Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
Online videogame marketplace G2A.com first showcased its interest in building virtual reality (VR) titles back in 2015 announcing G2A Land for Oculus Rift, which then launched in 2017. Over the past couple of years the G2A dev studio’s plans have expanded, revealing new experiences like Blunt Force and today going independent from G2A by forming onad Rock.
Just as it has done, Monad Rock will specialise in creating videogames and app for VR headsets. Additionally, subsequent products will be developed in various other technologies for both PCs and consoles.
“We are confident that Monad Rock will achieve great success,” said Maciej Kuc, Head of PR at G2A.com in a statement. “The studio has become independent, giving it full freedom to develop projects and talk with investors,”
“Working for G2A.com has been a great experience for the entire team. It was an intense time for us. We worked hard, accomplished many things, and learned a lot,” explained Marcin Kryszpin, CEO of Monad Rock. “The next step in our development is establishing a free-standing studio. The projects and brands that we created together with G2A.com will now be continued and developed by Monad Rock. From now on, we work independently.”
The studio is currently working on two VR titles. The previously announced Blunt Force, a first-person shooter (FPS) set during World War 2. The screenplay for Blunt Force is being crafted together with Hollywood screenwriter Mark Bristol. “It is a very ambitious project, which we will give greater details on soon,” added Kryszpin. However, we are currently focused on preparing Summer Funland for its upcoming premiere.”
Second title Summer Funland is the newest of the two, a theme park simulator that offers a myriad of attractions, including all the experiences available in G2A Land. “It is worth noting that all players who currently own G2A Land will receive Summer Funland for free,” said Kryszpin.
As for G2A.com, the online retailer will be focusing on two of its biggest products: G2A Marketplace and G2A PAY. “We are investing primarily in the development of our transaction system, machine learning, and blockchain technology,” adds Kuc. “At present, this is where we will direct our maximum attention. In the future, however, we plan to work together with Monad Rock on various projects. In fact, we are still working with the studio on one joint venture – the life-saving VR application that helps teach doctors how to detect heart defects in unborn children.”
Summer Funland is scheduled to be released during February 2018 on both Steam and the Oculus Store, with a PlayStation VR version following shortly after. For any further updates from Monad Rock, keep reading VRFocus.
Last week online marketplace G2A.com released its first effort into the world of virtual reality (VR) videogames with the launch of G2A Land for Oculus Rift. Today the company its helping other VR developers from around the world by inviting several to the Taipei Game Show later this week.
In cooperation with the Warsaw Trade Office in Taipei, G2A has invited Carbon Studio, Anshar Studio, Immersion, and Sigma to exhibit alongside G2A and the Warsaw Trade Office in the B2C zone. The developers have created titles such as including Alice VR, Detached, The Ancients, and The Purgatory VR, respectively.
Alongside demoing their latest projects, the studio’s will also participate in the Asia VR Arcade Partners project. The project promotes VR videogames to specially designed clubs of VR fans, letting them try titles for a small fee. As China is becoming one of the major markets for VR, and one many western companies are endevouring to access, projects such as Asia VR Arcade Partners present useful opportunities to do so.
While at the Taipei Game Show G2A.com will also be demonstrating its 3D printing platform, G2A 3D, In the VR zone, visitors will be able to see 3D printed models from G2A’s next immersive title, a World War II VR game called Blunt Force. Models will include the signature Blunt Force rose, an airplane, and attendees will also have the chance to win exclusive Blunt Force dog tags at the shooting range.
For further coverage of the Taipei Game Show and G2A.com, keep reading VRFocus.
Way back in 2015 G2A.com, an online retailer of videogames and other related items revealed development of its own experience, a virtual reality (VR) theme park called G2A Land. While the experience has featured at several events, originally G2A Land was supposed to launch alongside the Oculus Rift. That didn’t happen, but almost a year later the videogame has now arrived for the head-mounted display (HMD).
Theme park titles tend to lean towards a more management style of gameplay – like Theme Park Studio and Rollercoaster Dreams – G2A Land goes for a more traditional angle, with games to play and rollercoasters to ride on. G2A Land is split into five areas, Underwater World, Shooting Range, Great Cinema, Gotham VR and Rollercoaster. The names are fairly self explanatory with Underwater World taking players on a trip to the ocean depths, admiring sunken galleons, coral reefs, sea turtles and much more. The Shooting Range puts players in a wild west themed range, taking out targets with dual wielding pistols. Great Cinema allows videos to be viewed in a cinema setting, while the Rollercoaster takes gamers on a high speed thrill seeking ride. Finally there’s Gotham VR, in which players take control of the famous super heroes bat bike, racing through the city streets as fast as possible.
G2A Land should be moderately comfortable for most players – just watch out on that rollercoaster – and it’s downloadable via the Oculus Store for £7.99 GBP.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of G2A.com and its future VR plans, reporting back with any further updates.
Digital gaming marketplace G2A remains a controversial figure in the industry for selling second-hand Steam keys, but next year it will try its hand at selling something new: its own VR game.
G2A is developing Blunt Force, a new shooter that’s set both during the second world war and shortly before it. In the former, you’ll use position-tracked controllers and fixed teleportation points — a little like Epic Games’ Bullet Train — to gun down enemies across a simplified arcade mode and a more complex challenge mode, where players will find aiming harder and use weapons that require manual reloading.
Intriguingly, the portion of the game set before the war is intended to be an exploration experience. We haven’t gone hands-on with the game yet but you can see from the images above and below that the visuals seem to be shaping up very nicely. It also looks like you won’t just be aiming and firing a gun all the time but also interacting with the environment around you, loading shells into a tank during the WW2 section and pouring yourself a hot drink in the earlier campaign.
From the sounds of it, these campaigns will run simultaneously, though G2A declined to provide more specific details such as story information at this time.
G2A did tell UploadVR that the game was currently in development for the Oculus Rift, though it wouldn’t rule out the possibility of support for other devices like the HTC Vive. The team behind the game has previously experienced working on projects like Sniper: Ghost Warrior, Enemy Front, The Witcher, and The Lords of the Fallen. It appears to be the same team behind VR amusement park, G2A Land.
Blunt Force will be released episodically starting next year. The number of episodes has not yet been determined. It certainly looks like this is one shooter fans will want to look out for in the new year.
Tagged with: Blunt Force, FPS, G2A, oculus, WW2
First-person shooters (FPS) in virtual reality (VR) currently come in two forms: the wave shooter (Space Pirate Trainer, Brookhaven Experiment et al) and the corridor shooter (Arktika.1, Overkill VR). Blunt Force (working title) from G2A is in the latter camp; bringing an episodic World War II (WWII) experience to VR early next year.
Despite its somewhat abrasive working title, Blunt Force appears to offer a rather thought provoking take on the common WWII FPS formula. Instead of going all-out Call of Duty with intense one-man-heroics, Blunt Force opts for a more psychological presentation. The vertical slice VRFocus experienced begins in a café, with the player indulging in a spot of tea and some light reading. Moments later, the world has changed: the environment around you turns into chaos in slow motion as a tank rolls down the street.
Blunt Force flits between moments of serenity and chaos frequently, giving the impression that the final videogame will feature more than just gunplay and violence. On that note however, the gunplay itself doesn’t appear to be a weak link in the gameplay loop.
From the very first sequence of war, the player finds themselves forced to grab a weapon and take control of the situation. Teleporting to a set location adjacent to the café window, the player must take up arms and eliminate the enemy units encroaching on their location. A pistol, rifle and grenades make themselves available as the player takes out a dozen-or-so enemies, before moving onto the next location within the same environment and repeating the action. Unlike Arktika.1, there aren’t multiple positions in each location to choose from, but Blunt Force does make good use of the environment for building tension through immersion.
Later locations see the player moving through increasingly decaying buildings; a shallow reminder of the former glory of libraries and monuments. Its long been said that one of the strongest assets VR has to offer videogames is the greater attention to detail, and Blunt Force excels in this regard. Though the level design is artificially limited for the sake of player comfort, the mise-en-scène of seemingly simple aspects such as a fallen light or timber blocking the line-of-sight is near faultless.
The same too can be said of the sound design in Blunt Force. Easily one of the most impressive aspects of the videogame at present, the use of acoustics surrounding the player’s position and weaponry is of the highest calibre. Audio has always been important in videogames, but in VR it’s a make-or-break aspect of design: G2A’s team clearly know this, and are not afraid to invest resources in a technology that can’t be seen.
Regardless of what the common opinion of G2A’s business strategy elsewhere may be, there’s no denying that the company’s VR development team is full of talented individuals. Blunt Force has the potential to become a landmark addition to the FPS genre in VR, however the time frame for launch does bring about concerns. With Epic Games’ Robo Recall looking to launch in a similar time frame – and still currently blowing all other VR FPS videogames out of the water with its totally freeform teleportation – Blunt Force may appear dated in comparison despite only being a few months away.
If you’re a PC gamer then you might have heard of online marketplace G2A.com. While its main business allows you to buy or sell games, add-ons, DLC and such – usually in the form of Steam or other platform codes – the company has been diversifying into videogame development. Last year it revealed G2A Land, and back in May there was Gotham VR. Today G2A has announced another project in the works, Blunt Force.
Blunt Force is a virtual reality (VR) title set during World War II. Being created by the same team who worked on G2A Land from G2A’s Rzeszow, Poland, office, the new experience has drafted in the talents of Hollywood screenwriter Mark Bristol (Maleficent, Edge of Tomorrow, Mission: Impossible 5).
Being touted as an action adventure experience, Blunt Force will be formed of two simultaneous storylines. The first begins prior to the war breaking out, with players having to find hidden clues and secret information. While the second takes place during the war in the form of a first-person shooter (FPS). This will be split down again into to separate modes, Arcade and Challenge. For the Arcade mode players have to kill as many enemies as possible, being flung straight into battle, ideal for newcomers. While the Challenge mode will be for more experienced players, with fewer, more difficult targets to hit but with more weaponry to explore and master, such as manually reloading and lobbing grenades.
G2A hasn’t yet confirmed which head-mounted displays (HMD) will be supported by Blunt Force, but the title will be released in episodes over the course of 2017. For all the latest details on Blunt Force, keep reading VRFocus.