One of the earliest and best virtual reality (VR) horror puzzle titles was Robot Invaders Dead Secret for Samsung Gear VR back in 2015. In the following years the studio has expanded support for the title, bringing it to HTC Vive and Oculus Rift in 2016 whilst announcing a sequel last year. Today, Frame Interactive has revealed Dead Secret will now be coming to PlayStation VR.
Dead Secret is a mystery thriller set in rural Kansas in 1965 where you play as an ambitious journalist on a mission to make headlines. You arrive at the house of Harris Bullard, a reclusive man with a mysterious past who was found dead in his study five days previous. No foul play is suspected, least of all the police. But as a journalist looking for the next big story you know better: this is murder, and it’s up to you to prove it.
As you find items, solve puzzles, and collect evidence to name the murderer and make headlines the murderer is hot on your trail, so you must avoid getting cornered. Depending on the choices that you make along the way you’ll encounter one of five different endings.
There doesn’t appear to be any PlayStation VR specific improvements or additions to Dead Secret other than the ability to play the title in VR and non-VR modes.
VRFocusreviewed Dead Secretwhen it originally arrived for Gear VR giving it five-stars at the time: “Dead Secret is a wholly enjoyable experience for the handful of hours which it lasts. An easy recommendation for both experienced VR enthusiasts and newcomers to the Gear VR, Dead Secret is one of the best launch titles available for the consumer edition of the device.” How well it holds up almost three years later remains to be scene, as there are plenty of puzzle experiences available for PlayStation VR.
Dead Secret will be available for PlayStation VR on 24th April 2018. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Robot Invader, reporting back with any further updates.
Studios Frame Interactive and Robot Invader today announced Dead Secret (2015), the Gear VR title that later landed on PC VR headsets, is finally making its way to PSVR.
Coming to PSVR April 24th, the horror-mystery adventure puts you in the shoes of a 1960’s era reporter looking for your next big story. You’ll unravel the threads of multiple suspects while riffling through drawers in the house to put together clues—all in effort to understand who murdered Harris Bullard, a scholar of Japanese mythology and resident dead guy.
As in a classic whodunit, it’s your job to find items, solve puzzles, and collect evidence to name the murderer. There are five different endings to unlock, but watch out for the masked murder hot on your heels.
image courtesy Robot Invader
According to the PlayStation blog post announcing the game’s availability, the game will feature both VR and non-VR modes, although if Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017) was any indication, it’ll be much scarier (and immersive) from within the headset. No pricing is available yet, although it currently costs $15 on Steam.
Robot Invader is also bringing its sequel,Dead Secret Circle, to VR and non-VR platforms later this year. Although they haven’t announced specific target platforms, the release of the original Dead Secret on PSVR makes a strong case for future support. Dead Secret Circle puts you in the place of a 1971 Chicago gumshoe reporter, tossing you into a new adventure of catching a killer haunting both your dreams and the people of the city.
Headmaster was an entertaining technical showcase for the PlayStation VR (PSVR) at launch. However, it reminded us a bit too much of similar games for the Wii built around nothing more than demonstrating how to use the technology.
Developer Frame Interactive announced this week that Headmaster is now out on Oculus Home for Rift and Steam for Rift and Vive. The new version features a few improvements over the PSVR original. Chief among them is the addition of 10 new ‘party mode’ levels. The original release included only a single map for the pass-and-play multiplayer mode. While the new stages were introduced into the PSVR version in March, they’re there from the jump for PC VR players. The new version even allows a single user to play multiplayer by his or herself in what the developers have dubbed, “Lonely Party Mode.”
Another improvement is the inclusion of a beta version of “No Hands Support.” While Headmaster doesn’t allow players to use their hands in-game, players reported that the complete absence of hand tracking felt distracting. Now players can see their upper limbs rendered as dirty oven mitts covered in duct tape, called Handball Avoidance Mitts. Striking the ball with these will result in a call of a handball, so it’s best to avoid doing so. The in-game gloves were digitized from actual dirty oven mitts via photogrammetry, meaning they are just as lovingly detailed and rendered as the shiny stormtrooper armor in Star Wars: Battlefront.
PC Headmasters also get access to a practice mode to hone their skills without fear of failure, a new vacant stadium level previously shown at PAX West, and difficulty adjustments for the trickier parts of the game. Achievements for both Steam and Oculus find their way into the new version, too, along with Steam trading cards to round out the updated package.
The improvements are welcome, but not so revolutionary that we feel the original PSVR review needs to be updated. Check it out to see if Headmaster is for you and let us know what you think of the game in the comments below!
Sometimes it’s the simplest ideas that can be the most effective, doing away with complicated and convoluted plans, getting right to the bare bone essentials. That theory can be applied to all walks of life, videogames included, giving players a core gameplay mechanic that everything else revolves around. And that’s certainly true of Frame Interactive’s Headmaster, a sort of football – or soccer, depending on where you are in the world – arcade simulator that solely wants you to use your head.
Originally released as an exclusive PlayStation VR launch title in 2016 that exclusivity has ended so that the studio can bring its heading master class to Oculus Rift and HTC Vive (reviewed).
Set in a ‘Football Improvement Centre’ you have to head balls back at targets to score points, the greater the tally the more stars you’ll earn to unlock further levels, increasing in size and complexity. To start off with you’ll find yourself on a pitch in front of a goal mouth, with targets either on the floor or suspended via the frame. Then it’s just a case of directing the balls with enough accuracy, which is easier said than done.
What Headmaster does right straight away is the physics. If heading the ball felt inaccurate or a bit flimsy then then entire experience would just collapse, you’d be frustratingly trying to get those points, getting bored along the way. Luckily that’s not the case, as with a bit of practice – and going through the tutorial – it’s easy to find what part of your head/face you need to use for certain shots. Need the ball to go high then it’s the top of the headset, while the bottom is for those low shots. There’s no curling of the ball but on certain levels you’ll need to arch over obstacles.
It’s when Headmaster starts mixing things up that things start to get really fun. Boxes will appear that have to be smashed through, or a goalie will be introduced to make those high scores harder to achieve. Thankfully, to aid you are several ball variants that can be used tactically. How about a giant beach ball to knock over several close knit targets, a multiball option, or a ball packed with explosives that only detonates on impact – great for removing items in the way.
Such is the mixture of challenges that there’s plenty to keep you entertained for a few hours without even looking at the other modes. Additionally, there’s a practice arena filled with most of the ball options and obstacles found in the main campaign, plus the balls have motion trails to aid in the fine tuning of shots.
And let’s not forget Party Mode. This is Headmaster’s final feather in its cap, ensuring that once the campaign is complete there’s still content to come back to. This mode is all about local multiplayer allowing friends and family to compete against one another for bragging rights on the best score. It’s in Party Mode that the developer has added some of the best levels – particular favourites include darts and the beer cups – giving a different twist on the heading mechanics.
All in all Headmaster is a well put together title that the majority of VR gamers will find enjoyable. It does feel a bit 2016 in its gameplay offerings, with VR having moved on leaps and bounds in terms of the depth of content available. Headmaster is a tongue in cheek experience that doesn’t take itself too seriously, supplying light hearted fun mixed with good physics, and that’s no bad thing.
For the launch of PlayStation VR Frame Interactive released its football inspired virtual reality (VR) title Headmaster. Today the studio has announced the surprise launch of Headmaster for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
As the videogames title implies, Headmaster is all about using your head to return balls, aiming for targets to attain the highest score. Rather than just a straight port, Frame Interactive has been working on several new features for the PC version.
Firstly, there’s a new practice zone for you to try your skills at before heading into the main campaign. The area has unlimited chances and no pressure to win, with added motion trails to the balls to help hone in on targets. A massive, vacant stadium level has been included to offer more variety.
The Party Mode – of which there was one level for PlayStation VR’s launch and then expanded upon in March – now has single-player support. So there’s Pass and Play local multiplayer score competition with 11 levels or Lonely Party Mode if no ones about.
Lastly there’s No Hands Support which is currently in beta. After running tests with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive the studio received feedback that the videogame felt weird without hands – even though it’s all about using your head – so the team created Handball Avoidance Mitts for those that want them. The feature isn’t automatically enabled, you just have to activate it in the options menu.
Headmaster goes live on the Oculus store and Steam today. For any further updates keep reading VRFocus.
The virtual reality (VR) sector is growing all the time. As a result, many companies are on the lookout for those interested in VR technologies. If you happen to be an artist, programmer, engineer or designer who has been inspired by reading VRFocus, perhaps there will be a job here that is perfect for you.
As always, you can check last week’s edition for further job listings. If you are an employer looking for someone to fill a role in an AR or VR area and want the postion to be in next week’s VR Job Hub, please send the information to either pgraham@vrfocus.com or keva@vrfocus.com
There will be more job listing next Sunday here on VRFocus.
Today Frame Interactive has announced a major update for its PlayStation VR videogame Headmaster. Titled ‘Party Mode Update’, it adds enhancements to multiplayer, PlayStation 4 Pro support and more.
As the name suggests, the big inclusion for the update is a beefed up local multiplayer. Renamed ‘Party Mode’, nine levels have been added, some are remixes of existing elements, while some are completely new. They are:
Big Monkey – A giant, inflatable, used car sale gorilla that acts out a low-rent King Kong circus performance. I should just stop there.
Robert’s Room – Actually play in a room with mini balls and targets. See if you can dislodge Robert from the toilet.
Rock and Bowl – Bowling redone with blacklights and splatter paint
Basketcase – A newly done up basketball challenge.
Speed Round 2 – A new speed round with special surprises
Facility Tour – Several classic levels all in one, quickly moving between them in a single level.
Darts – It’s still darts taped to soccer balls like you’d expect
Carnival – The classic carnival exam remixed for Party Mode
For PlayStation 4 Pro owners, Frame Interactive has increased the resolution to help make those distance shots more legible. “We were able to turn the final rendered image up to 2x supersampling with MSAA,” said Frame Interactive’s founder, Ben Throop on PlayStation blog. “It runs at 90 frames per second on PS4 and PS4 Pro, but on the PS4 Pro it is now noticeably sharper.”
An initials feature has now been added, so that players can add theirs when competing locally if they achieve a high score.
Lastly, some of the tougher levels have been reworked to make them a little easier, with lesson 31 of particular annoyance Throop notes.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Frame Interactive, reporting back with the latest VR updates.
Its been just over a week since the PlayStation VR head-mounted display (HMD) launched and many owners will have likely made their way through the demo titles available. One of which is Frame Interactive’s Headmaster, a football title in which players have to direct incoming balls at various targets around them. If you’ve not tried the title yet or don’t currently own the headset, take a look at the tongue-in-cheek launch trailer to see what it’s all about.
The video is taken from the standpoint of an instructor welcoming you to ‘The Football Improvement Centre’, where they aim to teach you how to head a ball like a professional. It begins with explaining that you’ll ‘go through increasingly challenging rounds of heading re-education’. The clips will showcase some of the different challenges that await, from hitting targets located within a goal mouth, to heading ping pong balls into different point scoring cups.
Every now and then the trailer switches to outtake clips which show the centre as a less than professional establishment. Balls flying uncontrollably at the camera, warehouses are engulfed in flames, and files being torched that say ‘Full Mental Breakdown’ and ‘Severe Blunt Force Head Trauma’, add some irreverent comedy to the proceedings.
The trailer can be seen below, and for further PlayStation VR new, keep reading VRFocus.
6 days to go until the launch of PlayStation VR! We’re counting down to the release of Sony’s VR headset on October 13th by highlighting one game a day for its anticipated release. Today we’re talking to Frame Interactive about its anticipated title, Headmaster.
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Headmaster is one of the games we’ve been seeing time again on PlayStation VR, having been revealed all the way back in the days that the headset was called Project Morpheus. It takes a simple action, hitting a football with your head, and brings it to a technology where it feels right at home. In fact, it’s so intuitive it’s already inspired several other imitations.
Recently we sent some questions over to one of the game’s developers, Ben Throop of Frame Interactive. In the answers below, he talks about perfecting the game’s mechanics while also revealing a surprisingly in-depth story more. Headmaster is out next Thursday, October 13th alongside PlayStation VR itself.
UploadVR: Is Headmaster a game for sports fans? Or is it for VR owners in general?
Ben Throop: It’s for anyone, really. The game does not require interest in soccer. We’ve made a lot of deliberate choices to be gamer-focused because we love video games and it was our chance to make whatever we wanted. Luckily explosions and prison and bureaucracy and soccer all go together (somehow?).
You could even say Headmaster is an ANTI-sports game because it co-opts a sport and brings it into the gamer’s world in a similar way to Rocket League. Soccer provides a shorthand to explain some rules and take advantage of some popular tropes… but then we abuse the sport a bit to just make a fun video game.
Unlike Rocket League though, the mechanic doesn’t use a controller – just your head. This makes it more accessible for non-gamers who are interested in trying out VR. Gamers and developers take controllers for granted, so it was really surprising to see how non-gamers took to Headmaster, with actual excitement and enthusiasm like “this is great, I don’t have to think about the complicated buttons and stuff”. I thought hands-free gameplay was cool, but I didn’t quite realize how much it would widen the audience. It’s turned out to be a really fun way to show VR to family and non-gamer friends. When I have people play, I like to get a group together, turn up the external sound and keep the headphones off the player so we can all share the game space. Then we all watch and talk to the player/victim while we take in the campaign together. Watching someone try to make shots and deal with the game world is really strangely fun.
UploadVR: How is the game structured? Is there a story mode?
Ben Throop: There’s a campaign with a story and an ending. You’re a professional soccer player and you had a bad season, so you’ve been sent to the Football Improvement Centre, which you are told is not a prison – but there’s razor wire and floodlights and alarms. I guess that’s a bit of a comment about how school felt to me as a kid. The best way I can explain the story without spoiling it is to say that the Centre is run by people and they have their own flaws and problems. You learn of the only employee and he communicates with you by leaving you notes since he’s not allowed contact with students. Things aren’t what they seem and you end up in the middle of a crisis.
So you take Lessons and ultimately try to pass your Exams and then graduate, which means you can go back to your club.
The progression has you trying to earn up to three stars on each lesson. One star is required to pass and move on to the next lesson. The story unfolds as you advance. Generally getting one star is pretty easy, but every 10 or so lessons, there’s an exam. Exams are boss fights, pretty much. I can’t believe we made boss fights but now we’re done and I look back and yep there’s boss fights in this ridiculous game.
You need a certain number of stars to unlock exams, so usually you need to go back and choose some lessons to do really well on to earn more. Getting two stars on a lesson is a challenge that will take a little thought and concentration. Three stars on a lesson though… that will not only take some skill, but also problem solving. When you get three stars in a lesson, you get a Motivational Item chucked at your head, which is pretty much a worthless found item that the cheap administration of the Centre deemed “valuable enough”. You collect Motivational Items for viewing on shelves in your room, which is not a prison cell.
And then of course there are some crazy hard shots that I hope people will just record themselves nailing for the pure glory of it. I’m really excited to see how good people can get – right now our team contains the best Headmaster players in the world, so we are looking forward to being humbled after the game launches. The video share function on the PS4 is especially cool for this because it’s like a DVR, so if you make tough shot you just jam on the Share button and you can put it online.
There’s also local multiplayer for 2-6 players where you pass the headset and compete for high score. At launch we’re going to have one level in that mode but we plan on adding to that set in updates. This mode has more range of scoring so it’s where we’d really get to see who has skill.
UploadVR: How difficult has it been to perfect the action of heading the ball with fine tuned feedback?
Ben Throop: Surprisingly tough. It’s a pretty standard case of a simple, intuitive experience being complicated to create.
When first prototyping heading a ball in VR, the action was so direct and convincing that it immediately was fun. This was deceiving because it was the novelty that was carrying it despite the flaws in my first implementation. So despite the great early response in which time we partnered with Sony, many early testers came away saying “man, I loved it but I really suck”. So we had to figure out how to make it controllable and as intuitive as it could be.
Digging into why they felt that way was tricky, because nobody could really articulate it. The mechanic is very analog and people don’t have a vocabulary for it like they do for, say, an FPS. So we took that as a challenge.
One of the things that helped was counter intuitive, and that was reducing elements of randomness in the physics. I play soccer myself, but Eric (my creative partner on the game) does not. So he represented the gamer’s point of view, and I came from the athlete point of view when it came to tuning the mechanics. There would be arguments where he’d say “I need to be able to replicate this hit exactly so I can adjust my angle and timing” and I’d say “That’s not how sports works! You can’t replicate anything, you just have to practice.”.
Ultimately, he was right about a lot of stuff. Too much randomness in the serve of the ball and randomness in how it spun made the game really hard – not in a good way. But that’s what you do when you make video games… you inject a little randomness into things so they don’t look cold and computer like. It just turns out though that in VR the position of your head is random enough. So we took out a lot of the normal gamey random stuff and you would never know. All you know is that the ball goes where you want.
The other side of the mechanic discussion is how it is a physical motion that comes with a lot of expectations, and we need to show people how to play well. Anyone that’s ever headed a soccer ball knows that it carries a lot of inertia and you need to really brace yourself to head correctly. Thing is it’s not safe to be jumping around and moving like a crazy person when in VR, so our tutorial introduces “The Proper Heading Motion™” to get players to use a sustainable action when playing the game. And it’s not just about safety, but also fatigue. You want to have a motion you can repeat for an hour without having to quit because you’re tired. So it’s more chill and skill based. The action is still true to heading a ball, but it shows that you don’t need to be jarring or strenuous about it because the ball isn’t actually there. … so you rock your upper body back and forth and keep your neck straight as opposed to really blasting your neck and getting all sweaty.
However the first time you have a ball launched at your face, you definitely react! That first moment is the best to watch.
UploadVR: How long as Headmaster been in development for? Has developement finished?
Ben Throop: The first prototype of the mechanic was in June 2014 at the Boston VR Bender game jam that Owlchemy, Valve, and Unity put on. I met Alex and Devin from Owlchemy, Chet and Aaron from Valve, and Pete Moss from Unity there. Valve brought their prototype desktop hardware with positional tracking and the theme of the jam was to make something that used positional tracking for gameplay. Heading a ball was just this obvious-seeming idea that I immediately had. The prototype came together really quickly and showed promise. It’s still really fun to think about meeting those guys back then, and where the VR industry has gone since. It still felt very much like garage days.
The world and trappings of Headmaster evolved November 2014 and through the holidays. The game was first shown at Indiecade East in early 2015, and then we started on the PS VR version after pitching Sony at GDC 2015, around April. So by the time it comes out it will have been over two years since inception. The funny part is that this was my “I just quit my job let me make one quick game and see how it goes” game.
As of this writing we’re done and racing to make trailers for launch on Oct 13.
UploadVR: Do you have a price set for Headmaster?
Ben Throop: Not yet but very soon.
UploadVR: Were you expecting people to copy the idea for Headmaster? Especially before the game was even out?
Ben Throop: We expected other devs to independently discover the mechanic of heading stuff. It is a natural for VR. So to avoid any chance of having a direct competitor, we concocted this weird world of The Football Improvement Centre, set the game at night, and made the kind of video game that we’d wanted to make without worrying if anyone wanted to play it. We figured if it was really unexpected and came from the heart then nobody would be able to plot a line from here to there and end up doing the same thing.
Since the choices we made are so odd, I never thought anyone would clone Headmaster. But the game’s gotten some attention, Sony has been showing it everywhere, and it’s known to be exclusive and a PS VR launch title, so I suppose it’s natural for some teams to want to take advantage of that. Luckily they are basing these clones off of a surface level idea of what the game is and what the old trailer has revealed, and I think players will not have any problem telling them apart when the final game comes out. On some level it is flattering. Maybe we can get “Dystopian Soccer Prison Simulator” listed as a genre on the storefronts.
UploadVR: Have you considered how a full soccer game might work in VR? Could that be possible right now?
Ben Throop: I haven’t thought about this. Anything is possible but we’ve been pretty tied up.
UploadVR: Is Frame a VR studio from here on out? Will your next game be in VR?
Ben Throop: Yes, Frame is a VR studio at this point. We’ve gathered a great little team and all of our processes are streamlined now. Starting a new studio and doing the first game, there are so many firsts that need to get done. I look forward to doing a game without having to, say, choose an email provider or get an accountant in the middle of it all.
I can’t wait to see what we do next. Once you get into VR you realize there’s so much unexplored territory. It’ll be tough to decide on what our next project is but I’m looking forward to getting back into that exploration mode.
When Ben Throop went to the Boston VR hackathon in June 2014, he didn’t know that Valve was going to be showing off some prototype VR hardware that had positional tracking. At this point the Oculus DK2 had not shipped yet, and so he was able to build a VR game using his soccer experience to head soccer balls into a goal. He wanted to see how it felt, and was surprised that it was actually a lot of fun. He decided to continue working on it, and last year the game, Headmaster, was first announced at E3 as a PlayStation VR launch title. Frame Interactive was back again this year at E3 showing off the game at PlayStation VR’s booth.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
I had a chance to catch up with Ben at Sony’s GDC press event where I talked to him about the game design principles behind Headmaster, why even non-gamers love to play it, and why the physics of things flying at your face are some compelling in VR.
When