It’s been six months since 3D block building puzzler Cubismarrived on Oculus Quest, offering its simple yet addictive gameplay. Today, indie developer Thomas Van Bouwel has released the next major update to Cubism, adding hand tracking support as well as other content improvements.
Whilst the original SideQuest demo of Cubism did feature hand tracking, that wasn’t implemented into the official Oculus Quest release until now. On that first iteration van Bouwel notes in a statement the: “initial version didn’t properly take the limitations of the technology into account, meaning the quality of people’s experience would vary highly depending on their lighting conditions and their expectations of the feature.”
As for the improvements the developer has made to get the hand tracking to this stage, these include:
Puzzle pieces can be normally grabbed with fingertips instead of needing to be “pinched”
Buttons can be naturally pushed instead of needing to be “pinched”
Hand motion is smoothed out to prevent shaky-ness, which also results in more stable looking grabs
Fingers lock in place once an object is grabbed to give the appearance of a stable grip
Fingertips are coloured according to the puzzle piece you’re interacting with
Additional audio cues indicate when a piece is grabbed or a button is pushed
The game starts with a disclaimer to inform players on ways to improve the hand tracking experience (playing in a well-lit area & not crossing hands)
The hands indicate when they have lost tracking by fading to red, and inform the player if this is caused by them crossing their hands
“Hand tracking still has its limitations to be sure,” he adds, “but I’m excited to start supporting these new input methods that will hopefully make games and experiences like this more accessible and easier to share with new VR users.”
In addition to the hand tracking the update also features 5 new classical piano pieces by Robert Schumann and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikoyvsky and repositioning of the play area by pressing down on either joystick.
Cubism became one of VRFocus’ favourite puzzle titles of 2020, saying in its review: “Here you have a good example of why indie developers are such a vital part of the VR industry. Cubism would never have been made by a big studio yet it deserves your attention nonetheless.”
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Cubism, reporting back with the latest updates.
The 3D puzzler Cubism will be updated this Wednesday, March 17th, to support controller-less hand-tracking. A prior update released in December has paved the way for user-generated puzzles and puzzle sharing.
Cubism is a minimalistic 3D puzzler which has become one of the best rated games on Quest. The game’s relaxing pace and simple interactions made it seem like a perfect fit for Quest hand-tracking right out of the gate, but developer Thomas Van Bouwel said he wanted to polish hand-tracking support further before releasing it.
This Wednesday, March 17th, Cubism will get a free update which will allow the game to be played entirely with your hands on Quest and Quest 2 (controllers will of course still work too). Although the game is also available on Oculus PC and Steam, those versions of the game won’t support hand-tracking.
Prior to the upcoming hand-tracking update, Cubism was updated in December on all platforms with a handful of improvements in the ‘Mod & Replay’ update:
This added multiple save profiles, so that up to three players can play the game with separate progression. It also added initial support for custom puzzles; although this requires file management on PC or sideloading on Quest, the developer says it lays the groundwork for both an upcoming in-game puzzle editor and easier puzzle sharing in the future.
It’s been quite the year for the Oculus Quest platform, both positive and controversial. The standalone headset has gone from strength to strength with a growing catalogue of videogames and let’s not forget about the arrival of Oculus Quest 2. Whether you’re new to VR or not, here are VRFocus’ recommendations from 2020.
Below you’ll find 10 of the best videogames for Oculus Quest and this list is by no means exhaustive. It really was difficult narrowing down the selection and there are many more great titles on the store.
The Best Oculus Quest Games of 2020
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
For those who love a good zombie apocalypse Skydance Interactive’s The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is worth a look. Having to survive the mean streets of New Orleans, you’ll deal with dangerous humans and walkers alike. Scavenge houses for useful parts to keep you healthy or to craft more weapons, whilst uncovering the underlying storyline.
Go in silent with blades or a bow to avoid attracting attention or make some noise with pistols, rifles and more – just be ready for the horde. Plus in January 2021 a free horde mode ‘The Trial’ will provide wave-based action.
Cubism
Simple, elegant puzzle gaming, Cubismis the work of solo developer Thomas Van Bouwel. Featuring 60 puzzles, twist and turn them to try and fit the various colourful pieces inside. Easy to pick up yet difficult to put down Cubism is an indie gem to enjoy.
Blair Witch: Oculus Quest Edition
The horror genre has been well represented in VR and Bloober Team’s Blair Witch: Oculus Quest Edition is a great example why you should avoid the woods at night. Taking the standard 2019 title and giving it a VR twist, you have to explore the creepy woodland looking for a missing lad.
Along the way you have to deal with some strange events as well as your characters own PTSD and panic attacks. Lucky, by your side is your faithful pooch Bullet who can find hidden items as well as alert you to danger. Full of suspense and puzzles to solve, this isn’t for the faint of heart.
Until You Fall
When you just want a pure arcade hack-n-slash Schell Games’ Until You Fallis an energetic roguelite which ticks all the right boxes. Set in the neon fantasy world of Rokar you play a Rune Knight tasked with ridding the land of evil.
Gameplay revolves around runs through the world which changes each time due to procedurally generated levels. Combat is melee based, where you buy and upgrade various swords and knives adapt and conquer each run. Die and you return to the beginning a try again. Hectic and brutal, this is one videogame to get your heart pumping.
Population: One
Mixing the massive battle royale genre with VR’s interactive gameplay is Population: One. Taking place across one giant map which supports 18 players, across six squads with three players each, drop pods launch you onto the battlefield to see who can survive the longest.
Weapons and useful items are littered throughout the world as well as resources to build quick platforms for defensive and offensive capabilities. You can also climb anything you want and then glide across the map to gain an advantage. A relentless first-person shooter (FPS), one to keep you entertained for hours.
Phantom: Covert Ops
For a far more subtle shooter where you can be as stealthy or gung-ho as you like then nDreams’ Phantom: Covert Ops is a good choice. Playing as an elite operative infiltrating an enemy base, the unique element here is that you’re entirely confined to a kayak throughout.
So you can silently paddle through waterways, hide in reeds, and then snipe enemies to complete the task. Or with some C4 and the assault rifle tear the place up, your call. Completing mission-specific objectives or finding hidden secrets will unlock levels in the Challenge Mode, so there’s more to keep you entertained after the campaign is over.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted
The only other horror title on this list, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted goes for the classic jump scare, using it to great effect. A compilation of all the previous Five Nights at Freddy’s plus some made for VR content, all the levels are bite-sized mini-games where you have to survive the night.
With killer animatronics hunting you down encounters can include playing a security guard keeping an eye on monitors or crawling into claustrophobic ventilation systems to repair them. You know they’re coming, but it doesn’t make it any less scary!
Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale
Pure multiplayer madness for up to four people, Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale is all about preparing delicious lunches for your customers. They all have their own preferences with some more exacting than others, so it’s up to you and your team to deliver, no one person has all the ingredients. Therefore good communication and some speedy chopping skills are in order.
You have access to a fridge full of ingredients as well as a grills to toast (or burn) ingredients. Plus you’ll need to clear and clean plates as no customer wants their sandwich on a dirty plate. There’s also a single-player mode where you can team up with a kitchen robot assistant to tackle the various campaign levels. Good clean/messy fun.
In Death: Unchained
In a similar roguelite vein to Until They Fall, In Death: Unchained has procedural levels and single run-throughs where death puts you right back at the start, a little wiser and a little stronger. Here though, all you have is a bow – a crossbow can be unlocked – and an assortment of magical arrows to take down Templar Knights, demons, evil monks and other unearthly creatures.
One for those who love a challenge, there’s plenty to keep you entertained as the developer has just released a new gameplay mode called ‘Siege of Heaven’. Plus, like many on this list if you have an Oculus Quest 2 there are visual enhancements which make the world more impressive.
The Room VR: A Dark Matter
Fireproof Games took its hugely popular mobile series The Room and built The Room VR: A Dark Matter specifically for VR gaming. With an original storyline set in London, circa 1908, you play a detective called to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a renown Egyptologist from the British Institute of Archaeology.
Que elaborate puzzles, dark magic and fantastical gadgets to aid the investigation. These are all fully interactive to help engross you in each element plus the gameplay uses specific teleportation points so it should be a very comfortable experience for all players.
It’s the time of the season again for reflection, when we look back at this year’s greatest achievements in VR gaming and remind ourselves just how far we’ve come in the four years since consumers first delved head-first into truly immersive worlds.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, this year was plunged into an global economic cooldown which saw many industries grind to a halt. Comparatively unaffected though was the games industry, which could thankfully continue as developers took to finishing their projects at home from a safe distance.
In our fourth annual Game of the Year Awards, we again put ourselves to the task of celebrating this year’s greats in VR gaming. Moreover, we salute all developers for offering up their hard work and steadfast curiosity in the face of the same personal adversity we’ve all no doubt shared. We’re grateful for having safe places where we can connect and explore, and for lighting a world which at times may have seemed grim and unrelenting.
For many, this steady stream of VR games has been a lifeline to sanity, as physically stepping outside of our homes could mean either putting ourselves or our loved ones in danger’s path. We thank you for willing your virtual realties into existence for all of us to enjoy.
If you would have told anyone back in 2016—the year the first consumer PC VR headsets hit the market—that Valve (of all companies) would one day build a AAA Half-Life game (of all franchises) specifically for VR, we’d say you were crazy. Yet here we are, in 2020, giving Half-Life: Alyx our PC VR Game of the Year Award.
But before the release of Alyx earlier this year, there was still plenty of skepticism to go around. It was Valve’s first full-fledged VR game and the first Half-Life game in more than a decade. Could Valve deliver anything to possibly meet all that hype?
Well, the answer is now resoundingly clear. It turns out that Valve’s old-school, methodical (if sometimes messy) approach to game design works just as well for VR games as it does for non-VR games.
From the very opening scene—where players are, for the first time, truly standing before the monolithic Citadel in the middle of City 17—Alyx is immersive through and through thanks to heaps of detail, an engaging and interactive world, and one of the most memorable sequences seen in any VR game to date… the dreaded ‘Jeff’.
With excellent pacing that weaves together combat, exploration, and puzzles, Alyx takes players on a seamless journey through the well-realized streets, cellars, and rooftops of City 17, all the way to a mysterious conclusion that has serious consequences for the future of the franchise.
Against all odds, one of the most legendary game developers brought one of the most legendary franchises to VR in stunning fashion. Given that the studio stood to make tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions) more in revenue by making a non-VR game, it’s hard to call Alyx anything but a love letter to the VR medium.
Half-Life: Alyx stands as VR’s new benchmark in graphics, immersion, and scope, and I’m sure that Valve itself is as eager as the rest of us to see who will be next to raise the bar.
While it surely brings ample opportunity, there’s nearly an equal amount of risk in using the likeness of an iconic character like Iron Man. While the character has plenty of backstory to draw from, delivering the experience of actually stepping into the character’s shoes—the experience of actually being Iron Man rather than just watching him—is no trivial task, especially in the still young and often ill-defined medium of VR.
Before Iron Man VR arrived to the rescue, there really were no standout superhero games in VR. There were attempts, certainly, but none that truly planted a flag and said “this is how it’s done.” Developer Camouflaj, however, turned out to be up to the task.
And they did it in a most ambitious way. While choosing to focus their game on a superhero that didn’t fly would have surely avoid plenty of headaches, picking one that did fly forced them to tackle the serious challenge of keeping players comfortable even as they sailed through the sky.
What’s more, the game’s innovative flying system was specially designed around Iron Man’s character—around his palm-mounted repulsor jets specifically—bringing an immersive flair to the way players control themselves in the game by aiming their hands to control thrust. The result was a truly fun and thrilling method of locomotion that balanced high-speed maneuvering with aerial combat.
But more than just coming up with a novel flight system for VR, Iron Man VR contextualized its gameplay with an engaging story that explored the man behind the mask, Tony Stark, nearly as much as his superhero persona. Combined with immersive details sprinkled throughout, Iron Man VR delivered a package that felt whole and delivered the fantasy it promised.
It wasn’t clear what to expect from Skydance Interactive’s take on the storied The Walking Dead zombie franchise. The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners could have easily been a ham-handed attempt at shoehorning a standard first-person shooter into VR. We’ve seen them before, and they weren’t pretty.
As soon as you start the game though, it becomes immediately apparent that Saints & Sinners demands the player to invest themselves completely in the experience—it’s a true VR native. In this scaled-down RPG, moral choices meet zombie-killing carnage in a way we simply haven’t seen in VR up to this point. You’re instantly thrust into a world where supplies are scarce, crafting useful items is key, and coming in contact with any zombie is a fight for survival.
It’s a gruesome and realistic experience in all the right ways: a zombie can be hacked to pieces with any manner of sharp object, but you’ll lose precious stamina than you’ll need as you run away from the evening horde. If you’re a decent shot, you can try to stick to headshots the entire way, but as the mob grabs at you, you’re left with very little choice but to look them straight in the eye sockets and brain them with a knife, cleaver, or pointy stick. Complete your mission and get the hell out of dodge, or face the consequences; with each zombie presenting potential death, the horde isn’t something you’ll ever want to face.
Outside of its impressive physics-based melee and gun combat, one of the most frightening parts is navigating the muddy waters of the New Orleans gang life, where you literally choose to side with one faction by stoking blood fueds by personally executing NPCs, or by walking your own path as a freelancer. Although the adventure isn’t open-world, discrete maps are so large and rich in detail that you’ll probably forget in the first five minutes anyway.
The standalone version of the game on both Quest and Quest 2 is lower res than its PC VR forbear, but that’s saying very little. As is, the game is more than the sum of its parts, and shines even with the obligatory knock in visual fidelity for a game of this scale, polish, and depth.
Each year we try to come up with games that shine in specific departments, so we tend to highlight titles that haven’t already won our platform-based awards. This year though, there’s simply no ignoring the titanic effort that went into making Half-Life: Alyx the most immersive VR game of 2020.
From the liquid shaders inside the many errant bottles laying around, to flippable light switches, to the full baby grand piano, every object has been loving realized with one thing in mind: immersing the player into the world of Half-Life like never before.
While full, unfettered object interaction is great for immersion, this also lets players get creative with how to use seemingly banal stuff to their advantage, like carrying a basket full of grenades when you run out of space in your inventory.
In Half-Life: Alyx, there are only a few misses in terms of immersion, which are more linked to stylistic choices by Valve. You can’t melee enemies, and the gesture-based menu pulls you out a bit from the action, but even with those minor offenses, Valve has effectively created VR’s most detailed game to date that will be difficult to rival in the years to come.
Building a new car is, for the most part, putting new spin on a concept that’s largely already been figured out by those that came before. While non-VR game development similarly stands on the shoulders of past giants, in VR, almost any step you take is likely to mean breaking fresh ground—right down to rethinking how players will even move around your game world.
Developer nDreams embraced the unknown and built an entire game around a novel locomotion scheme that had players sleuthing through sluices in a tactical kayak.
It might sound a little ridiculous on the surface, but dive a little deeper and you’ll see that it really fits VR well. Not only is paddling a much more immersive and intentional way to get around than using using a joystick, the kayak worked great as a sort of ‘inventory’ system for the player thanks to weapon and ammo holsters along its sides.
While a smooth moving and turning kayak could surely prove challenging from a comfort standpoint, nDreams managed to come up with a snap-turn solution that worked seamlessly with the kayak locomotion, allowing more players to enjoy their time on the waterways.
The locomotion innovation of Phantom: Covert Ops makes us excited to see what the studio comes up with next.
Flying an X-Wing in VR has been the dream ever since EA Games released the free X-Wing VR Mission DLC for Star Wars: Battlefront Rogue One in 2016 on PS4. And in a big way, EA’s Motive Studios delivered on that dream with this massive first-person dogfighter, which lets you play through an well-crafted singe-player campaign, or cross-platform online battles.
Motive Studios took on the mantle of making Star Wars: Squadrons feel like a native VR game which lets you play with a giant pool of players, delivering support for PC VR, traditional PC monitors, PSVR, PS4, and Xbox One players together. And when it comes to dropping in for a casual dogfight, you simply can’t waste time waiting around.
To boot, playing in VR has its clear advantages, as you can naturally track enemies by looking through your cockpit’s canopy windows, all while keeping an eye on your 3D radar. One of the hopes we had for the game was motion controller support for added immersion, however simulator enthusiasts know that the most immersive way to control a vehicle in VR is using a HOTAS setup, which lets you play with physical thrusters and flight sticks so you can truly feel like you’ve stepped into your own Star Wars universe spaceship. You can also play with gamepad, which is fun too since the game offers up arcade controls instead of pure simulator-style flying like you might find in Elite Dangerous (2014).
Both the world inside and outside of your canopy is a visual treat. While cinematic cutscenes are reduced to 2D windows, the game makes up for this by putting you on the deck of each ship to speak face-to-face with some of the most detailed character models we’ve seen in VR. Crafted with motion capture, the game’s NPCs seem to inch very close to the far side of the Uncanny Valley—something you’ll appreciate more from the inside of a VR headset.
In all, Star Wars: Squadrons gives VR gamers everything it has to offer on traditional platforms and more. It also sends a clear message to AAA studios that VR doesn’t have to be a second class citizen when it can slot in so well.
Cubism is a spatial puzzle game that shows that an interface can be beautiful through simplicity. The interface strikes a perfect balance between recognizable affordances and VR native flourishes like the use of depth and placement within arms reach. When it’s done the job selecting a level, it gets completely out of the way, allowing the player to directly interact with the puzzle before them.
The interface also hides a little secret which also doubles as a subtle but enjoyable means of ‘progression’ in the game. Each puzzle you complete represents a musical chord which you can hear when you select the level. Played one after another, each of these chords is part of a complete song which is every bit as beautiful in its simplicity as the interface itself. Once you complete all puzzles, the song is yours to enjoy.
There’s not much else to say—and that’s the point. Cubism’s interface does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
Indie studios take risks that larger, more established names in the industry simply won’t. And supporting those indie devs can mean playing some of the most unique and inventive games out there. Granted, there was a tad less risk involved for Pixel Ripped 1995, a retro-inspired VR game that follows in the footsteps of its popular predecessor, Pixel Ripped 1989 (2018). Still, it’s an amazingly creative slice of mid-90s nostalgia that’s expertly interwoven into the pioneering genres that made so many of us fall in love with games in the first place.
Pitching a unique ‘game within a game’ storytelling style, Pixel Ripped 1995 acts as the setting for its constant flights of fancy, mashing up the fourth console generation’s pioneering genres into a charming 3D world. Without brushing to close to infringe on any copyrights, Pixel Ripped 1995 authors a love letter to the generation’s colorful platformers, side-scrolling beat ’em ups, and RPGs.
At five hours of gameplay, it’s short and sweet, but critically doesn’t overextend itself either. Its linear gameplay offers a virtual smorgasbord of variety as you’re always left guessing at what’s next, leaving little room for boredom.
Release Date: Available from July 7th- November 15th, 2020
The Under Presents (2019) wasn’t released this year, but it did host a very special limited time immersive theater show to Oculus Quest and Rift-owning audiences that delved into some seriously interesting experimental territory. In a sea of graphical and technical marvels this year, the game’s immersive reinterpretation of William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest took the cake.
In a time when live actors are mostly out of work, The Under Presents invited expert thespians to lead groups of up to eight VR users through a rejuvenated retelling of the popular 17th-century theater piece. Built with user participation in mind, it felt more like acting in a high school theater play, with roles dolled out on the fly.
Showing up in the lobby, which is conveniently placed at the entrance of the game’s main area, participants were greeted with interesting toys and magical object to play around with as you hang with your fellow amateur actors. Once the show begins, you’re transported to a campfire to meet a live actor, who in the show’s meta-narrative took on the role of Prospero and many others. The guide weaves the story throughout dreamlike set pieces, and gets everyone involved in acting out parts in the story. Since players are mute, your guide acts as a professional voice over artist by filling in your lines.
In a time when interacting in large groups can be dangerous, The Under Presents The Tempest offered up a truly novel and creative experience that, even with its low-poly art style, felt like a tantalizingly real break from reality. We’re hoping to see more from developers Tender Claws in the near future, whether it be encore presentations of the experience or entirely new interactive theater pieces yet to come.
Note: Games eligible for Road to VR‘s Game of the Year Award must be available to the public on or before December 13th, 2020 to allow for ample deliberation. Games must also natively support the target platform as to ensure full operability.
A few VR games have been nominated in this year’s Unity Awards across several categories.
Unity is the most popular game engine used across various platforms, including VR. However, it can be used for much more than just video games too, and that’s reflected in the 18 varied categories for this year’s Unity Awards. Of course, only games that use the Unity game engine are eligible.
The nominees for the Unity Awards Best VR Game in 2020 are Cubism, Iron Man VR and The Under Presents. Cubism is a fantastic puzzle game on PC VR, Quest and Quest 2 that I absolutely fell in love with in my review earlier this year. It’s smart, easy to understand yet challenging. The Under Presents is a game that plays with live narrative and multiplayer interactions in a way that is truly unique to VR, and well worth checking out — though we should note that some of the live elements of the experience may no longer be active. And while Iron Man VR was marred by it’s loading screens, when you finally got into the game it was amazing to embody Tony Stark and Iron Man.
Meanwhile, co-operative ghost hunting game Phasmophobia, which offers optional VR support, is also nominated in the Best Multiplayer Game category, going up against Fall Guys, Crowfall and G.T.F.O..
Voting for the Unity Awards is now open — to vote, head over to www.awards.unity.com/2020. Which title are you giving your support for the best Unity VR game of 2020? Let us know in the comments below.
Recently released on the Quest store, Cubism is a spatial puzzle game with a slick minimal presentation. Designed by a solo indie developer Thomas Van Bouwel as a side project, the game impressively holds the highest user rating among all Quest apps with more than 100 reviews, according to our latest ranking. We reached to Van Bouwel to learn more about his approach to the project and lessons learned along the way.
Thomas is a Brazilian VR developer currently based in Brussels, Belgium. Although his original background is in architecture, his current work in VR spans from indie games like Cubism to enterprise software for architects and engineers like Resolve.
In September I launched Cubism, a minimal VR puzzle game about assembling colorful blocks into complex geometric shapes. It was my first commercial release as a game developer.
I developed Cubism on my own in my spare time, all while keeping my job as lead product engineer at Resolve, a Brooklyn-based enterprise VR start-up. I’ve only recently transitioned into working part-time for the game in the months leading up to its release.
Bootstrapping your first game alongside a full-time job can be a good way to allow for a flexible development schedule and reduce financial risk—but I think it’s only feasible if you design around your limitations and don’t over-scope your game.
In this article, I want to share some lessons I learned on how to stay on track when bootstrapping your first VR game.
1. Prototype & Playtest as Soon as Possible
The first questions you need to answer when starting any new game is: “is this fun?” and “could this have an audience?” A good way to answer these questions is to build a vertical slice—a small but fully playable segment of your game idea—as soon as possible, and put it in front of strangers to gauge their reaction.
I built the first functional prototype for Cubism over a weekend back in 2017. The prototype was pretty bare bones, but playable, and was enough for me to test the concept with friends and colleagues and to share the idea with strangers online to see if a game like this could spark interest.
The first prototype of Cubism had 3 puzzles, but no menu or game logic. Two of those three original puzzles ended up in the final game.
2. Scope Within Your Constraints
Choosing the right scope for a game is the best way to ensure you can actually finish it, and this will be determined mostly by your constraints (budget, skillset, time, etc).
For Cubism, I knew I’d have limited time to work on it, I knew I wanted to work solo to keep my schedule flexible, and I knew that things like 3D modelling, graphics programming and audio design weren’t my strong suit. Cubism’s minimal aesthetic and straight-forward gameplay leaned into these constraints, and helped inform many design decisions along the way.
For example, the minimal environment removed the need for detailed environment modelling or complex lighting, and helped put the focus on the puzzle in front of the player. This lack of environment also meant that having gravity made no sense, since pieces had no surface to fall on other than the floor—so instead, everything floats. This actually made puzzle solving a bit easier and enabled more complex puzzle shapes which wouldn’t be possible if gravity applied.
The lack of gravity in Cubism allows for more complex puzzle shapes.
Adjusting scope is something that will inevitably happen throughout development as well. One instance where I realized I was over-scoping was with my plans to support hand-tracking in the initial release of the game.
When hand-tracking first became available, I quickly prototyped experimental support for the feature and released it in a demo on SideQuest as it seemed like hand-tracking could make for a very intuitive way of playing the game. The reality was that hand-tracking at the time still had limitations, and the quality of people’s experience with it varied highly depending on their lighting conditions and their expectations of the feature. The demo I made did not handle these limitations well.
Linus from Linus Tech Tips struggling with Cubism’s experimental hand tracking input (source).
I realized that properly implementing this feature would require much more work than I originally anticipated, which would delay the release of the actual game. I instead decided to remove the feature from the release scope and plan it for a future update.
This was a difficult call to make, since the SideQuest demo set expectations for the full game to support this feature as well, but I think it was the right call as it ensured I could give the development of this feature the time it required to be done properly.
3. Build Tools That Save You Time
When you recognize that an aspect of your game will require a ton of iteration to get right, it’s worth looking into what tools you can buy or build to help make that iteration more efficient.
For Cubism, I realized early on that I would need to iterate a lot on the design of the puzzles in the game, so one of the first things I built was a simple puzzle editor. It was far from release-ready, but as a developer tool it had a huge impact on how quickly I was able to iterate and find interesting puzzle designs.
An early in-VR level editor tool helped me speed up puzzle design and iteration
Another aspect of the game that required a lot of iteration was the audio design. In Cubism, every puzzle piece is associated with a note, meaning every puzzle forms a complete chord once finished. Completed puzzles and their associated chords form a complete song. When a player presses the play button in the menu, it will play this song as it goes through all the levels they’ve solved.
Pressing the play button lets players hear a song composed of chords associated with each puzzle they’ve completed.
In Unity3D, I built a simple editor tool that would let me modify the notes associated with the puzzles and would save these notes in a separate file. This allowed me to test multiple songs for the game in parallel and made it easier for me to keep the notes associated with puzzles up to date while the puzzle designs evolved during development.
This simple puzzle song editor let me modify the notes associated with pieces of each puzzle and preview what this would sound like in sequence in the game.
4. Don’t Playtest Your Game with Gamers (at first)
If you want to make your VR game accessible for newcomers to the medium, take special care to playtest it with non-gamers during development.
Since Cubism was meant to be a casual game, one of my design goals was to make it as pick-up-and-play as possible for newcomers to the medium. However, about a year and a half into development I realized one of the biggest blockers for newcomers was the game’s control scheme and the onboarding tutorial to teach new players.
Almost every button had a function mapped to it, and the game would start by walking you through each button, which would be very disorienting for people who weren’t used to holding controllers.
Cubism originally used every button on the controller and the onboarding tutorial would walk users though each one.
It took me a long time to realize this was an issue, because I had mainly been testing the game with other developers, gamers, and VR enthusiasts who would tend to breeze through the controller onboarding. It was only during a more family-oriented game event, where I got a chance to test the game with more non-gamers, that I realized input was a barrier to entry for some folks.
After that insight I focussed on simplifying the control scheme by making the entire game playable with just the triggers. This had some design implications as well: the menu moved from being anchored to the player’s hand to being anchored underneath the puzzle. And moving the entire puzzle, which used to be mapped to the grip buttons, now happened by grabbing the puzzle within its bounding box.
These changes greatly simplified onboarding and made the game much more easy to pick-up-and-play. Where some players used to get confused by the original tutorial, they would now breeze through it and be solving their first puzzle within 10-20 seconds of launching the game.
Cubism can now fully be played with just the triggers, greatly simplifying and shortening the onboarding tutorial.
5. Don’t Solo Dev Alone
Even though I made Cubism on my own, I would never have been able to finish the game without the support of various friends and organizations within the VR community. They kept me motivated throughout development and have given me valuable advice when I was stuck.
In most cities I’ve lived in since I started working on Cubism, I’ve been able to find meetup groups for Unity developers, indie game developers, or VR enthusiasts. And even though going to actual meetups is harder these days, many of these groups also have active online communities on Slack or Discord.
If you’re planning on developing on the Oculus platform, I also highly recommend joining their Oculus Start program. Beyond the support Oculus provides to Start developers, they also have a really active and supportive community on Discord.
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The choice of whether or not to work solo and/or part-time on a project will likely depend on your circumstances and the nature of the game you’re making. I’ve definitely felt the downsides of solo spare-time development as well: a dev cycle that was probably longer than it needed to be, being confronted with gaps in my own knowledge when it came to actually finishing and publishing a game, or the lack of a creative sparring partner to work through design problems and help make decisions.
But for Cubism, there was a flip-side to each of these downsides as well: not having to compromise between a game I wanted to make and a job I enjoyed doing, being forced to learn new skills, and being incentivised to seek out the wider gamedev community for advice, support and motivation.
In many cases, it will make more sense to work together with others or to seek funding for development, but if you’re planning on solo-bootstrapping your first game, I hope this article will be helpful!
In classic puzzle game form, Cubism is simple to understand but increasingly hard to master. But do its pieces fit together to form a perfect shape? Here’s our review of Cubism, available for Oculus Quest and PC VR.
The basic premise of Cubism is as simple as it gets: you are presented with a wireframe of a 3D shape and several smaller blocks in varying (and sometimes odd) shapes. All you have to do is fit the blocks into the wireframe, making sure every space is covered, nothing sticks out of the frame and every block is used. Easy, right?
If you’ve heard of Cubism before, it’s probably in relation to controller-free hand tracking. A small demo of the game was available on SideQuest last year, with controller-free hand tracking support added when the feature was still in beta and very few other games supported it. The demo was great fun at the time, but in many ways might have sold Cubism a bit short. While the core gameplay is the same as that demo (excluding hand tracking support, which isn’t available at launch), the real meat of the game comes in the later levels. And trust me, it’s a lot more engaging, and more difficult, than you might expect.
Levels
The levels are split into different sections, each focusing on a different shape type or theme as the basis for the wireframe. They start as flat shapes, then progress to folds, then pyramids, then a 3×3 cube and so on, each getting increasingly more complex.
The first few levels of each section ease you in, but the last two or three are always much harder. As you progress through each section, the overall difficulty gradually increases as well. I was convinced that the difficultly ceiling couldn’t be that high for a concept so simple, but I was very wrong. The campaign won’t last you hours upon hours, but the later levels definitely start taking considerably longer to solve. For some of them, I spent what felt like 20 or 30 minutes just trying out different combinations — I couldn’t tell you the exact time it took, because I became so mesmerized and lost in the game. Depending on how fast you are at solving the puzzles, your play time might vary.
But as the levels get harder, they don’t get more frustrating, which is crucial. It never comes to the point where you want to rip off the headset and give up. For a puzzle game (and as someone who usually has a fairly low tolerance for them), it’s an incredible achievement. The concept of Cubism is so simple and never changes, so the solution always feels just moments away. There is nothing complex about the method of solving the levels — if you can just place the pieces in the right position, you’ve beat the level. That’s it.
It’s this simplicity that is key to why the game works so well — you feel like you’re always about to make a breakthrough, even if you won’t actually solve the puzzle for another 10 minutes. There were several moments where I became almost possessed by Cubism, falling into a flow state where I just had to keep going until I found the right combination.
The levels fall perfectly into the ‘pick up and play’ category of VR. This is a game that you can easily jump into for 10 minutes to solve one or two puzzles. It really hits the sweet spot of a relaxing yet challenging VR game that doesn’t require much physicality or time.
The only real frustration I had was that positioning a block will sometimes require you twisting your arm into a strange position in order get it into the orientation you want. It’s an incredibly minor issue (and one that the advanced controls, detailed further down, attempt to fix) but it still felt odd at times. You do have a huge degree of control over the orientation of the wireframe itself, which you can rotate and position however you want, but that doesn’t alleviate the sometimes-awkward one-handed positioning of a block.
Soundtrack
Another key piece in the Cubism puzzle is the soundtrack, which is absolutely perfect. It’s simple, light and slow classical piano, which creates a relaxing and calming atmosphere. The music even fades out when you go to slot in the last piece of a level, ready to play the celebration music if you’ve got it right.
The piano theme carries through the whole game — menu selections are accompanied by piano motifs, and placing a block in an invalid space will be brought to your attention by a soft ding of a piano note. It all feels very cohesive and is super effective at setting the mood.
Custom Controls and Hand Tracking
While the game can be played straight out of the box with no problems, there’s some nice customization options available too. There’s advanced controls (that let you rotate blocks with your joystick) and a dark mode, which changes the white background to a dark grey, if you want to avoid late-night eye strain.
Despite the SideQuest demo last year, Cubism will launch on Quest without support for hand tracking. However, an improved version of hand tracking support is planned to arrive in a future release. It will be a welcome addition for the Quest version of the game, and might provide a solution for some of those positioning quirks I mentioned earlier.
Final Thoughts
Everything about Cubism feels consistent and rock solid. It runs like a dream on the Quest, and the puzzles scratch that itch of being easy to understand but increasingly difficult to solve. The difficultly curve feels perfect and overall there’s very little to complain about. It’s not the longest game in the world, but that also means that the concept doesn’t overstay its welcome. There’s also huge potential for DLC expansions in the future.
Just like its puzzles, Cubism is a perfect, complete package where everything fits just right — the minimalist design, the reserved soundtrack and its simple nature all come together to create a really fantastic and polished end product. If you’re a fan of puzzles that put your mind to work, then don’t sleep on Cubism. It might seem basic, but solving each level is infinitely more complex than you’d expect and the satisfaction you get at the end is incredibly rewarding.
Cubism launches September 17 for $9.99 on Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift and SteamVR with support for Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows MR headsets. This review was conducted on an Oculus Quest, using the standalone version of the game. For more on how we arrived at this score, check out our review guidelines. Are you looking forward to Cubism? Let us know in the comments below!
Cubism is a casual VR puzzle that plays a bit like a 3D version of Tetris. The game is due to launch on September 17th on Quest, Rift, and Steam. A future update will add hand-tracking on Quest.
Cubism from Belgium-based developer Thomas Van Bouwel is a cheery brain-teaser that tasks players with solving 3D puzzles by fitting Tetris-like shapes into a larger pre-defined shape.
The game’s sleek, casual design makes it great for relaxing seated play. But fear not, while the puzzle concept is simple, Cubism will have you scratching your head in short order as difficulty increases across 60 stages. As any puzzle game should, Cubism’s puzzles always feel satisfying when you click that last piece into place.
Image courtesy Thomas Van Bouwel
Though the game won’t support Quest’s controller-less hand-tracking at launch, the developer says a future update will add the feature, making playing Cubism as easy as putting on your headset and grabbing the pieces with your hands.
Cubism will launch on September 17th on Quest, Rift, and Steam for $10. Developer Thomas Van Bouwel has confirmed the game will support cross-buy between Quest and Rift.
A promising puzzle game called Cubism will see full release on the Oculus Quest store later this month alongside its launch on PC VR headsets.
Earlier this year Cubism caught our eye with a SideQuest demo that made for a pretty cool early demonstration of hand tracking on Oculus Quest. Now the Belgium-based developer behind the title, Thomas Van Bouwel, is releasing the full game with 60 puzzles of varying difficulty.
Check out the announcement trailer:
“Sidequest helped me realize the game had an audience on Quest, which encouraged me to submit the Quest pitch document to Oculus in early January,” Van Bouwel wrote to me. “More than anything, Sidequest was an essential avenue for me to playtest the game and it’s puzzles during this last year of development. With Oculus’ announcement of new distribution paths to Quest in the future I think they have definitely realized the value of giving developers easier access to the Quest community to prove out early concepts, and to playtest and refine games in earlier stages of development.”
The developer says the full game is easy to learn and “within the first 10-30 seconds of launching the game, players learn the core mechanics and are solving their first puzzle.” It won’t launch with controller-free hand-tracking support initially — so tracked controllers only for launch — but “an improved version of hand-tracking input is planned in a future release along with other updates.”
You can try out the demos now or wishlist the game. Cubism is set to launch on September 17 for $9.99 on Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift and SteamVR.
Cubism is an upcoming VR puzzle game from indie developer Thomas Van Bouwel that challenges you to think in 3 dimensions. Inspired by puzzles like the Soma cube, or a cube composed of smaller Tetris-like geometric pieces, Cubism tasks players with assembling increasingly complex shapes in what results in a real brain teaser.
First announced a month ago, Van Bouwel has now published a working demo of Cubism, which gives you a quick slice of the sort of difficulty ahead.
Starting out with basic ‘flat’ geometry, you soon encounter interesting jaggy 3D shapes and hole-filled messes that start to take a toll on whatever primordial part of your brain is tasked with processing colorful Duplo blocks.
The control scheme is intuitive, mapping a button that magnetically assembles the blocks nearby, something that makes picking them up from the zero-G environment and clicking them into their spots an easy affair. You can also move the wire structure and turn it to get a better sense of where the next block should go.
After playing for about 15 minutes and taking off the headset, I noticed a sort of 3D version of the ‘Tetris Syndrome’, the unique effect that occurs when you finish playing a round of Tetris and your brain is still engaged in placing blocks (despite the Game Boy being stashed in your nylon, neon book bag). The effect wore away after a few minutes, but it was interesting to note that I was now ‘thinking in 3D’.
Cubism is currently still under development, and is slated to release sometime in 2018 with support for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and all Windows MR Headsets. The demo, which works with SteamVR-compatible headsets, can be downloaded here.
