset owners to more inexpensively complete their libraries if they’ve missed buying a couple of these games over the years.
For those unfamiliar, Space Pirate Trainer is perhaps the definitive wave shooter of VR’s first generation and a fantastic introductory arcade VR experience alongside Owlchemy’s Job Simulator. Survios Raw Data and Sprint Vector explore the range of single player and multiplayer game modes with an assortment of weapons and ways to navigate through virtual worlds explored. Cloudhead’s The Gallery, finally, is a wonderfully inventive adventure with deep world-building and engaging puzzles.
If you’re new to VR in 2019 or just looking to catch up on a few missed games, this new bundle looks like a great way to catch up on quality VR software you might’ve missed.
Facebook just released the Oculus Rift S, HP is launching the Reverb and Valve’s Index headset is due to arrive in the coming weeks to early buyers — all brand new VR headsets on which these games can be played.
Cloudhead Games CEO Denny Unger recently tweeted what appears to be an unreleased VR headset and motion controllers using SteamVR 2.0 tracking basestations.
Cloudhead Games have been at the forefront of VR development ever since the studio brought a 2013-era prototype of The Gallery: Call of the Starseed (2016) to the Oculus Rift DK1 and Razer Hydra motion controllers. About two years later the studio announced they were working closely with Valve and HTC to bring The Gallery as a Vive launch title, which makes heavy use of object interaction thanks to the Vive’s motion controllers.
With this in mind, it comes as no surprise that Cloudhead has become a trusted name in VR, giving them a unique opportunity to get their hands on unreleased VR hardware from the biggest players in virtual reality.
Many key parts of the image have been blurred out, including most of the headset and all of the motion controllers. Unger deleted the tweet shortly after posting it on Friday, although it can still be found in Google’s webcache.
Despite the blur, the controllers really aren’t such a big mystery at this point, as they’re very likely some iteration of Valve’s Knuckles controllers, which feature an unmistakable hand strap and ‘open palm’ design.
Image courtesy Google Webcache
An active SteamVR 2.0 basestation can also be seen in the full image above, lending credence to the fact that both the controllers and headset are tracked by Valve’s recently updated positional tracking standard.
The blurred-out VR headset is a much larger mystery at this point however. While it’s impossible to say exactly what it is, we can tell you what it isn’t. The profile, which has been retained partially despite the laughing-crying emoji and blur, isn’t consistent with HTC Vive, HTC Vive Pro, Oculus Rift, Windows VR headsets, Pimax VR headsets, or any other headset we know of. We can also see that the headset is indeed a tethered PC VR unit.
Here’s a closeup of the headset’s partial profile:
Image courtesy Google Webcache
Unger tweeted further to clarify his reasons for posting and subsequently deleting the image, saying that he deleted the tweet because “[i]t was honestly just a tweet about being in stealth mode for so long.”
Why being in stealth mode is important for the studio, we just can’t tell; it’s clear Cloudhead is working on a third episode of The Gallery, as the second episode is set up to continue in a sequel.
Furthermore, Unger said that plenty of the VR hardware in the studio “is not fit for public consumption. From all major players. Small mods to existing hardware and previously publicly visible hardware that is just not primetime ready. Bla, bla, bla.”
So while Unger can’t confirm or deny whatever nascent headset is in the image, that won’t stop us from blowing past the “bla, bla, bla” boilerplate for some healthy speculation.
The most tantalizing hypothesis: Cloudhead may have their hands on some version of the Valve headset recently seen in a series of leaked images.
Image courtesy 2flock
While there are some similarities between the leaked image and Cloudhead’s mystery headset—namely the small lip that could be one of the Valve headset’s protruding camera sensors—it’s simply too blurred to tell for now, keeping this squarely in the realm of speculation.
Images courtesy 2flock, Google Webcache
Valve hasn’t publicly commented on the leaked headset, which appears to be either a late-stage prototype or developer kit. We do know however Valve has been extremely interested in pushing both new VR software as well as new hardware. Last summer they affirmed VR’s role in the company’s future in redesign of the company website, showing an evolution of their headset designs including a bare-wire unit in its early phases of development.
Whatever the case may be, it’s clear Cloudhead Games is continuing in its tradition as an early VR pioneer. The studio is touted as one of the first to develop and utilize teleportation in a VR game. Although teleportation is somewhat of a given now (love it or hate it), at the time it was a breakthrough in VR-native locomotion that focused gameplay on object interaction as opposed to more of the high-speed, nausea-inducing early stabs at VR locomotion.
Cloudhead Games, the studio known for pioneering several locomotion schemes during the creation of their well-received VR adventure series The Gallery, have just released a fresh demo for their latest game, The Gallery: Heart of the Emberstone (2017). The demo is a sandbox version of the Coliseum level that lets you get your hands on the game’s unique telekinetic powers before committing to the full game.
While dedicated game demos used to be the best way to find out if you wanted to take the full-priced plunge, in this late age of digital content distribution it seems not all developers commit to creating demos for their games, instead making users rely on refunds to get a taste of whatever it is they cooked up.
Cloudhead’s Heart of the Emberstone: Coliseum is now live on Steam for free, making for an easy way to dive head-first into the game’s magical powers, and step inside some of the game’s imposing architecture while you experience a no-spoilers slice of the story.
The studio says the demo was a way to “break up the monotony of the usual arcade fare in VR with a taste of a bigger adventure.”
Heart of the Emberstone is the second episode in the series after Call of the Starseed (2016).As a successor to one of the first room-scale games in existence, the second episode takes you deeper into the ’80s fiction-inspired universe and flushes out what proves to be a story as rich as the cinematic direction teased in the first. Far from being a one hit wonder, the second episode improves on the experience of the first in almost every way.
Find out why we rated Heart of the Emberstone a solid [9/10] in our review.
The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone from Cloudhead Games is officially releasing next month on October 18th, 2017, for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Back in June of this year the developers announced a September release window, but the game has been slightly delayed in order to insure the highest quality experience possible.
According to the developers:
“The game is effectively finished at this point, but as a small team we’ve decided to take the opportunity to put some extra love into Emberstone before launch. We’re running out of days in September, and while “Heart of the Octoberstone” doesn’t have quite as nice a ring to it, we feel it’s the right choice to make the best game for our fans…This was a hard decision to make, but we thank you as always, Reddit, for your support over these last few weeks and months especially. The adventure wouldn’t be possible without you.”
Just last week we got the chance to go hands-on with an updated build of the game and came away very impressed. Graphically it’s looking better than ever, the story promises more depth, the team is planning even more puzzles than before, and it’s reportedly twice as long as The Gallery – Episode 1: The Call of the Starseed, clocking in around 4-6 hours from early internal playtests.
The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone releases on October 18th, 2017 for Rift and Vive at a price point of $29.99. Owners of the first game will receive a “complete the bundle” discount and you’ll be able to purchase both games at launch together for a 10% bundle discount.
What do you think of this news? Will you be playing The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone? Let us know down in the comments below!
The sequel to Cloudhead Games’ early room-scale VR hit, The Gallery: Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed (2016), is nearly here. We got our hands on a limited preview of the soon-to-release Heart of the Emberstone, and if the little we played accurately represents the fit and finish of the final product, we’re in for quite a treat.
Note to the reader: Needless to say, if you haven’t played the first installment, Call of the Starseed, you probably shouldn’t read any further. Considering though the studio just slashed the price by 50% on Steam to only $10, it’s an easy buy for an hour-long experience that still holds up.
If you have played though, the preview only contains 10 minutes of gameplay, or two scenes-worth of what is said to be a 4-6 hour game.
Carrying on from when we left off last, traveling through space and time at the behest of our new (and clearly malevolent) acquaintance, the game begins with a disembodied monologue of your dear twin sister, Elsie, telling you that despite that fact that you settled down when she sought out adventure, that “we were meant for more.”
By virtue of the fact that you’re now traveling through space with a magical gauntlet that lets you move objects telekenetically, I’d say she was right about that.
Plopped down of what appears to be the far side of the Universe, you stand across a shimmering portal from the hunchbacked overlord, bidding you to travel to the Tower of Cogs to “fix yourself with a grasp,” a powerful tool of his own creation.
The Gallery: Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed
“It will make you better. More. Compliant. Elsie obtained her grasp with limited help. Lets see how you fare,” he bids. With your marching orders assigned, Hunchback-guy says he’ll be waiting with your sister until you get back. It’s all so deliciously ’80s as it harks back to The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986), two of the game’s main inspirations.
Sending me on my quest, a giant round door suddenly retracts behind me, casting an eerie red light as it opens to reveal a floating walkway covered in rubble. Clearing out the giant stones with my trusty gauntlet, I find a cube that fits right into the cube-shaped recess in the next door. This door retracts like a defocalized eyeball, leading me to a lift with a curious holographic control mechanism activated by your gauntlet.
image courtesy Cloudhead Games
Exiting the lift, I meet my first door puzzle. Nearing the door, a holographic tube appears, and much like the lift, I have to guide my now spinning runestone through to the other end. It’s a simple little thing, but the further I go, the more complicated the little holographic puzzles get. Later in the preview, I have to crouch down to get a good vantage point as I weave my runestone through rotating red barriers, that when touched set you back at the beginning. None of them are what I’d call particularly difficult, but it certainly puts an immersive twist on what could ultimately be a boring task of turning a lever. We’ll just have to see when we play the full game soon.
image courtesy Cloudhead Games
Stepping into what appears to be an ancient gladiatorial ring covered in desiccated corpses, a ghostly hologram of Elsie appears. She’s just as wowed as I am by the massive statues and the hot alien sun that seems to have made the planet no longer habitable.
image courtesy Cloudhead Games
Making my way to the only operating door in the gladiatorial pit, I enter into a small, windowed room that looks out over an eternal sandstorm obscuring my vision. Another hologram of Elsie appears to give me a hint. “It’s just like Operation!” she exclaims. Two more holo-puzzles down, and that’s when the roof is ripped off the room to reveal an honest-to-goodness giant lumbering forward. He seems curious, and not at all the sort that would squish me like the ant I am. A holographic map of the world appears, and I dutifully select the Tower of Cogs. The giant bends down to pick me up. Fade to black.
From my 10-minute play session, Heart of the Emberstone both looks and feels more polished than its predecessor. Although there weren’t any locomotion options in the preview, the stock blink teleportation definitely seemed more solid than Call of the Starseed.Textures also seem more ‘alive’ as well, although it could just be a fresh appraisal of the alien world combined with its intricate clockwork doors and holographic puzzles that wowed me.
Cloudhead has a really firm grasp on lighting, using it to draw your attention to smaller clues and casting it expertly to create dramatic effect, which in turn makes the experience truly feel cinematic.
There’s no launch date yet, but the Steam page maintains it’s set to release sometime in September. The game will also support both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive including motion controls. If you’re still twiddling your thumbs in anticipation though, feast your eyes on the teaser trailer—of course created to look like an ’80s made-for-TV movie.
My demo for The Gallery: Episode 2 – Heart of the Emberstone ended the exact same way Episode 1 ended for me: with my mouth open, staring up at the sky. In the first episode, you’re ascending into what can only be described as a portal of some kind as The Watcher, a mysterious and ominous character, talks to you about what’s coming next just before the credits roll. The ending of my Episode 2 demo was much more visually arresting.
At GDC 2017, Cloudhead Games allowed me to have the first hands-on preview of the upcoming sequel to their 2016 hit VR adventure title, The Gallery: Episode 1 – The Call of the Starseed [Review: 9/10]. After over $1 million in revenue and winning our award for Best VR Game Narrative of 2016, Episode 2 is picking up right where it left off.
The demo began with me standing in front of a large, circular door. I reached out with my right hand, which was laden with an ornate, clearly alien gauntlet — the same one you receive at the end of Episode 1. A crystal reacts to the glowing part of the gauntlet, triggering a mechanism that allows me to unlock the door by moving my hand forward.
From there, I’m treated to a room that I am later told will serve as the hub of the adventure. The Gallery: Episode 2 is designed as a longer journey (around 6 hours) rife with exploration. Instead of following a mostly linear path like the first game, this time you’re free to roam between different areas, unlocking secrets as you go.
For starters, this room contained plenty of secrets. In front of me was a shining pad on the ground that, when stepped upon, created a cascading effect of stones around me to spawn what looked like a topographical map. My guess is that I can use this hub portal to fast travel in the future.
To my left and right were chests that had floating crystals that I could once again activate with my right hand. This time, each of them spawned a special puzzle that needed to be solved very carefully. My hands disappeared and my right hand movements were now represented by only the crystal, which I had to slowly move through a tube.
Inside the tube I saw red obstacles that were moving around to hinder my progress. I had to carefully move the crystals through the tubes without touching the insides of the tube themselves. It sounds confusing, but you can see a glimpse of them in the teaser above.
After my demo of The Gallery: Episode 2 I spoke with the team at Cloudhead and they emphasized how small of a slice this demo was of the full game. I didn’t get to explore the greater world, I only saw one other character — a hologram of a woman exploring the room (could it be your missing sister?) and poked around with a few puzzles.
But that being said, what I did see got me very excited. This strange new alien world of Ember is coming to life in wondrous detail and I’m aching to dive back into this universe. The biggest issue with Episode 1 was the linearity and brevity; both of those elements seem to be improved, if just a bit, this time around.
The demo ended with a giant stone-like creature emerging from the smoke and shadows, standing tall above the tower I was inside, and reaching down with his enormous hand towards me as I stood there, mouth agape, looking upwards just as last time.
We don’t have an exact release date for The Gallery: Episode 2, but it is slated for Spring 2017, which means within just a couple of months. Stay tuned at UploadVR for more coverage on the game as we get closer to release.
The Gallery Episode 2 will release simultaneously for both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift with Touch this Spring. Cloudhead is also working on bringing both existing and all future episodes to PlayStation VR (PSVR) with no timeframe for release.
After you’ve been playing and critiquing games for a while, you start to get a bit jaded. You start to recognize a lot of the little tropes and tricks that developers use to try and catch an audience by surprise. Plot twists, good guys turning bad, and the whole slew of other seemingly “unexpected” devices all start to taste the same when you’re force fed them all enough.
The same goes for being shocked and awed by pretty visuals – we’re reaching that uncanny valley level of realism in traditional TV-based gaming on standard PCs and consoles, so the bar is raised higher than ever for something to really impress me anymore. Then I played The Gallery: Episode 1 – The Call of the Starseed and watched the credits roll with my mouth wide open.
First, let’s back up a bit. The Gallery: The Call of the Starseed is a slow-paced, narrative-driven, adventure/puzzle game for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift with Touch. You’ll take on the role of Alex, a young person searching an island for what happened to his/her sister. In The Call of the Starseed, Alex is whatever gender you want. While the first episode of this journey only lasted approximately 2 hours for me, by the end I was literally awe struck standing in the middle of my living room, mouth agape, desperately wishing for more.
What Cloudhead Games have accomplished here is such a rare and delightful balance between a mysterious narrative and a world ripe for discovery and exploration that it’s truly difficult to really describe. I have no qualms with saying that The Gallery: Call of Starseed may very well be one of the, if not the, most polished VR game I’ve ever played.
The episode’s final act is punctuated with some of the most spine-tingling moments I’ve ever had in VR.
Part of that is surely due to the fact that it’s a short piece of an otherwise much larger puzzle, but it’s also been in development for quite some time specifically with VR in mind. From the opening moments of the game – where you’re immediately thrust into an intuitive and incredibly well-made tutorial – to the game’s final moments that have you staring at the sky in sheer awe, Call of the Starseed is full of surprises.
One of the most delightful discoveries is the utter brilliance of the voice acting on display here. The female voice that guides you through the opening moments and narrates several of the cassette tapes you find scattered about is simply entrancing to listen to without moving or doing anything else. The episode’s final act is punctuated with some of the most spine-tingling moments I’ve ever had in VR due to the expertly voiced lines and reverberating 3D spacial audio. Whipping your head around in terror as someone descends upon you from what can only be described as a terrifying doorway to what looks like hell is an incredibly tense way to spend an evening.
One great but often overlooked feature of the HTC Vive and Oculus Touch motion controllers is how sensitive the triggers are. If I squeeze my finger down slowly on either, my fingers in the game will slowly move down as well. Once I reach the bottom of the trigger, I can click it down one notch further, which defines my hand in the game into a fully-clenched fist. The Vive wands felt more natural in my hand for holding objects, such as bottles or signal flares, given their shape and weight, while the Touch controllers felt like a natural extension of my hand, granting a more believable sense of hand presence. Either platform plays great when you have an optimal 360-degree tracking setup.
It’s all of the small touches like that with VR experiences that really make this game stand above the rest.
There is a tactful balance between puzzle-solving and exploration.
There was also not a single moment of combat throughout the entire episode. The closest I came to a violent confrontation with someone or something is when I was mistaken for someone else and shot at, but I wasn’t ever in any actual danger.
Movement is handled via Cloudhead’s much-touted “Blink” system. It works by you holding down the track pad in your left hand, then aiming the icon on the ground using head-tracking. You can swipe your thumb to re-position which direction you’re facing, then release to teleport to that spot. If you’re watching someone play, it can look a little jarring since there is so much blinking and switching happening on-screen, but when you’re in VR, it actually feels very natural and easy.
The Gallery: The Call of Starseed may very well be one of the, if not the, most polished VR game I’ve ever played.
There is a tactful balance between puzzle-solving and exploration. That balance is so perfect, in fact, that it’s at the core of what makes Call of the Starseed work so well. The beauty of shorter narrative games like this is that they’re devoid of any unnecessary padding or frustrating portions that expand the game for unnecessary reasons. Just as a puzzles was starting to wear on my patience enough to be frustrating, I’d figure it out and move on to the next area, albeit often very slowly.
The Gallery is a world that doesn’t force you to poke around and take your time, instead it begs you to. I never felt like hints or clues were too difficult to discover or that puzzles were designed in weird and obtuse ways, but rather, that I found solutions organically in my environment while playing and never felt like I was going too far out of my way to do so. All too often the answer to a problem in others games will be in a bookshelf on a forgotten floor behind a hidden candlestick or something equally as ridiculous, but not here. Everything feels natural and expertly paced.
I’m absolutely dying to dive back in.
Unfortunately I’m not able to go into any more specifics about what happens or what you’ll be doing exactly at the risk of spoiling things for you. Not because there are any revolutionary or profound moments or because there are huge plot twists that you won’t see coming. No, there’s no cheap tricks here. Once you’ve finished playing The Gallery: Call of the Starseed, you’ll see exactly what I mean.
Update: Since its original HTC Vive release, Call of the Starseed has also launched on the Oculus Rift with Touch controllers. Since the game does encourage movement and exploration, we recommend playing it with one of the experimental 360-degree sensor setup configurations, preferably three cameras. Playing with two front-facing cameras will not result in a comparable experience and using the full compliment of at least three is greatly preferable over even just two in a 360-degree arrangement. With the proper setup, it works great. This is still one of the best adventures found in a VR headset.
Final Score:9/10 – Amazing
The Gallery: Call of the Starseed is a short game, there’s no denying that. And just as things really start to pick up the pace, after the incredibly immersive and engaging cutscene that really opens the door for a whole galaxy of possible plot developments, it’s over. But those precious 2 hours you spend inside the game are some of the best you’ll find in VR on any platform. With The Gallery, Cloudhead uses simple, old-fashioned, awe-inducing beauty and immersion that hooks you instead of any cheap tricks or gimmicks and I’m absolutely dying to dive back in.
There are a lot of upcoming Oculus Rift games with Touch support. We spotlighted over 30 of them last month, but now know that 53 different titles are expected to be available on day one, December 6th, when the motion controllers launch next week. One of the games on that list will be the excellent adventure title, The Gallery: Call of the Starseed [Review: 9/10] from Cloudhead Games.
Back during the launch of the HTC Vive, The Gallery’s first episode released amidst a wake of tech demos and shallow experiences to show us that, albeit brief, immersive, engaging, and narrative-driven VR content was not only possible, but that it flourished from within a VR headset. While we are still impatiently awaiting the release of Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone, seeing The Gallery’s debut adventure come to a new ecosystem is great news. And in a way, it’s a bit of a homecoming.
And in 2012, The Gallery was one of the first commercially announced Oculus Rift titles and that was one of the targeted platforms when the game completed its $80,000+ Kickstarter campaign back in 2013.
“In 2012, Palmer Luckey and I would chat frequently in the MTBS3D forums on modern VR and how important it is to make the medium stick–I even did an early proof of the original Oculus logo,” says Cloudhead Games CEO, Denny Unger. “As a long time VR enthusiast I pulled together a group and began developing The Gallery with some of the earliest hardware. We were ambitious even back at that early stage; and we innovated systems for hand tracking, constraint & interaction, body persistence, VR comfort mode, and Blink Locomotion–many of which are still used by developers today. So this launch feels monumental; we have come full circle and are excited to be releasing The Gallery on Oculus now with the launch of the Touch controllers.”
Now, that mission is coming full circle when The Gallery: Call of the Starseed releases on Oculus Rift with Touch on December 6th, 2016.
