For the full list of all of our livestreams scheduled for this week, as well as archived footage after the stream has happened, check out the schedule right here.
There are so many good VR games out there these days that it’s incredibly easy for things to go under the radar. Sometimes a great game will come out at the wrong time or alongside a bevvy of other new releases and it just doesn’t get the attention that it deserves. That seems to be what happened to From Other Suns, the procedurally generated co-op shooter from Gunfire Games that’s all about embarking on space faring missions with your buddies to find powerful new guns on a journey back to Earth. It’s a fun title with a lot of variety and it doesn’t seem to have gotten the love that it deserved at launch.
We’ll be playing From Other Suns on Rift using a two Touch controllers. We’re starting right around 1:00 PM PT and we’ll aim to last for about an hour or so. We’ll be livestreaming to the UploadVRTwitch page where you can interact with us directly and chat among yourselves. Now that we’re affiliates on Twitch you can subscribe to our channel, cheer us on with bits, and earn nifty loyalty badges. Soon, we’ll have custom emotes too. You can see the full stream once it’s live right here:
Did you know we stream games over on Twitch? We’re getting into a rhythm that will allow us to stream VR games each and every weekday (except in the case of holidays or traveling for events of course) and we’re having a lot of fun doing it. We’ve moved all of our VR game streams to Twitch and want you to help us build a community.
Every week we will post a new Livestream Schedule like this. You can click here to see all past livestream archives and scheduled streams. This way everyone can anticipate what’s coming for the week and know when to tune in. If you have suggestions for games you want to see us stream next, leave those ideas down in the comments below!
We’ll embed archived versions of each stream after they’re done and if we’re live right now when you’re reading this then you can watch right here.
Tuesday, January 1st 2018 @ 1:00 PM PT
Vengeful Rites on Rift
Vengeful Rites is a VR RPG that’s been on our radar for a long time and we’re finally going to check it out. With an intuitive combat system and lots of freedom to explore, it’s like a spiritual successor to Vanishing Realms from a new developer.
Wednesday, January 2nd 2018 @ 11:30 AM PT
Electronauts on Rift
We’re back behind the DJ booth in Electronauts on Wednesday spinning up some funky beats and catchy tunes. Survios released three different VR games and experiences this year and as the middle-child of their release schedule, we don’t want Electronauts to be forgotten.
Thursday, January 3rd 2018 @ 1:00 PM PT
From Other Suns Co-Op on Rift
From Other Suns is still one of our favorite Rift games and is an excellent shooter to play with friends in co-op due to the procedural generation and replayable premise. We’re diving back in for some co-op fun on this one today.
Friday, January 4th 2018 @ 1:00 PM PT
Beat Saber Custom Songs on Rift
We’re topping off the week with Beat Saber, the viral sensation that’s still just as fun to play now as the first time. This will be our last stream of the week and the last one for a little while because CES is the following week. We’ll focus on doing custom songs and letting viewers decide which songs we play.
Gunfire Games’ most recent release, the space adventure game From Other Suns (2017), is playable for free this weekend. The game is exclusive to the Oculus platform and designed “from the ground up” for the Touch controllers, coming from the studio behind Chronos (2016) and Dead & Buried (2017).
The free weekend lasts from Jan 19th at 7:00 PM CET (local time) until Jan 22nd at 9:00 AM CET (local time). Reverting back to its normal $40 price tag after the weekend, it might just give you the opportunity you need to see if the game is right for you.
With similarities to the roguelite FTL: Faster Than Light (2012) and the Borderlands series, From Other Suns is a compelling space adventure game that works best as a co-op experience, combining action FPS gameplay and spaceship management. The procedural technology makes for randomised locations and encounters, and the vast array of weapons allow for “over 2000 possible variations”.
In our full review, we noted the challenging resource management could prove frustrating for some players. But the premise should appeal to many sci-fi fans and fans of FTL in particular, and its gameplay is backed up by rich visuals and audio.
Vor einer Woche stand Raw Data über das Wochenende zum kostenlosen Zocken bereit, an diesem Wochenende ist From Other Suns dran. Der reguläre Preis des exklusiv für die Oculus Rift erhältlich Action-Shooters mit sozialen Elementen liegt bei knapp 40 Euro. Die Aktion ist also eine gute Möglichkeit, den VR-Titel mit Ko-op-Modus auszuprobieren.
From Other Suns: Sci-Fi-Shooter für das Wochenend-Vergnügen
Es ist nicht das erste Mal, dass der First-Person-Shooter From Other Suns des Entwicklerstudios Gunfire Games an einem Wochenende kostenlos spielbar ist. Zuletzt war das letztes Jahr Ende September der Fall – seinerzeit allerdings noch im Rahmen der Open-Beta-Phase. From Other Suns überzeugt vor allem mit seinem Ko-op-Modus, bei dem man mit bis zu drei Spielern gegen die Gefahren aus dem Weltall bestehen kann. So steuert man gemeinsam ähnlich wie bei Star Trek: Bridge Crew das Raumschiff und muss beispielsweise Schutzschilde hochfahren. Erobert man aber ein Raumschiff, wandelt sich das Spiel in knallharte First Person Shooter Action und man kämpft gegen Aliens und technoide Gebilde.
From Other Suns ist am 14. November letzten Jahres offiziell für die Oculus Rift erschienen. Eine Umsetzung auf andere Plattformen wie PSVR und HTC Vive steht noch aus. Wodurch sich an diesem Wochenende für Besitzer des VR-Spiels die Wahrscheinlichkeit erhöht, Mitspieler zu finden. Ob und wann andere VR-Brillen bedient werden, ist noch nicht bekannt. From Other Suns steht ab Freitag, den 19. Januar 2018 ab 19 Uhr bis zum Montag morgen im Oculus Store kostenlos bereit und lässt sich in diesem Zeitraum gratis spielen. Wer auf den Geschmack gekommen ist und nach dem Testwochenende die Vollversion von The Other Suns erwerben will, zahlt knapp 40 Euro. Günstiger wird es bei dem kostenlosen Spiel vom letzten Wochenende, der Sci-Fi-Action-Shooter Raw Data kostet derzeit im Store 25 statt 40 Euro.
Gunfire Games have been extremely active on the Oculus Rift, first-person space based co-operative shooter From Other Suns is the fourth title to be released on the Oculus platform. The Beta for From Other Suns ran for a few days between September and October, and upon release the full videogame allowed player to combine elements of crew management with first-person shooting and loot gathering. VRFocus spoke to John Pearl, Design Director at Gunfire Games about From Other Suns at Oculus Connect 4.
When VRFocus spoke to Pearl at Oculus Connect 4, he describes the title as a combination between FTL: Faster Than Light‘s ship management and a Borderlands run-and-gun type of shooter. After creating Chronos and working on Dead & Buried, Gunfire Games wanted to do something bigger that was co-operative focused. Inspired by their favourite science-fiction series from Star Trek, Firefly to Star Wars, the team wanted to re-create that sense of adventure, ‘just one more jump, just a little more money and just one more day’. As long as you have fuel in your ship, you can keep going.
Exclusive to the Oculus Rift, From Other Suns can have up to three players playing in co-op together. However you can play solo, as long as you have organic crew members alive on your ship. The map, missions and universe are randomised, so when you start playing you never know what your missions will be, who you will meet or where you are. You may be asked to fight pirates, stop a pirate ship from getting away, fight enemy robots, roll back firmware or fight merchants and pirates that are travelling between stars. Or skip the mission altogether, as long as you have enough fuel and can afford to.
The weapons are interchangeable and you may need to swap out various guns for a specific mission type. The largest frigate ship can sustain 12 A.I. Crew members which three people can switch in-between and the rest is up to the player. You are your own boss in space, but in order to keep travelling you have to collect resources to upgrade your ship – and with a large ship you’ll need to hire more crew members. Upgrade through salvaging in missions and hire crew at space ports, acquire more during missions, or just get your friends to join in with your adventures.
After running the Beta, Gunfire Games have also added more options for movement modes. From Other Suns integrates Oculus Touch support and four different modes of movement. This will allow players who don’t have their VR feet yet to play with more advanced players. To find out more watch the video below, and stay right here at VRFocus for all the latest from Gunfire Games.
Austin-based Gunfire Games is one of the more experienced game studios in the world working on VR. With around 60 people employed there today, the company behind Darksiders III also produced five VR titles stretching across Rift and Gear VR, including third-person role-playing game Chronos, shooter Dead and Buried and mobile title Herobound: Spirit Champion.
Gunfire’s latest game, From Other Suns, takes Rift owners soaring across the galaxy in a game that mashes together a shooter with one of the most addictive games I’ve ever played — FTL. If you’re unfamiliar with FTL, the PC game is also available on iPad and sees players managing a spaceship as it makes its way warping across the galaxy gathering resources by defeating enemies to purchase more weapons and upgrades for the ship. The game gradually scales in difficulty as you approach your destination so you need to constantly be getting stronger while both its enemies and environments are generated anew with each game so it is constantly a fresh challenge infused with the need for a bit of good luck.
From Other Suns is very similar, with you embodying one of the ship’s crew members and heading on away missions to ships and stations in hopes of harvesting enough resources to survive the trip to Earth. Games Editor David Jagneaux gave it a “Good” rating, concluding “the real test for replayibility in a game like From Other Suns though is going to be how well Gunfire can support it post launch and how much the community embraces it.” As a fan of both Star Trek and Star Wars, I hope the game continues to evolve after launch because the genre Gunfire is honing in on is an absolute dream for many of the starry-eyed gamers buying into VR.
Designing virtual reality software is incredibly challenging, as I’ve covered at length diving in deep with developers like Owlchemy Labs and outlining, for example, how it took hundreds of hours just to make a realistic cup of coffee in Job Simulator. And earlier this month we posted a guest article authored by engineers at Leap Motion exploring the creation of more intuitive user interfaces. With From Other Suns, we see Gunfire working to make a fun multiplayer game while simultaneously pushing user interface design as far as they can in VR. The game features wrist-mounted maps and teleportation buttons, floating holographic storage systems and dashboards meant to intuitively allow players to control the ship’s functions — all ideas that if they could be developed further might become integral parts of much more dynamic virtual worlds.
Gunfire’s work from Herobound and Chronos to now shows a quick evolution into more immersive and intuitive VR design, and I hope the company gets the chance to keep pushing these design ideas further. I recently spent an hour or so in VR with Design Director John Pearl and Level Designer Cindy To both interviewing them and playing the game. Check out my 11-minute edited version of our talk that runs through some of their gameplay and design decisions.
From Other Suns has been one of the more anticipated Oculus titles since its announcement earlier this year. Today the co-op space survival game launched on the Oculus store priced at $40, and a new launch trailer shows you what to expect.
From Other Suns is a co-op survival FPS set in space, and clearly draws inspiration from 2012 indie hit FTL: Faster Than Light. While the latter is a top-down strategy game tasking you with keeping your ship in tact and your crew alive as you make FTL jumps across the universe, From Other Suns in VR takes things into a first-person perspective, adding an elements of first-person shooting, navigation, and physical inventory management. And while Faster Than Light is single-player only, From Other Suns offers co-op with up to three players.
A new launch trailer for the game has cropped up which highlights the game’s action, but also the potential for comedy when players make their own improvised fun, either by roll-playing or trolling each other for laughs.
‘From Other Suns’ might be too brutal for the casual weekender going solo, but its ability to provide online multiplayer significantly changes the amount of fun you’ll have. While not as immersive and detailed as we’d hoped, the game presents a fairly solid shooting experience and hectic ship resource management to pump up the adrenaline. However you play, you’ll need to be determined to bang your head against the wall until you beat it though, because you can sink hours into it with only a few measly achievements to your name.
Today, Gunfire Games, the studio that helped to make Dead and Buried with Oculus Studios, Chronos and Herobound: Spirit Champion, has released its biggest virtual reality (VR) title to date, the intergalactic adventure From Other Suns.
From Other Suns puts players in command of their own ship and crew, having to survive the perils of deep space travel as they to try to save humanity.
Explaining the story, Gunfire Games states: “It was supposed to be a simple job. Test an experimental folding drive to travel beyond the fringes of explored space. Return safely for a big payout, and retire on a small colony to never be heard from again. Things don’t always work out as planned. On the return trip, something followed you back. Something ancient. Now it’s a race to make it back to Earth before the ancient alien threat wipes out everything in its way – including you.”
You can either take on the challenge of fighting ruthless pirates, lethal robots, and deadly aliens on your own, or you can team up with up to three friends for some co-op action. As captain of your ship you’ll need to manage its various systems and challenges, upgrade components and weapons while negotiating with merchants for the best deals.
The title is a first-person shooter (FPS) at heart though, with plenty of firefights to contend with. To make sure you’re not out gunned there are over a dozen unique weapon types, with over 2,000 possible variations. And just to mix things up even further should you die at a particularly difficult spot, Gunfire Games has added a fully randomised universe so that each playthough, from alien encounters to locations are never quite the same.
If you like the look of From Other Suns you may have taken advantage of the pre-order offer which reduced the price slightly and gave you two Golden Laser Pistols. With the launch that offer has now ended so you’ll have to pay the full price of $39.99 USD/£29.99 GBP.
Check back with VRFocus later in the week for a full review, and as further announcements are made VRFocus will keep you updated.
From Other Suns is finally releasing to the public today! Developed by Gunfire Games for Oculus Rift with Touch, From Other Suns is a tense, cooperative, first-person action game set in a galaxy where a deadly alien species is bent on destroying the Earth. It’s up to you and your crew to get to the Earth before they do and mount a final stand. By combining ship-based combat and strategic battles with fast-paced first-person shooter missions, it’s unlike any other VR game out right now.
From Other Suns includes a relatively lengthy tutorial that covers everything from aiming, shooting, and moving in the game, but it drops the ball in terms of actually showing you what to do. Since From Other Suns is basically a big, procedural sandbox for you to go out and explore, there isn’t really a right or wrong way to play. However, this is what we usually do each time we start a new game.
Once you load up a new game head to the teleport bay and grab a second pistol off the rack on the right, as well as a stimpack and hackatron. The stimpacks are for healing and the hackatrons let you hack into ship computers and steal cargo. Now head to the bridge and open up the Star Chart (covered in more detail down below) to plot your course. The general goal is to make your way towards the right side of the map hitting other ships, space stations, and small quests along the way.
When a pirate attacks you and disables your FTL drive you can either blow up the ship to escape with a small amount of its salvage in tow, or you can disable their tactical systems (rendering them unable to attack) and board the ship before they get a chance to repair it. This way you get all of their cargo and salvage, but also loot the captain, who usually is carrying some really powerful weapons.
Just keep doing that until you die and restart (this is a roguelike after all!) or reach Earth itself.
Understand How to Use the Star Chart
The Star Chart is a tiny bit confusing at first. Basically, all of those little dots are like waypoints that you can visit. The ones that are just dots by themselves have a random chance of being any one of numerous different types of encounters. You might run into pirates, you might come across some aliens, you could encounter a Trader looking to do business, or something else entirely.
The horizontal, circular icons are space stations where you can buy and sell gear, as well as upgrade your ship’s various systems. And the vertical spiral icons are other large ships. Usually these have longer, more difficult missions that involve clearing out hostiles from a ship, rescuing crew, or hacking into a faulty computer system. The risks are often higher, but so are the rewards.
Swap Weapons Frequently
Similar in some ways to Borderlands, you’ll find new guns all the time in From Other Suns. After you kill ship captains they’ll drop their guns, some low-level enemies drop guns and other items, and you’ll even find guns on racks and recharge stations all over the place.
The deeper you get into the game, the better the gear is that you find. That’s why that auto pistol you love so much should be discarded ASAP when you come across a laser rifle that does twice the damage. Difficulty spikes are a real issue in From Other Suns so the better gear you can get, the better off you’re gonna be. There is only a limited amount of inventory space so don’t get attached to any guns.
Don’t Neglect Crew Members
NPC crew members serve two core functions in From Other Suns: they can be given orders and they serve as your extra lives for respawning. From the Bridge in your ship you can select crew members to assign to different rooms during a battle with another ship. If an enemy is destroying your engines, disabling your tactical capabilities, or wreaking havoc on you in some way, then you can send a crew member to a specific area of the ship for repairs — that way you don’t have to go do it yourself.
Also, if (actually it’s more like when) you die, then you assume the role of one of your crew members. You’re a blank slate once again and need to go back to where you died to retrieve all of your guns and items. That’s why recruiting new crew members is always a focus anytime I play when visiting trading posts.
Stand Up While Playing
Finally, you should really try and stand up as much as possible when you’re playing From Other Suns. The most obvious reason is because you can more easily move your body to dodge enemy fire and get behind cover, but it goes a bit further than that too. If you’re standing up then that means you can crouch down behind boxes and consoles in the environment, making it even harder to hit you.
Standing up also helps aid with the immersion factor, but you should be careful if you’re sensitive to motion sickness. When I play I use the full, smooth locomotion system with smooth rotation so I can twist, move, and aim as quickly as possible. This may not work for everyone though.
Let us know what you think of our tips and the game itself down in the comments below!
Today at UploadVR we decided to revive our livestream efforts via our Twitch channel. With the embargo lifted on From Other Suns (read our review right here) we decided to take that one for a spin in some cooperative multiplayer fun. From Other Suns is a procedurally generated roguelike cooperative first-person shooter that’s all about looting and pillaging the starships of pirates and aliens. It releases tomorrow on Oculus Home for Rift with Touch.
I hosted a game for myself and Senior Editor, Ian Hamilton, that lasted for about an hour and a half. We were eventually joined by another player but couldn’t hear them since they weren’t in our chat party. If you missed out on watching us playing live, don’t worry! You can see the full stream, archived in its entirety, right here:
And you can also see a ton of other gameplay videos on our YouTube channel as well for From Other Suns and other games. We’re trying to make an effort to start livestreaming more, especially with so many VR games releasing these days, so you can plan on seeing more of that from us in the coming weeks and months. Especially with the launch of Skyrim VR on PSVR coming up very soon!
Let us know what you think of From Other Suns down in the comments below!
