Military first-person simulator Onward arrived on the Oculus Store several months ago, created by indie developer Downpour Interactive. For those that have yet to try the videogame out, the studio will be offering a free weekend to those interested in some tactical, multiplayer gunfights.
Featuring 5v5 online battles where players have one life, no heads-up display, and no crosshairs, Onward also includes solo/co-op modes against AI opponents. To add to the realism Onward features dynamic time of day, weather effects, and multiple environments and scenarios to play through, as well as an artificial locomotion system to make the hectic gameplay as comfortable as possible.
The Onward free weekend is only available on the Oculus Store for Oculus Rift – there’s nothing on Steam for HTC Vive owners – beginning this Friday 25th January at 6pm GMT (1pm ET), running through to Monday 29th January at 8am GMT (3am ET). As it’s normally priced at £18.99 GBP a free weekend is a good way of trialing the shooter before purchasing.
Onward has over thirty different weapons to choose from, with a number of mods available in the game’s lobby, including red dot sights, flashlights, 12x scopes, and more to add a tactical advantage to each combat scenario. Recent additions include a Jungle map and a new game mode called “Evac”, letting new players dive in with friends and get to know the mechanics. This is especially useful for newbies as Onward doesn’t feature a ranking system, so will feature players of every skill level. And since the title has been on Steam Early Access since August 2016 – Onward only came to Oculus Store in November 2017 – expect there to be some highly proficient players.
Don’t forget that there’s more than one videogame running a free weekend this Saturday and Sunday. A little harder to get into, Survios will be running its closed beta for Sprint Vector. Starting last weekend – if you were quick on the ball VRFocus gave away some codes – the studio enlisted the help of players to test out the experience featuring the Fluid Locomotion System. Sign-ups are still available although not guaranteed.
If you’re unsuccessful with Sprint Vector then at least there’s Onward for some free gaming fun. For any further updates keep reading VRFocus.
Onward, the tactical multiplayer shooter for Vive and Rift, is getting another free weekend – this time for Rift players on Oculus Home.
The free weekend begins January 25th at 1:00 PM ET and goes
until the 29th at 3:00 AM ET (your time here). Check out Onward on Oculus Home here.
Created by Downpour Interactive, Onward offers 5v5 online multiplayer, as well as solo/coop vs AI mode, and objective-based gameplay. With 30 different weapons at your disposal, all of which are modeled after real-world military weaponry, the focus of Onward is decidedly on creating realistic battles. Fans craving the usual assortment of heads-up displays or cross-hairs seen in other shooters need not apply.
Normally priced at $25, the free weekend should give you a chance to see if the mil sim-paced game is right for you. At this point in Early Access, there isn’t a ranking system in place, so expect to meet all levels of skill when you first start playing. This can be daunting, considering how much of a hardcore player base the game has garnered in the year and half since it launched into Early Access, but the free weekend should level the playing field somewhat as a glut of new players enter the game.
Onward remains to be one of the most popular and ambitious VR games on the market with almost 2,000 user reviews on Steam nearing a perfect 10/10 rating. When it originally released into Early Access on Steam over a year ago for HTC Vive it took the VR gaming world by surprise with its attention to detail, intense realism, and laser-sharp focus on delivering a fully immersive military-sim shooter. Not bad for one guy that dropped out of college to make his dream game.
“I knew it would be popular, but I never expected it to be this popular,” Buckley tells me during a recent interview. His modesty is a constant theme every time I’ve spoken to him, even though he is technically now several peoples’ boss. “This is my first time actually leading a team. With my age and experience there has been a lot to learn but thankfully they’re really receptive and want to make fun games and willing to be led. So far everything has been going pretty well. They make my life a lot easier.”
In that statement he’s alluding to what his life was like when he was working on Onward basically by himself. With regards to his work-life balance, there simply wasn’t any. His life during that time was literally eat, sleep, and code. That’s it. It was unhealthy and unsustainable.
“It was hell,” Buckley admits. “I’d wake up, go to work by sitting on the computer all day, basically thinking in code while staying up until I couldn’t anymore, then go right back to sleep and start it all over again the next day. I was addicted and I loved it, but yeah. If I were to start another company I’d make sure to setup a structure in the beginning. It was bad.”
All that hard work has paid off though. When Onward first launched it was a relatively straight forward game with only a handful of maps and really just one competitive multiplayer game mode that tasked teams with killing each other or completing a singular objective. Now there are multiple different ways to play, including cooperative multiplayer against AI opponents, which help the game feel more fully realized.
To top things off on this long journey thus far, Onward finally released on Oculus Home for Oculus Rift and Touch officially two weeks ago — I found out because an Oculus PR representative told me so and actually was in charge of setting up the interview. This means in the past 12 months Buckley has gone from working at the Valve offices to being represented by Oculus’ PR team, which I find interesting.
“I feel like it’s just smart business to work with both equally and get the game out to as many people as possible so that they can have the best experience possible,” Buckley explains. “Just having it on both with SteamVR support and Oculus SDK support and working with both companies is important. In a lot of ways both of them helped shape who I am with Steam itself and Oculus even going back to the Kickstarter days and seeing them form and inspire me to get into VR.”
We still don’t really know what’s coming next, but that didn’t stop Buckley from dropping some hints during the interview. “What’s next will be announced before the end of the year and it might be a bit controversial when we decide to talk about it, but overall I think people will like it,” he says. “Most will be excited, but with any community sees changes there is backlash sometimes. It’s an announcement, within the next month or so. It’s exciting for sure.”
I tried pressing him to find out if these are changes coming to Onward or if this is news about a brand new game and all he would say is that it’s an announcement coming soon, so that’s not much to go on. In the past he’s alluded to a desire to work on emotionally-charged narrative-based experiences, so perhaps this will be a new game announcement and not anything to do with Onward.
For more details on Onward make sure to check out our Field Guide that’s full of tips to help you excel on the battlefield. You can buy Onward on Steam for Vive and Rift or on Oculus Home for Rift. Let us know what you think of the game down in the comments below!
Another Sunday and another edition of The VR Job Hub – and it seems I’m on for a hat trick with my third week in a row. As usual a return to The VR Job Hub means yet another selection of employment opportunities for you to peruse. All of which relate, in some way at least, to the fields of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and/or mixed reality (MR). After last week’s round the world trip we’re keeping things simple today with whatever the fates throw at us. Including roles at Oculus, Facebook and three recent roles from AR start-up Touch Surgery, which featured on VRFocus earlier this week.
Check out the list below to see if there’s something that sparks your interest.
If the above didn’t tickle your fancy remember you can always check out last week’s edition of The VR Job Hub which last week featured ten different jobs from ten different countries. Showing that no matter where you live there’s something in VR, AR or MR just around the corner. Likewise, don’t forget that if you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – and you want that position to be featured on next week’s VR Job Hub, then please send details to myself via keva@vrfocus.com and also pgraham@vrfocus.com.
Check back with VRFocus next Sunday at 3PM GMT and every Sunday for the latest roles in the immersive technology industry.
Onward (2016), the popular VR FPS known for serving up its ‘no-frills’ squad-based action, is now in Early Access on the Oculus Store. The tactical mil-sim shooter, which aims to appeal to fans of traditional shooters like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, or Counter-Strike, now features cross-play between both versions of the game—purchased through either Oculus or Steam.
Onward has supported Rift through SteamVR since it moved into Steam Early Access back in August 2016, although admittedly the Touch optimization was less than ideal until recently, with Touch getting a fresh button remapping a few days prior to launch on the Oculus Store.
As a bid to appeal to traditional FPS-players, Onward doesn’t feature teleportation—a common method of traversing large maps in VR—but rather has what you might call a ‘traditional’ locomotion scheme: smooth forward movement is locked to the physical direction of your hand, leaving you with the ability to look in a direction regardless of where you might be headed. As a locomotion style built initially for Vive’s trackpad, it’s had somewhat of a mixed reception on both platforms; either you can stomach it, or you can’t. Onward also offers a front-facing mode for Rift players that mitigates some of the discomfort by allowing snap-turning, and also lets you control your forward, backward and strafe controls via hand position and Touch’s joysticks themselves.
Oculus rates Onward a ‘moderately comfortable’ experience.
Onward dev and founder of Downpour Interactive Dante Buckley, who remains the driving force behind the game, says the team tightened down on Touch’s button mapping after its free weekend two months ago.
“We took a lot of the feedback from the free weekend and used it to help us shape a better control scheme for Onward,” says Buckley. “This new default control scheme is default, and we’ve added in some options for players to further tweak the experience to suit their preferences.”
The Early Access game features objective based game modes in 5v5 online multiplayer, and solo/coop multiplayer vs AI. With 30 different customizable weapons available, there’s plenty of ways to support your squad.
As a game that requires players to use coordination, communication, and most importantly marksmanship skill to complete objectives, giving players on both platforms equal attention is fundamental to keeping things fair. While the locomotion scheme is still an acquired taste for many, the hardcore adherents to the Onward way of life will continue to proselytize the game for its ability to deliver a traditional shooting experience—something many big studios have shied away from.
Onward is one of VR’s most popular and ambitious games to date and it was all made originally by a single man that dropped out of college to pursue his dream of becoming a game developer. It’s an inspiring story and the quality of the game reflects his attention to detail and ambition. It originally released in Early Access a little over a year ago on Steam for HTC Vive and then eventually added Touch support once Oculus’ controllers hit the market. Now, the game is becoming officially available for download on the Oculus Home store.
In Onward, players get to take on the role of a modern military soldier. You can engage in objective-based 5v5 multiplayer, as well as play cooperatively and alone against smart AI opponents. What makes Onward unique is that from the very beginning it featured full, smooth artificial locomotion that let players freely move throughout the environments. On top of that the game sports an incredible amount of realism and detail, such as the need to manually reload each weapon, unpin and throw grenades, use a shoulder-mounted radio to communicate with team members, and more.
“I grew up playing tactical military shooters and loved the strategy, teamwork, and skill needed to win,” says Onward Developer and Downpour Interactive Founder Dante Buckley in an Oculus blog post. “The high risk/high reward goals in games like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Counter-Strike, SOCOM, and Insurgency make these experiences a lot more meaningful and unique—you can see a lot of their influences in Onward.”
At the start of this year Valve even invited Buckley to work out of their offices in an accelerator program which he gladly participated in. Since Onward’s release it’s caused a shake up in the VR market as developers have taken note of gamers’ interest in more fully-featured, robust experiences with full smooth locomotion. For example. Arizona Sunshine added it after launch and Skyrim VR will include it from day one. We’ve also seen direct competition spring up in the form of other shooters like Pavlov on Steam and an upcoming project on PSVR.
According to Oculus Onward will be available for purchase on the Oculus Store as of the time of this writing right here. Buckley also told us that it will in fact have cross-platform multiplayer with Steam users as well. For some tips on playing the game check out our Onward Field Guide and let us know down in the comments below what you think!
Indie developer Downpour Interactive launched its first virtual reality (VR) title Onward back in August 2016 via Steam Early Access. Today, the studio has announced that the title will now be available on Oculus Store as well.
Onward is a multiplayer focused, tactical military shooter featuring 5v5 online battles where players have one life, no heads-up display, and no crosshairs. Featuring dynamic time of day, weather effects, and multiple environments and scenarios to play through, Onward also has an artificial locomotion system that’s been fine tuned by the Steam gaming community.
“I grew up playing tactical military shooters and loved the strategy, teamwork, and skill needed to win,” said Onward developer and Downpour Interactive Founder Dante Buckley in a statement. The high risk/high reward goals in games like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Counter-Strike, SOCOM, and Insurgency make these experiences a lot more meaningful and unique—you can see a lot of their influences in Onward.”
Featuring over thirty different weapons, Onward includes a number of weapon mods available in the game’s lobby, including red dot sights, flashlights, 12x scopes, and more to add a tactical advantage in various combat scenarios. The Jungle map was just added, with another map coming soon. Additionally, a recently introduced game mode called “Evac” lets new players dive in with friends and get to know the mechanics. There’s also a solo/co-op mode against AI.
To balance mechanics and deep gameplay, Buckley focused on design decisions that reinforced the real-world, including a single player life per round. “You have to think strategically and cooperate with your team to capture or defend objectives,” he says. “One-life games, especially in VR, make things very intense and competitive.”
“Even as a kid, VR was how I always envisioned playing games—I wanted to be inside the game,” Buckley recalls. “Working in this medium today is really a dream come true, and it made perfect sense. The immersion, experiences, and storytelling that can be had in VR will change the future of entertainment, and I want to be a part of that.”
As Downpour Interactive continues to grow its team and expand Onward, VRFocus will bring you all the latest news and updates.
Onward, the mil-sim tactical multiplayer shooter, has garnered a hardcore playerbase since it released on Steam Early Access a year ago, and if you want to know what all the hubbub is about surrounding what many are hailing as the end-all VR shooter, you’ll be able to get a taste from September 14-17 during the game’s free access weekend.
Onward isn’t your typical shooter. As a project developed by a single core dev, the mil-sim multiplayer has a character of its own, focusing on a brand of realism that emphasizes coordination, communication, and marksmanship skill. This is a strictly ‘no cross hairs and no HUDs’ experience, and the better you know your way around a firearm and the better you can communicate, the more effective you’ll be on the battlefield.
Onward, which currently sells for $25 on Steam, supports HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The 360 nature of the game though makes a third Oculus sensor a much better choice to eliminate occlusion of the Touch controllers.
Be ready for plenty of stiff competition too, because many long-time players have upgraded their controllers to include a physical stock, giving them a clear leg up as they can steady their shots more easily. The level of competition is so high, that some players have formed an unofficial Onward Championship League.
Its sole developer, Dante Buckley, is a new game designer at 20 years old, while the game is still a work-in-progress, it’s amazing what he’s done with pure determination in such a short time. UploadVR’sDavid Jagneaux details Buckley’s story of dropping out of college to teach himself game designing from scratch. Buckley told UploadVR that he works “continuous 14+ hour work days. It’s been worth it though.”
In the post announcing the free weekend, Buckley says there will be new content coming out in September and October, including new maps “and more”.
On the night of August 29th, 2016, Dante Buckley started crying.
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in September 2017.
It wasn’t because he was heartbroken from a devastating breakup, or because he was sad and distraught from horrible events in his life. No, this night, Dante Buckley was crying tears of joy, relief, and excitement. After dropping out of college and focusing on teaching himself how to create a video game from scratch almost entirely by himself, his game, Onward, was finally released on Steam Early Access. The weight had been lifted and he could finally breathe again. A long, arduous road he started down over a year ago had finally reached its first milestone.
But this wasn’t the end of the road — he was just getting started.
The Anatomy of a Surprise Hit
“This is my first-ever interview,” Buckley confessed nervously during a Skype call. “I honestly did not know how big the game would be. I dropped out of college and focused for a full year on game development. I had some funds left that didn’t go towards tuition and I just went heads down and focused. I had a bit of programming background, but not in gaming. I watched YouTube, used resources online, and just built Onward. That’s where the name for the game came from. I wanted to keep moving forward and this was the perfect name for that point in my life.”
Now, two short months later, Onward has over 700 reviews on Steam with a ‘Very Positive’ designation and it’s widely regarded as one of the best VR shooters available on any headset. It’s easily one of the most popular games among Vive gamers on Steam.
Which, in some ways, defies logic. Conventional wisdom says create a fun, accessible game that can be enjoyed by gamers of all types and VR-comfort levels. Make it sickness free. Provide a multitude of movement options. Hold hands and simplify controls. That’s what common knowledge says for a brand new medium, but Onward isn’t like that. It’s a hardcore, simulation-style, multiplayer military shooter that requires motion controls and a roomscale environment.
According to the game analysis website Steam Charts, Onward had over 270 concurrent players at its all-time peak and maintained over 50 players on average throughout the past month — which means you should never have issue finding a game. That may not sound like much, but compare those numbers to other multiplayer VR shooters you may be more familiar with, such as Battle Dome (87 all-time peak,) Hover Junkers (107 all-time peak,) or even the 100% free Rec Room (112 all-time peak) and the popularity is clear.
“It’s my first game and nobody knows who I am and I just really didn’t expect it to be this big,” Buckley admitted. “I started working on the game when I was 18 and I’m 20 now. It’s just so much bigger than I could have expected.”
Much to his surprise, the game was a hit in the budding market of VR gaming. The surprise success adds up to approximately 18,000 sales so far to date. The game costs $25, and with a little quick math, that means the game has made ~$400,000 from Onward, not counting any limited sale periods and not factoring in the revenue split from Steam. For a small game made by a single college dropout, that’s tremendous.
“I definitely grew up playing a lot of first-person shooter games,” Buckley said. “The biggest one for me was probably Halo, back when I was around six on the first Xbox. I used to play the old Call of Duty games on PC too, my dad let me try those. Medal of Honor, Battlefield,Ghost Recon, and Rainbow Six too.”
A Hardcore Shooter Without Compromises
The VR landscape is constantly in flux in its early stages and there is an apparent mad dash to be one of the first in various different genre categories. Buckley knew that people would release shooters, but they weren’t the shooters he wanted. A focus on arcadey, simple experiences was a far cry from he tactical realism the desired.
“I knew there would be a market for it, ” Buckley said. “So I just made this game for myself. I want Onward to be my dream game. This is based on what I want to play and what I’ve played in the past. ”
The game’s entire development was also chronicled in a series of dev blogs on YouTube, the first of which was posted almost a full year ago. That was a crucial part in building the game’s fan base. But he wasn’t just creating Onward, he was creating an entire game development studio. By hiring some freelance commissions and contractors to help with art work and other assets, he took on the job of programming and launching the game, and thus Downpour Interactive was born.
When someone loads into the game for the first time, it can be overwhelming. There is a brief series of tutorial-esque moments and a shooting range to practice on, but it definitely isn’t a game for the feint of heart. He encourages everyone to watch the tutorial video (embedded above) before actually playing the game. It feels like one of those safety training videos they make you watch before going on certain rides at Disneyland.
Due to the type of game that Onward is, you’ll be using the full compliment of both Vive controllers. You can move yourself freely around the environment using the left touchpad, or physically walk, duck, and maneuver in your actual physical room. Reach down and grab your gun, put a magazine in, load the chamber, and configure settings all using actual switches and slots on the physical gun’s model.
You can reach up to your shoulder and talk to teammates on your radio, or grab the grenade at your belt, pull the pin, and toss it at your enemies. You’ve even got a knife at the ready for use in close-quarters combat. All of these things I’ve described are in most other modern military shooters — but they’re not in VR. Using your hands and physically doing all of these things — like ducking behind a wall as an enemy fires at you from 100 yards away — is a visceral feeling unlike anything else I’ve tried inside a headset.
Since the game uses a mixture of roomscale movement and artificial trackpad locomotion, you’d initially assume people would get sick, as that’s the common understanding. But according to Buckley, that’s almost never the case.
“I got lucky with how people don’t really get sick. People that get sick in other games don’t seem to get sick in Onward,” Buckley laughed. “I can make some guesses, but I don’t really know what I did to avoid sickness.”
Essentially, there are three main contributing factors, he surmises. Firstly, there is no yaw rotation, meaning you can’t artificially move your head’s view from side-to-side using the trackpad. That’s often a big contributing factor, so he makes you physically turn your head. Secondly, the touchpad movement actually help as well, as you can adjust your speed and acceleration based on where you place your thumb — or lack of acceleration, as it were — however you want. Finally, by focusing your vision downfield at enemies and points of interest, it creates a subconscious tunnel vision that emulates the narrowing field of view seen in other games, like Eagle Flight.
I’ve never been susceptible to motion sickness either inside or outside of VR, but I can verify that I also don’t experience it in Onward either. Granted, it could also be the hardcore-leaning nature of the experience as well. I assume it’s tough to focus on whether or not you’re nauseous when you’re splayed out, prone on the ground, trying to line up a shot a few hundred yards away.
In fact, I’ll never forget the first time someone opened fire on me — it had that sudden, adrenaline-infused impact of an event that was actually happening. It didn’t feel like a video game as I ducked for cover.
Building VR For The Future
As much as Buckley loves making Onward, he doesn’t want to stop with where he’s at right now. Ultimately, he’s a creator at heart. He has ideas for adding cooperative missions and expanding the competitive modes, as well as other game ideas for the future.
“I don’t think multiplayer is going anywhere for me, but I want to go into singleplayer storytelling soon,” Buckley explained. “I don’t see myself leaving the shooter genre much, but there are other genres I enjoy. I am really interested in telling stories in VR and I just knew that multiplayer was a great place to start and learn. That’s really what the studio name, Downpour Interactive, is all about. I want to make people feel a downpour of emotions when they play my games.”
There is already such a wide variety of content available for VR devices, it’s easy to see the allure of other genres at some point in the future. He’s working on building a team for Onward right now, since it’s still mostly just him by himself pushing out patches and updates.
“It’s been super stressful with lots of Red Bull,” Buckley told me. “Continuous 14+ hour work days. It’s been worth it though — it’s lots of fun and I love it. After Onward, I’ve got at least 5-10 other game ideas I want to work on in the future. It’s been really scary though, putting myself out there so much as the face of this game and the company. Gamers can get a little extreme with their opinions. For the most part though, it’s been super positive and I wouldn’t be where I am without the fans. Their support means everything to me.”
Onward and upward, indeed.
Onward is now available on Steam for $24.99 with official support for the HTC Vive with motion controllers.
[Editor’s Note:] This article was originally published on October 25, 2016 and has been republished as commemoration for the game’s one year anniversary on August 29, 2017. For tips on playing the game well you can read our Onward Field Guide here.
Onward rocks. The, military-sim, multiplayer shooter won our award for Best VR Shooter at the end of last year and was in the running for best overall game as well. Onward pits two teams of up to four players against one another on one of seven maps. Teams have to use intelligent communication, informed strategy and an array of realistic firearms to either protect or capture each map’s objective.
Onward is a multiplayer-only game, a huge risk for a VR-only title, but no matter what time you log on, you’ll always be able to find multiple Onward matches to jump into. This speaks to the quality of the game and the ravenous community it has inspired since launch. What’s even more impressive is that Onward was created by essentially just one man. A first time game developer named Dante Buckley who dropped out of college to make it happen. He is only 20 years old.
We recently had the chance to speak with Buckley again to discuss how the game has grown since we last interviewed him and what new features fans can expect him to add in 2017 and beyond.
“It’s been cool,” Buckley said, in his typical understated fashion, when asked how he’s been enjoying the success of his game.
Never one for self-promotion, Buckley is much more excited to discuss the future of Onward. We asked him to share what sort of upgrades, additions, and add-ons fans of the game can expect from him in 2017. He began with one word that should be music to many players ears: co-op.
Right now, Onward players can only battle it out against human opponents. But, according to Buckley, he is currently working on adding a mode in which players can work with their friends to wage war against AI opponents instead.
“Pretty much I want to create a way for players to work together against an AI,” Buckley said. “Something I’ve learned is how important it is to build multiplayer experiences that players can enjoy together.”
Buckley is keeping the details on this new modes exact rules, features, and release date to himself, but did say that fans can expect to see it by the end of this year. Coming sooner than the co-op mode, however, will be Onward’s first new map to launch since the popular Suburbia battlefield released several months ago.
“There’s definitely going to be a new map in the next patch,” Dante revealed. “I won’t say right now when that patch is hitting or what the new map is, but I think people will really like it.”
In addition to adding a new map, Buckley is also working hard to make sure the existing maps in the game are fair and balanced to players. “Right now not every map is 100 percent balanced so that’s something I’m definitely paying attention to and working on updating regularly as patches come out,” he elaborated.
Co-op is not the only new game mode Buckley wants to add to Onward. He also detailed his version of an escort game mode that could work within the existing team structure of the experience.
“Basically what I want to do is make one person on one team a high value target,” Buckley explained. “He’d only have maybe a pistol and it would be his team’s job to make sure he gets all the way across the map to a designated safe zone. The target can’t really fight back on his own so this mode would definitely be more about running and hiding and using really good teamwork.”
Buckley also shared that he is working on revamping Onward’s loadout system to make it more balanced. Right now, players can select one of several classes and pick their favorite main weapons, side arms, grenades, etc. for that class. Dante’s vision for the future, however, involves a point system that forces players to be more strategic about what armaments they select.
“Each player would start out with a set amount of points at the start of the game,” Buckley said. “Then each thing you pick for your loadout would have a certain cost that you have to spend. I think that will help balance some issues and also give players a chance to be more strategic and specialized.”
There are a lot of changes coming to Onward this year, but Buckley is also clear that much of the game will not change. According to Buckley, the game’s punishing realism, minimal HUD, and library of weapons will all remain primarily unchanged as these new features get added.
Onward is available now on Steam for $24.99. You can play it on either the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift with Touch controllers. For tips and strategies on getting started with the game, make sure to check out our Onward Field Guide.
Featuring 5v5 online battles where players have one life, no heads-up display, and no crosshairs, Onward also includes solo/co-op modes against AI opponents. To add to the realism Onward features dynamic time of day, weather effects, and multiple environments and scenarios to play through, as well as an artificial locomotion system to make the hectic gameplay as comfortable as possible.
