Dr. Splorchy Presents: SPACE HEROES is an upcoming Google Daydream title from Squanch Games, a studio founded by Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland. Squanch today announced that the patently Roiland-esque game is launching July 23rd.
I went hands-on with Dr. Splorchyat this year’s GDC in March, and while I walked out not quite understanding if the game was primarily a shooter or action-adventure title, whatever it is I knew Dr. Splorchy was set to offer the same ad lib madness of Squanch’s other off-the-wall VR games such as Accounting+ (2018) and the upcoming PSVR platformer Trover Saves the Universe.
Image courtesy Squanch Games
Here’s Squanch’s description of the game (apparently the titular Dr. Splorchy types in all caps):
YOU AND YOUR BROTHER ARE IMPORTANT SPACE HEROES. WITH THE HELP OF ME, DR. SPLORCHY, YOU’VE MADE YOUR WAY INTO THE HEART OF THE EVIL SPACE LORD SHIP WHERE YOU MUST DEACTIVATE HIS WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION.
Demos of Dr. Splorchy Presents: SPACE HEROES are currently available at the San Diego Comic-Con doing an informal ‘pop-up playtest’ outside of the venue this weekend. Squanch employees walking around with Lenovo Mirage Solo headsets will be tossing unwitting con-goers into what we suppose is a special demo build of the game.
Squanch Games, the studio behind Accounting+ (2018) and brainchild of Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland,is coming out with a new Daydream exclusive that follows the exploits of the titular Dr. Splorchy, plopping you aboard a spaceship with dangerous bugs that you have to shoot for a reasons that seem strangely improvised.
Is it possible to create a game entirely by adlib? If the other titles attached to Roiland’s name can tell us anything, then yes, they very much can. In Roiland’s games, fourth walls don’t really get broken so much as they lay in heaps of rubble on the ground. The game knows you’re there to play it, and it doesn’t want to give you the standard formulas. Accounting, Squanch Games’ first title which was later expanded into the paid game Accounting+, is an absolute subversion of your expectations in the same way Monty Python’s Flying Circus challenged traditional comedy by being sketch-based instead of serial or plainly episodic.
While I only had a five-minute demo of Dr. Splorchy, I left Google’s booth with more questions than I had before going in, but with one very clear thought in my head. The joke was very clearly on me. Here’s the teaser in case you missed it:
Stepping into Google’s booth on the GDC expo floor, I popped on a Lenovo Mirage Daydream headset, and with little introduction, I found myself in the hold of a cartoony spaceship with a guy who was supposed to be my brother. Why were we there? There wasn’t time for explanations. I was aboard a ship for some reason, and I had to kill the bugs (for some reason).
To introduce the game’s locomotion system and prepare me for the wave of alien bugs, the guy produced a basket full of lemons. “Here’s a lemon! Dodge that lemon! Lemon! Lemon! Lemon! Lean to dodge that lemon! Lemon!” Physically leaning to the left and right resulted in an exaggerated shift of my point of view in the corresponding direction, giving me the latitude to dodge what would later become the slow-moving projectiles from the alien horde. It was easy and worked well, and not nearly jarring as the locomotion’s description suggests.
Image courtesy Squanch Games
With the aliens dead, my brother, who was hiding behind me during the onslaught, popped in front of me again to alert me of a bomb that appeared behind me (for some reason). “Turn around. Turn all the way around with your body. The VR headset can do that, just turn your whole body around,” the guy told me.
The bomb had to be defused somehow. A single red button was highlighted, and pushing it only made things worse. Not worse in the sense that I now had a bomb crisis to manage, but that a little man’s face popped out of a side panel to inform me that it wasn’t indeed a neutron bomb about to blow, but a supermarket. A supermarket. The bomb was really a supermarket.
“It’s not a bomb. It’s really a supermarket. It’s a supermarket in here. I’m doing my shopping and it’s a supermarket in here!” Fade to black.
I reappear on the spaceship, the same cargo hold as before. Now, I was told, there was a space mayor here (for some reason). And that’s when the demo ended, which was clear because the guy told me to get up and leave the demo. “Let someone else have a turn. Leave already. You’re using the VR headset when someone else could be in here. Get up. Get up and leave. Leave the booth.”
What is this game about? Is it a wave shooter woven into the fabric of another more esoteric trip through the unhinged mind of a lifelong cartoonist, or only a slice of what’s to come. I wasn’t sure. In fact, no one else in the booth was either. The fresh batch of expo attendees streamed out of tiny booth with confused looks on their faces.
Even the press release is reluctant to bow to established conventions like telling you what the hell it’s about, as the game is “so beyond the capability of your understanding that if I were to try to explain them to your primitive earth mind I would have to rip out most of your brain and replace it with a computer so powerful it hasn’t even been invented yet, so no, I will not send you a blurb for your stupid press release.”
In partnership with Google, developers Squanch Games have revealed Dr. Splorchy Presents: Space Heroes, the first in a series of exclusive games for the Daydream VR platform. Announced today, the game is playable on the GDC show floor at Google’s booth.
The game centres around scientist Dr. Splorchy, who evidently has no interest in what we say here, as in his own words, his experience with VR is “so beyond the capability of your understanding that if I were to try to explain them to your primitive earth mind I would have to rip out most of your brain and replace it with a computer so powerful it hasn’t even been invented yet, so no, I will not send you a blurb for your stupid press release.”
Image courtesy Squanch Games
This particular brand of humour comes from Squanch Games co-founder Justin Roiland, best known as the co-creator of animated comedy series Rick and Morty. He formed a VR development studio with Tanya Watson in 2016 called Squanchtendo, changing their name to Squanch Games late last year. Their first game, Accounting (2016), developed with Crows Crows Crows for SteamVR, launched in enhanced form as Accounting+ (2017) on PSVR.
Roiland and Watson appear to have been superseded by “Senior Lead Master Game Developer” Dr. Splorchy, saying “we’re tremendously fortunate to have found such a creative and experienced partner in Dr. Splorchy, an incredible genius that we have definitely not grown to be deeply concerned about or afraid of over the course of our relationship” under what they both describe as “definitely not duress.”
Image courtesy Squanch Games
As Dr. Splorchy isn’t being forthcoming with information, not much is known about his new game, but we’ll try to check out the project at Google’s booth at GDC to learn more. Going by the teaser and the screenshots, it could feature adventure elements as well as first person shooter action. In the meantime, you could follow Dr. Splorchy’s various social media accounts: his blog, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
