Category: Flow Weaver

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The VR Game Launch Roundup: A Magical May

VR Game Roundup

Spring 2021 is in full swing and VRFocus has got another crop of VR titles to look forward to in the coming week. There are so exciting VR videogames on their way including Resolution Games’ latest multiplayer and Carbon Studio’s magical adventure expanding its hardware support.

Flow Weaver

Flow Weaver – Stitch Media, Silverstring Media Inc.

Described as a ‘multidimensional escape room’, in Flow Weaver you’re trapped in a single room but are able to control ‘Flows’, a way of moving between dimensions which overlap the material world. You therefore have to navigate between them, solving puzzles which can link across dimensions and hopefully make your escape.

  • Supported platforms: Oculus Rift
  • Launch date: 3rd May

Demeo – Resolution Games

Revealed for the first time only a few months ago, Demeo is a turn-based strategy title allowing up to four players to engage in a dungeon quest, exploring the dangerous hallways and rooms whilst working together to defeat any foes they encounter. Players can assume one of four roles, an eagle-eyed hunter, a mystical sorcerer, a deadly assassin or a protective guardian each bringing their own unique skillset to the team. The end goal is to defeat the Mad Elven King.

Demeo

The Wizards – Dark Times – Carbon Studio

Released last year for PC VR headsets, Carbon Studio is now bringing The Wizards – Dark Times’ gesture -based magic to Oculus Quest. Players have to learn and master 11 individually designed spells which can only be cast with their hands, freezing foes where they stand or setting them on fire for example. All the while trying to rid the land of Meliora from a mysterious dark plague sweeping the land.

Imercyve: Living with Intellectual Disability – Valley General

Appearing in last week’s roundup, the launch of Imercyve: Living with Intellectual Disability has been pushed back to this week. “Developed in partnership with support services not-for-profit Mercy Connect, this experience explores the efficacy of an immersive approach to strengthening communication and understanding between advocates and people with a disability by simulating a variety of effects that may be familiar to those with diverse and high care needs.”

The Wizards - Dark Times

Experience the Energy: Take the Challenge – Mammoth

A free app designed to see if you’d like a career in the Canadian energy industry. “Take the challenge to see how your skills align with 10 exciting careers in oil and gas. Try your hand at drilling, adjust valves to maintain pressure, and send one-of-a-kind robot assistant, Appo into the field to look for hazards.”

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Review: Flow Weaver

Flow Weaver

There have been a lot of puzzle titles hitting virtual reality (VR) headsets of late, from the beautiful Mare to the emotional Vanishing Grace, and let’s not forget classic Myst. While they’ve all had their own unique properties and are enjoyable they’ve not quite managed to achieve that wow ‘must buy’ factor. So even in this packed genre, there’s still room to manoeuvre. The latest to try is Stitch Media with its escape room-style experience Flow Weaver, offering a magical, dimension-jumping tale of interconnected worlds.

Flow Weaver

You play a Flow Weaver, someone who can travel anywhere because of magical ‘flows’. However, due to another sorcerer who wants to learn about these conduits you become stuck in one dimension with five worlds to explore. You then have to solve the various puzzles within each realm to attain five special runes which can help break the spell that keeps you captive.  

An entirely seated experience that should be comfortable for most players as there’s no locomotion whatsoever, Flow Weaver challenges you to solve interconnected puzzles, so if you’re stuck on one then its entirely likely that you might be in the wrong place. Because you can’t move, it’s all about carefully remembering what’s in front of you as Flow Weaver keeps everything within a 180-degree field-of-view. This makes the gameplay fairly easy to pick up, with new elements introduced at a steady rate – depending on how quickly you solve the puzzles.

The entire videogame revolves around the Material World, this is where you talk to the sorcerer and find a couple of easy puzzles to get you warmed up. As you unlock each new world you’ll be able to access a new power, the Shadow Realm offering the first and most useful ability, Shadow Hand – basically remote grab. Early on each puzzle nicely rolls into the next yet they never become too taxing that you’ll become baffled. Should that occur then Flow Weaver provides a ‘Meditate’ function that highlights areas of interest, even bringing up ghostly images of items from other realms to nudge you in the right direction. Your character also has audio snippets which can hide extra snippets of info.

So to begin with Flow Weaver comes across as a fairly pleasant puzzle title, with some mildly intricate puzzles, detailed levels and a fairly interesting narrative. Yet it soon becomes clear that the gameplay is stymied on several levels and quickly loses its flow thanks to some clunky design elements.

For instance, as mentioned a lot of the puzzles overlap across the levels in some fashion yet you have to continually head back to the Material World before choosing the one you actually want. This becomes more laborious if you do become stuck and wish to quickly hop between them for clues. The same can be said for the spell selection. They’re linked to the world you found them in, requiring you to go back to the level select area to grab and bring the spell towards your body to activate it. It’s easy to understand that the developer wanted to create a physical process for these functions yet they become really repetitive over time.

On the subject of repetition, you may actually want to turn the sound off. Again, to start with the audio is well presented and acted, with the Flow Weaver character providing most of it. But as you do in most puzzles you generally repeat certain processes until you solve them. In Flow Weaver, she’ll keep going, drop an item, try and place it somewhere or whatever, and she’ll happily keep reminding you. There’s a certain section that involves an acorn that proved to be immensely patience-testing. This is made worse by little bugs which make items hover, unable to grab, or just inconsistent physics.

Flow Weaver

Perhaps most annoying is the awfully erratic save system. Flow Weaver runs for around 3-4 hours approximately and on an Oculus Quest that generally means a recharge at some point. Yet there’s no way to manually save and no indication of checkpoints. Having collected the fourth rune a break was needed, only to come back and find the last save point was at rune two. It’s not difficult to quickly solve those puzzles again yet each rune collected means more dialogue, all of which is unskippable and soon becomes waffle that you lose interest in.  

Flow Weaver starts out as a promising puzzle adventure ideal for all players. Unfortunately, it doesn’t hold that candle high throughout, as inconsistencies creep in. Videogames like this should offer a sense of satisfaction upon completion, that no puzzle was too great. Instead, there’s more relief that it’s finally over with no reason to return. If there was more lore to uncover, better saving and a satisfying spell system then Flow Weaver could’ve had potential. A difficult one to recommend considering others in this genre.

Posted on

Review: Flow Weaver

Flow Weaver

There have been a lot of puzzle titles hitting virtual reality (VR) headsets of late, from the beautiful Mare to the emotional Vanishing Grace, and let’s not forget classic Myst. While they’ve all had their own unique properties and are enjoyable they’ve not quite managed to achieve that wow ‘must buy’ factor. So even in this packed genre, there’s still room to manoeuvre. The latest to try is Stitch Media with its escape room-style experience Flow Weaver, offering a magical, dimension-jumping tale of interconnected worlds.

Flow Weaver

You play a Flow Weaver, someone who can travel anywhere because of magical ‘flows’. However, due to another sorcerer who wants to learn about these conduits you become stuck in one dimension with five worlds to explore. You then have to solve the various puzzles within each realm to attain five special runes which can help break the spell that keeps you captive.  

An entirely seated experience that should be comfortable for most players as there’s no locomotion whatsoever, Flow Weaver challenges you to solve interconnected puzzles, so if you’re stuck on one then its entirely likely that you might be in the wrong place. Because you can’t move, it’s all about carefully remembering what’s in front of you as Flow Weaver keeps everything within a 180-degree field-of-view. This makes the gameplay fairly easy to pick up, with new elements introduced at a steady rate – depending on how quickly you solve the puzzles.

The entire videogame revolves around the Material World, this is where you talk to the sorcerer and find a couple of easy puzzles to get you warmed up. As you unlock each new world you’ll be able to access a new power, the Shadow Realm offering the first and most useful ability, Shadow Hand – basically remote grab. Early on each puzzle nicely rolls into the next yet they never become too taxing that you’ll become baffled. Should that occur then Flow Weaver provides a ‘Meditate’ function that highlights areas of interest, even bringing up ghostly images of items from other realms to nudge you in the right direction. Your character also has audio snippets which can hide extra snippets of info.

So to begin with Flow Weaver comes across as a fairly pleasant puzzle title, with some mildly intricate puzzles, detailed levels and a fairly interesting narrative. Yet it soon becomes clear that the gameplay is stymied on several levels and quickly loses its flow thanks to some clunky design elements.

For instance, as mentioned a lot of the puzzles overlap across the levels in some fashion yet you have to continually head back to the Material World before choosing the one you actually want. This becomes more laborious if you do become stuck and wish to quickly hop between them for clues. The same can be said for the spell selection. They’re linked to the world you found them in, requiring you to go back to the level select area to grab and bring the spell towards your body to activate it. It’s easy to understand that the developer wanted to create a physical process for these functions yet they become really repetitive over time.

On the subject of repetition, you may actually want to turn the sound off. Again, to start with the audio is well presented and acted, with the Flow Weaver character providing most of it. But as you do in most puzzles you generally repeat certain processes until you solve them. In Flow Weaver, she’ll keep going, drop an item, try and place it somewhere or whatever, and she’ll happily keep reminding you. There’s a certain section that involves an acorn that proved to be immensely patience-testing. This is made worse by little bugs which make items hover, unable to grab, or just inconsistent physics.

Flow Weaver

Perhaps most annoying is the awfully erratic save system. Flow Weaver runs for around 3-4 hours approximately and on an Oculus Quest that generally means a recharge at some point. Yet there’s no way to manually save and no indication of checkpoints. Having collected the fourth rune a break was needed, only to come back and find the last save point was at rune two. It’s not difficult to quickly solve those puzzles again yet each rune collected means more dialogue, all of which is unskippable and soon becomes waffle that you lose interest in.  

Flow Weaver starts out as a promising puzzle adventure ideal for all players. Unfortunately, it doesn’t hold that candle high throughout, as inconsistencies creep in. Videogames like this should offer a sense of satisfaction upon completion, that no puzzle was too great. Instead, there’s more relief that it’s finally over with no reason to return. If there was more lore to uncover, better saving and a satisfying spell system then Flow Weaver could’ve had potential. A difficult one to recommend considering others in this genre.

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‘Flow Weaver’ Brings Multidimensional Puzzles to Quest & PC VR Today, Gameplay Trailer Here

Flow Weaver (2021), an adventure puzzle from Canada-based studios Stitch Media and Silverstring Media, launches today across Quest and PC VR headsets, bringing with it plenty of multidimensional puzzles.

Flow Weaver takes place a fantasy realm where you’re trapped in single room. Although limited to staying in a single spot—it’s a seated experience—you soon find out you can switch between dimensions and manipulate the world with magic in order to escape.

Messing with one object sometimes effects another, which leads you to yet more complex puzzles and discovery of greater spells. Much of the game is played with force grab-style telepathy, but you can also manipulate objects directly if they’re within reach. Flow Weaver is said to take three hours to complete.

The game launches today on Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, and SteamVR headsets. Check out the gameplay trailer below:

The post ‘Flow Weaver’ Brings Multidimensional Puzzles to Quest & PC VR Today, Gameplay Trailer Here appeared first on Road to VR.

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Flow Weaver Review: Clever Time-Weaving Doesn’t Escape Boredom

In Flow Weaver you’re trapped in a magical prison and must escape using powerful dimension-hopping time-weaving magic. Check out our full Flow Weaver review below to see what we thought!

VR is a natural habitat for escape rooms, and it’s no big surprise that so many virtual escape rooms have appeared across the medium during a time when so many of us would like nothing more than to escape the room we’re actually in. Flow Weaver, a new VR escape room game from developers Stitch Media and Silverstring Media for the Quest and Rift/S, brings a touch of high fantasy to the VR escape room formula.

It does some interesting things with its use of multiple dimensions “overlaying” each other in the same space, but it ultimately falls flat, filling much of its time with generic exposition and constraining you to only a few static and claustrophobic areas across its 4-hour runtime.

Flow Weaver Review – The Facts

What is it?: A magical VR escape room about time magic and dimension hopping
Platforms: Quest, PC VR coming this year
Release Date: March 11th, 2021
Price: $TBD

The main mechanic here is called “flow weaving”, a school of magic that exists in Flow Weaver’s high fantasy-inspired world that lets you, the protagonist, shift between dimensions by pulling threads over from the other side. On the Oculus Quest 2, this effect is snappy. Given the minimal load times, it felt reminiscent of last year’s reveal trailer for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, where Ratchet jumps between dimensions with little load time separating them all, making for a seamless experience. Traveling between dimensions in Flow Weaver certainly channels that same seamlessness, so it’s a shame that each environment is so limited once you get there.

flow weaver flying animal clouds

Of the five total “rooms” you’ll visit, the puzzles are extremely short. In fact, there’s only an hour of content total, if you know what you’re doing. On the other hand, it took me about 4 hours to figure it all out – not because it was well-designed and captivating, but rather because things simply weren’t laid out all that well, and none of the clues led me in the right direction. It quickly became an exercise in trying everything over and over again until something clicked, and there were some spots that were upsettingly dense and frustrating for no obvious reason. One key example is a machine you have to power up by finding and reattaching lost gears. Finding the gears is simple, but since it’s not visually clear where those gears are meant to go, I spent an entire 30 minutes circling around until I eventually figured it out.

Adding on to Flow Weaver’s issue of time padding is the dialogue. There’s a lot of it, and none of it is skippable. Every time you enter a new room or unlock one of the 5 total runestones that are necessary for you to wrap things up, you’re immediately thrust into several lines of unskippable exposition that don’t really hold all that much emotional tension or weight, making Flow Weaver feel more drudgey than exciting and expansive. There’s just too little scope to what Flow Weaver is for any of its worldbuilding to feel particularly interesting.

You’re also not really able to interact that much with the world at all. By holding down the B button, you can highlight interactive objects in the environment. But there are two issues with this. One, not every interactive or important object is highlighted when you hold down B, making for some confusing situations like the one I mentioned earlier. Two, there aren’t many things you can toy with or interact with outside of the objects that are necessary for you to progress. Most of the world is static, which ultimately makes it uninteresting when compared to other games that give you more things to do with physics objects.

flow weaver pink forest

Luckily, the rooms are visually pleasing and nicely-detailed. The limited environments are at least quite varied, and each of them look great on the Oculus Quest 2. One room features a breathtaking ocean of clouds that contains mystical structures which swirl around you.

This is something that looks like it came right out of Warcraft’s Silvermoon City, but seems much grander in VR. Characters are less detailed, but they’re usually positioned so far away from you that it’s hard to notice. The soundtrack is easy to listen to in the background, and certainly doesn’t get in the way of the experience, but isn’t all that remarkable or memorable either.

Flow Weaver Review – Comfort Settings

Flow Weaver is an entirely seated and forward-facing experience, which means that you can sit down on the couch and comfortably play the entire thing without ever getting up. That said, there are many moments where you’ll need to stretch your arms well out of your play area to grab distant objects and pull them towards you. The planar compass (the combined world map, spell menu, and journal, basically) is always positioned well above your head, making you need to crane your neck upward to interact with the different elements of it.

This makes me wonder whether Flow Weaver was always meant to be a seated experience. Other than that, you can use a “shadow hand” spell to pull distant objects toward you, kind of like the gravity gloves from Half-Life: Alyx, but with a little less flair and style.

Flow Weaver Review – Final Verdict

Flow Weaver is a sometimes entertaining, sometimes frustrating, and wholly forgettable break from reality which, by the end of its short but needlessly stretched-out hour of gameplay, left me ready to escape to some other game. If you love sorcery and you’re jonesing for a chance to cast a few spells in VR, there are certainly better alternatives like Waltz of the Wizard. However, the puzzles offered in Flow Weaver are still worth checking out if you absolutely love the escape room genre. If so, you’ll be rewarded with some genuinely nice looking environments that are easy on the senses.

2 STARS

flow weaver review pro con box

For more on how we arrived at this score on our 5-star scale, read our review guidelines. This review was conducted using a digital pre-release version of the game on a Quest 2 headset.

UploadVR Review Scale

You can check out the game on Oculus Quest if you’re interested. It’s also coming to Steam this year.

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Fantasy Puzzle Game Flow Weaver Hits Quest Next Week

Stitch Media and Silverstring Media’s fantasy puzzle game, Flow Weaver, arrives on Oculus Quest and Rift headsets next week.

The title touches down on March 11th and is now available to wishlist in the coming soon section of the Quest Store. In Flow Weaver, players awaken to find themselves trapped in an unknown dimension, and must use their powers to move between other realities and find a means of escape. It’s essentially a VR escape room, requiring players to learn new spells to solve puzzles and access new dimensions. Check it out in the trailer below.

We’re definitely reminded of Aldin Dynamics’ Waltz of the Wizard watching the trailer, but Flow Weaver definitely has a more puzzle-driven vibe. The game’s intended to be a seated experience so users can play for extended sessions. Borderlands 3’s Ciarán Strange voices the main character.

Earlier this month Flow Weaver’s developers even debuted a tabletop RPG set in the same world as the game. You can download a free PDF to try it out for yourself right here.

Currently the game’s planned for launch exclusively on Oculus headsets. That said, there is also a SteamVR listing that only lists compatibility with Oculus headsets, but it should be possible to experience the game with other devices there. The developers haven’t made any mention of a possible PSVR version.

As for Quest this week? Later today sees the launch of narrative storybook adventure, Luna, and long-anticipated rock climbing sequel, The Climb 2. Later on this month will also see the launch of VR horror game, Cosmodread. March is shaping up to be a pretty good month for the standalone headset, then. What are you going to be picking up? Let us know in the comments below!

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Multidimensional Escape Room Flow Weaver Heads to Oculus in 2021

Flow Weaver

Virtual reality (VR) headsets have plenty of puzzle titles for fans to enjoy and today indie studio Stitch Media has announced its addition to the genre, a magical title called Flow Weaver; due for release next year.

Flow Weaver

Being built for Oculus headsets, Flow Weaver will be a multidimensional escape room where you play a wizard held captive in a mysterious location. You’ll need to use your magical powers to escape, learning new spells to move between worlds.

“The primary gameplay centers around transitioning between your cell and different dimensions (or “Flows”) as you discover them, learning how each Flow affects the world in different ways,” explains Stitch Media. “The player uses those differences to solve puzzles and challenges, learn new skills or spells, and uncover new objects and new puzzles.”

Designed to be a comfortable seated experience, the studio a wide 5 – 10 hours of gameplay with fully voice-acted dialogue and various paths to explore for alternate endings. Spells look like they could be gesture-based which always helps immersion, as well as utilising hand tracking.

Flow Weaver

Currently, Stitch Media has said Flow Weaver will only support Oculus platforms when it launches in 2021. Take a look at the trailer below which showcases various worlds and some of those magical abilities. As further details are released, VRFocus will keep you updated.