This past week has already seen White Door Games announce the terrifying Cosmophobiaand now another equally unsettling virtual reality (VR) horror has surfaced. Drifter Entertainment, the studio behind Robo Recall: Unplugged and Gunheart has revealed its next project, Lies Beneath for Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift.
A survival horror which has been inspired by classics such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill, Lies Beneath takes place in the sleepy town of Slumber, Alaska. “Returning college student Mae must fight to save her father (and her sanity) from the terrifying townsfolk and creepy creatures infecting her hometown,” explains the synopsis.
Lies Beneath looks like its going to be instantly terrifying thanks to its visceral cel-shaded art style. “In terms of the world we’ve built, it pretty obviously draws inspiration from the comic world, says Creative Director Brian Murphy on the Oculus Blog. “I think of it as a kind of a cheeky mid-century American Creepfest, mixed with profoundly disturbing Junji Ito-style Japanese horror comic weirdness.”
Gameplay will see players fight hordes of monsters with an arsenal of melee and ranged weapons, from shotguns and pistols to axes, knives and explosives. Drifter Entertainment mixes up the action with puzzles to solve and lore objects that uncover hidden truths to find.
Drifter Entertainment has impressively committed to the storyline by creating two websites dedicated to Slumber. The first is a tourist style ‘Visit Slumber, Alaska‘ site with a nice version about its history. The second is by the Slumber Historical Society, for a Ghost Tour of Slumber’s darker history.
There’s not long to wait for Lies Beneath with the Oculus Quest version scheduled for 31st March while the Oculus Rift edition will arrive on 14th April. Check out the first trailer for the videogame below and for further updates keep reading VRFocus.
Following teases earlier this week, Gunheart developer Drifter Entertainment just announced its next VR game, Lies Beneath.
As the initial trailer alluded to, Lies Beneath is a horror game, though today we learned it’s published by Oculus Studios and coming to Oculus Quest first, followed shortly thereafter by Oculus Rift. It’s inspired by the likes of Silent Hill and the Resident Evil series as well as horror comics and TV shows like The Walking Dead. Check out another new trailer below.
Set in the fictional town of Slumber, Alaska (which Drifter has mocked up a fun travel website for) Lies Beneath casts players as Mae. Returning from college, she discovers her home overrun with monsters and takes the fight to them in hopes of saving her father (certainly you can hear a little of Silent Hill in that premise). Alongside the action — which looks to have a mix of both melee and ranged weapons — there will be puzzles and exploration elements, too.
For Drifter, it will mark a turning point in VR development with a narrative-focused game. According to the Oculus blog, it’s been in development for nearly two years. The studio cut its teeth on Quest with an excellent port of Epic Games’ Robo Recall, so we’re excited to see what it can do making its very own game for the platform.
Lies Beneath will launch on Quest on March 31st and then follow on Rift on April 14th. Check back for more on the game in the coming weeks. Looking for more VR horror games? The developer of Dreadhalls just announced its latest title, Cosmophobia.
Believe it or not, California is a bit of a tech hub. In actual fact, the entire West Coast of the US is a technological smorgasbord, from the giants like Google and Microsoft to all those little startups fighting for venture capital cash. And because of this those with the know-how can find all sorts of vacancies, just look at the selection VRFocus has below.
Don’t forget, if there wasn’t anything that took your fancy this week there’s always last week’s listings on The VR Job Hubto check as well.
If you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s feature. Details should be sent to Peter Graham (pgraham@vrfocus.com).
We’ll see you next week on VRFocus at the usual time of 3PM (UK) for another selection of jobs from around the world.
When Oculus Touch arrived at the end of 2016 there were a few decent titles to show off the controllers. It wasn’t until Epic Games released free experience Robo Recallin early 2017 that the controllers truly shone, with the title becoming one of the standout VR videogames of the year. When Oculus announced standalone headset Quest during Oculus Connect 5 (OC5) one of the first titles confirmed for launch day was an intense first-person shooter (FPS). Now the first screenshots have been released showcasing the incredible work porting the title across.
The port isn’t the work of Epic Games, instead, it has been entirely handled by Drifter Entertainment – best known for 2017 FPS Gunheart. Not a simple undertaking due to the quality of Robo Recall, a recent interview with Drifter CEO and Co-Founder Ray Davis on Oculus Blog reveals the importance of bringing the exact same gameplay to Oculus Quest.
“It’s going to push the platform extremely hard,” said Davis, going on to stress: “Our core principal was, ‘Do not change the gameplay,’ We want complete parity on Rift and Quest.”
“When I told [Epic Games Technical Director] Nick Whiting we were taking on the project, he said, ‘You are fucking insane,’” Davis adds. “Four months later, here we are. It’s totally a viable, awesome experience—and it also speaks to our culture at Drifter. We’ve all had the past experience of really pushing forward on new platforms and seeing what can be done, so this is the perfect project for us.”
Looking at the screenshots the team look to have created a mobile version worthy of the original, from the detail on the guns and the enemy robots to the vast cityscapes Robo Recall is known for. But it was easy, with the veteran team using as many tricks of the trade as possible.
“Early on, everybody had some skepticism,” admits Davis. “But once we got Robo Recall playable on Quest, more and more people were like, ‘Wow, this is how the game was meant to be played.’”
The Oculus Quest has yet to receive a specific release date with an announcement expected soon. The line up of titles has been growing ever larger of late, so customers should have plenty of choice on launch day. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.
Drifter Entertainment, the studio behind Gunheart (2017) and Ready Player One: Rise of the Gunters (2018), is taking the reigns of porting Epic’s impressive arcade shooter Robo Recall (2017) to Oculus Quest. In an Oculus blog post today, the studio showed off a bevy of screenshots, and gave a peek into just how difficult it was to bring the PC VR game’s photorealism to the standalone headset platform.
Epic’s Robo Recall is by all accounts a fun game, but the robot-smashing arcade shooter also played a big part in showing just how good games can look and feel in VR, setting a visual bar that few have approached even two years after its release on Rift.
“It’s going to push the platform extremely hard,” says Drifter CEO and co-founder Ray Davis, speaking about the task of bringing the title to Quest.
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Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
Image courtesy Drifter Entertainment
While Oculus maintains the gameplay experience is set to be identical to the PC VR version, albeit with the ability to gank robots in it full untethered, 360-degree glory, there’s undoubtedly going to be some sacrifices in the visual department.
“Our core principal was, ‘Do not change the gameplay,’” Davis maintains. “We want complete parity on Rift and Quest.”
Bringing the game to Quest required methods such as lowering polygon counts, and utilizing Multi-View, a rendering technique typically used to lighten the load of CPU-bound applications on Oculus Go and Gear VR; this is done by rendering objects once to the left eye buffer, then duplicating them to the right buffer automatically with appropriate modifications for vertex position and view-dependent variables such as reflection.
The studio says addressing the game’s photorealistic style, bloom effects, and depth of field all proved to be especially challenging.
“We had to find ways to bring back the feel of those things while still hitting our performance targets,” Davis says.
Robo Recall is set to be a day-one launch title for Oculus Quest when it releases at some point this spring. Drifter worked closely with the Platform Team at Oculus and Epic Games to bring Robo Recall to Quest.
Five new images of Robo Recall for Oculus Quest were revealed today on the Oculus blog. The blog also revealed that the game was ported by Drifter Entertainment.
Drifter’s co-founder Ray Davis was Executive Producer for Bullet Train when he worked at Epic Games. Bullet Train was a VR FPS tech demo and prototype that eventually “evolved” into Robo Recall itself.
Robo Recall was the Rift’s flagship game for 2017. Developed by Epic Games and funded by Oculus with an estimated budget of up to $10 million. The graphical quality pushed the bounds of what was possible in VR games with action and physics.
That’s why when Mark Zuckerberg announced on-stage at Oculus Connect 5 that the game would come to Quest, the entire VR industry was rightly skeptical. Could a mobile GPU really play this game, or would this be a port beyond recognition?
“Early on, everybody had some skepticism,” David claimed in the blog. “But once we got Robo Recall playable on Quest, more and more people were like, ‘Wow, this is how the game was meant to be played.’”
While the game’s graphics required significant reduction, the gameplay apparently did not. From the blog post:
Throughout development, Drifter was adamant that the gameplay experience should be identical. “Our core principal was, ‘Do not change the gameplay,’” stresses Davis. “We want complete parity on Rift and Quest.”
Proving Quest’s Potential
Of course, images and videos don’t come close to representing how a game will feel in VR. The distances these shots were taken at may also hide low detail areas. So Drifter will be letting members of the press get hands-on with the game running on Quest this week.
Oculus Quest opens up a new frontier for VR- fully untethered room scale with tracked controllers without needing a PC. While we know its mobile processing hardware can play games like Beat Saber or Job Simulator, questions have been asked about what more it can handle.
Oculus Studios now tells its developers to build for Rift and Quest, but will Quest truly get the types of full scale games these developers have delivered in the past? If Robo Recall truly does have the same gameplay as Rift just with reduced graphics, that may be an indication of the answer.
Virtual reality (VR) first-person shooter (FPS) puts players into a world full of intense gunfights and alien bugs that need killing. Step into the shoes of a robotic bounty hunter trying to make some money at the edge of the galaxy alone, with friends, or in player-versus-player combat. The title has come a long way since it was announced back in May 2017 and then having left Early Access last month. Now, the team at Drifter Entertainment have released a new update that brings plenty of exciting new content to the title.
Dubbed the June update, players will not only find the usual large number of bug fixes and improvements to gameplay and systems, as is the tradition with updates but a number of new features all together. Firstly players will be able to take character customization to a new level as there is now the option to pick the paint job for their rig. Match the paint job with your favourite hat and you’ll be able to rock the galaxy in style.
While in the Palco Rig Room picking a paint job why not try out the new Rig Mods. Mods were added to weapons sometime back and allow for players to change up the behavior of a selected weapon. With Rig Mods, players will be able to upgrade their robotic body with new perks such as increased air control, projectile slowing, area-of-effect (AOE) damage on shield break, and many others that will do ‘crazy stuff’ to help keep the gameplay fresh and engaging.
The movement system has been completely revamped allowing greater control of how to navigate the world and offering more control when in the air. This will come in handy for the new Lone Wolf mode which offers the hardest challenge yet in the title as players go in alone against some of the toughest enemies in the world of Gunheart all with only one life. This mode will be even more of a challenge as enemy behaviors have been upgraded to allow for better spawning of enemies and encourage them to hunt players down. The buzzkills enemy will also now go crazy and dive bomb players, blowing up on impact.
Lastly, there are improves to the games player-versus-player mode to off a more balanced and interesting fight along with the whole new Horde mode. Can you survive wave after wave of increasingly difficult enemies and come out on top as the best robotic hunter around? Put your money where your guns are and find out.
Gunheart has received positive reviews from players including VRFocus’ own Senior Staff Writer Peter Graham who said in his review: “Gunheart has a lot going for it, visually well designed with decent gunplay mechanics and enough content to keep most players happy for several hours. There are bugs and some optimisation issues – just having a better than min spec PC might work – yet the overall experience is still very enjoyable. Certainly Gunheart’s main hook is the easy, drop in co-op gameplay, yet there’s not always many people about, an issue a lot of VR multiplayers suffer with.”
Gunheart has been a long time coming and continues to get numerous updates from the team at Drifter Entertainment. The title supports both VR play with HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets along with non-VR play as well. The title is available now and you can see a short video detailing the above update below. For more on Gunheart in the future, keep reading VRFocus.
Science fiction has become something of a go-to setting for action first-person shooter titles. Perhaps the vast, unknowable nature of the universe makes it attractive to explore, or perhaps it is the idea that there might be hostile aliens out there we can shoot without feeling guilty. Whatever it is, space is the setting for Gunheartfrom Drifter Entertainment.
Today’s gameplay video begins in a central hub known by the name of ‘Event Horizon’. This is the place where players can check out their equipment, and buy new guns and other paraphernalia that can make you even more dangerously effective.
In Gunheart, the player takes the role of a galactic bounty hunter, with your missions coming with a target and a cash reward. Money appears to be the driving motivation for your character, as all that high-tech equipment comes with a hefty price tag.
Some of the guns can be combined to make even bigger and more terrifying guns by simply bringing the motion controllers closer together, causing the two parts to click together to form this powerful handheld cannons.
The weapons can be upgraded with various mods, like rapid reloaders or sniper scopes, and special bullet types like hollow points are up for purchases as well. All these settings can be controlled from within this central hub.
The missions are accessed from a map which bares a resemblance to a transit map like you might find in the London underground. Once a job is selected, you are teleported to the correct location to begin.
In addition to the single player campaign, PvP is also available and can be selected from the mission map. There are several PvP modes available, including the ‘Brawl’ free-for-all. Mastering certain weapons in PvP mode will unlock them for purchase in the main campaign.
The Gunheart gameplay video is available to view below. For further coverage of new and upcoming VR titles, keep checking back with VRFocus.
Gunheart feels like the result of developers listing out all of the things most hardcore VR gamers want from their ideal game. Drifter Entertainment have crammed in tons of weapons to pick from, dynamically generated missions so you don’t run out of content too quickly, procedural and hand-crafted maps, lots of enemies, satisfying and tight gun mechanics, and a strong networking system to facilitate co-op. You can also freely move around the map with smooth locomotion, leap dozens of feet into the air, and teleport anywhere as much as you’d like.
In fact, Gunheart is such a thoroughly robust shooter that it’s even got a fully functional non-VR mode for PC players so everyone can play co-op running the same missions together regardless of device. It’s ambitious and after about a year of Early Access refinement, extremely polished.
Gunheart is an excellent example of a game that evolved in smart ways throughout its time in Early Access and became better as a result. For example, when I first played Gunheart all the way back over a year ago it was a teleportation-only game. Since then, they added full locomotion, jumping, and a slew of enhancements and content expansions. Other than the core shooting mechanics, it’s hardly even the same game anymore.
The premise here is that you’re a robotic bounty hunter that takes on jobs to hunt down and kill disgusting bug-like alien monsters. While the plot is just light enough to give you a reason to shoot at things, the real selling point is the atmosphere.
Before and after every mission you’ll visit the Bent Horizon club, which gives off a Star Wars-esque cantina vibe. From here you can customize your bounty hunter with hats, face designs, different vests/capes, and more. You’ll also be able to equip dozens of different weapon mods to tons of different weapons to augment and change how they’re used in battle.
Each Bent Horizon instance also serves as a multiplayer hub lobby where other players materialize so you can chat and meet people and decide if you want to group up for some missions together. Having a physical (or rather, virtual) place to walk around and adjust things rather than just a bunch of menus really helps establish Gunheart’s personality and lore. It feels like a sci-fi version of Rec Room’s gym.
While there aren’t as many varied missions in Gunheart as you’d find in a game like Destiny 2, that had years of development time across hundreds of team members for example, there’s still quite a lot going on here. A semi-procedural system shuffles map layouts around to keep missions fresh and there’s a set-in-stone progression of campaign stories to finish.
The temporary event missions spice things up a bit, as do the competitive PvP maps, so there’s definitely something for everybody. During a mission you’ll come across loot like money and ammo, but not much in the way of gear. Uncovering loot caches and treasure chests that contain cosmetic skins or even new gun mods more frequently during missions would have helped add to replayability.
Luckily most of the maps feature a lot of elevation variation encouraging you to use your jump and teleport liberally to stay mobile and get the high ground. Most standard enemies have wings that let them glide and jump up to high points as well, so you’ve got to keep your head on a swivel. It’s very easy to get overrun quickly if you let them swarm in on you — especially if you’re playing solo.
The drop-in, drop-out multiplayer works great though and you can set it so random people or friends can join your Bent Horizon lobby or even jump in on your mission while you’re right in the middle of it. Even though it’s launch week so far we haven’t seen a ton of people online yet, but hopefully that changes with the weekend coming up and the inclusion of both VR and non-VR play styles.
Since we first played Gunheart over a year ago one other prominent co-op shooter with fast movement has hit the scene as well, named Evasion. That one is targeting PSVR support as well with the Aim Controller and has a bit more variety from the jump with different classes, but it lacks the speed, jumping, and weapon mod system that really helps Gunheart stand out.
Drifter Entertainment consists of game development veterans from Epic Games, Oculus, and Microsoft with experience on projects like Gears of War, Halo, Robo Recall, and Doom. That pedigree shows with how polished and exciting Gunheart is to play. After a few hours I wanted more variety and more types of guns, even though the unlockable perks were all awesome, but at launch it’s already much better off than most other VR shooters.
Final Score:8/10 – Great
Gunheart is a perfect example of how to iterate and improve on a game over the course of more than a year in Steam Early Access. What started out as a basic co-op VR shooter with teleportation movement is now one of the most feature-rich VR games we’ve seen in recent memory. Dozens of weapon mods, dynamic mission generation, excellent co-op, high-flying fast-paced movement, and enough bullets to make John Wick blush all add up to Gunheart being an easy recommendation. If they can continue iterating and adding content post-launch, this could become VR’s go-to co-op shooter.
Virtual reality (VR) first-person shooters (FPS) have certainly come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, slowly moving away from fixed wave-based videogames to experiences that are far more engaging and fluid. Upcoming titles like Archiact’s Evasion and Farhome by DEVCUBESTUDIO show what’s coming in the future, and as for the present Drifter Entertainment’s first VR project Gunheart has all the hallmarks of an exciting sci-fi shooter.
To say that Drifter Entertainment has a pedigree in FPS videogames is somewhat of an understatement, the team is made up of VR veterans from Epic Games, Oculus and Microsoft who have worked on Gears of War, Doom 3, Halo 4, and Bullet Train. That history is noticeable throughout Gunheart, from the gritty neon lit hub of The Bent Horizon to the open sprawling levels, and veritable selection of weapons and upgrades available.
Gunheart certainly doesn’t take itself too seriously, aiming to provide an arcade style shooting experience that’s ideal for drop in and drop out gameplay, whether you just want a quick half hour blast, or to go on some epic team missions. As mentioned The Bent Horizon is your hub and starting point. Kitted out like some futuristic dive bar where only the nastiest of criminals would venture, everything is neatly laid out so you can upgrade your rig, change guns or hangout with other players.
While there is some sort of storyline about you being a bounty hunter and some alien race coming down to create all sorts of havoc, the only thing you need to concern yourself with is cash. Nothing comes for free and that’s especially so if you want to buy the latest armaments to be a badass bounty hunter. To earn cash you need to complete missions, either by yourself or with a few teammates if any are around. Each mission isn’t massively long – averaging around 20 to 30 minutes each – yet Drifter Entertainment has added a few extras to make them more than just A to B killing romps.
Missions have Elite and Speed modes available to earn more cash, and for those eagle eyed players there are plenty of money canisters littered around the levels to up that total even further. Being the multiplayer title that it is, Gunheart also features PvP battle modes for when hunting aliens gets a little too samey and monotonous.
These tend to come into effect after a few levels due to the way the aliens have been designed. While the actual environments are gloriously winding and varied at points, offering plenty of tactile points to move between – rather than just walking into a death trap valley – most of the creatures do tend to have that alien bug mechanic of running at you until one of you is dead. Some of the bigger creatures do occasionally go for cover but not for long.
One of the best features about the gun fights in Gunheart is the movement. Of course there’s teleportation for maximum comfort – it’s also needed to get to some of the trickier ledges – alongside smooth locomotion for that true FPS feel. Additionally, there’s also a double jump option which is very rarely seen in VR shooters. This helps to open up the maps enormously, being able to leap considerable distances.
What did spoil Gunheart’s gameplay however was latency. VRFocus always runs on a min spec PC to make sure what the developers claim can run a VR experience actually can. On HTC Vive there wasn’t an issue with the graphics controls on low. With Oculus Rift however, with the same settings the visuals looked better yet at points the latency made trying to shoot anything almost impossible.
Gunheart has a lot going for it, visually well designed with decent gunplay mechanics and enough content to keep most players happy for several hours. There are bugs and some optimisation issues – just having a better than min spec PC might work – yet the overall experience is still very enjoyable. Certainly Gunheart’s main hook is the easy, drop in co-op gameplay, yet there’s not always many people about, an issue a lot of VR multiplayers suffer with.
