Walkabout Mini Golf adds a new course today called Quixote Valley, available on all supported platforms in a free update.
The course is the game’s eighth, with both a day and night mode available. As you can see from the screenshots and teaser trailer, Quixote Valley is set among a rocky cluster of quaint windmills, a classic staple of most real life mini golf course. In Quixote Valley, you won’t just be dealing with one or two flimsy windmills though — there’s a whole fleet of them to contend with here.
However, the new map also brings with it some appropriate new mechanics. You can’t have windmills without wind, so you can expect to face a bit more resistance from the forces of nature on this map, thanks to the new wind mechanics. In select areas of the new map, players will now have to account for wind potentially affecting the trajectory of the ball when lining up their shot.
Walkabout Mini Golf started its life as a mobile game, before being ported over to Oculus Quest for release in late 2020. A SteamVR release followed this year in July, with support for cross-platform play. Starting with just four courses at launch, this latest content update rounds out the selection to eight maps, with normal and hard variations for each.
Dash League runs competitive 5v5 tournaments for the game in a league format and it’s teamed up with SideQuest and Logitech for this weekend’s tournament matches as part of the Side Dash Tournament. All the matches will be broadcast online and it kicks off at 12pm PDT on May 22.
Tournament registration was previously open to existing Dash League members but all spots have now been filled. Those who registered, of which there are currently 70, are placed into five-person teams to compete with throughout the tournament. You can see a list of all the currently registered players here.
While Dash League is running the tournament organization, it’s also being run in partnership with SideQuest and Logitech.
“SideQuest are excited about the potential of Esports in VR and how we can take the action of traditional sports married with the convenience of Esports and create really fun and engaging events in VR,” said SideQuest COO and Co-Found Orla Harris in a prepared statement. “We welcome spectators to Side Dash. We are gathering feedback on the tournament from both participants and spectators with the hope of creating further Esports possibilities for the SideQuest community.”
Logitech’s support is coming in the form of prizing and the use of its tournament management platform, Challonge. First place in the tournament receives $400 ($80/player), second gets $250 ($50/player) and third place $150 ($30/player).
The Side Dash Tournament begins at 12pm PDT / 8pm BST on May 22 and will be available to watch at www.side.quest/sidedash.
Pick your price and donate what you want to the Humble ‘Spring into VR’ Bundle and get 8 PC VR games including Borderlands 2 VR and Sairento if you commit at least $15. The deal is available for two weeks, until March 21.
Humble Bundle: Spring into VR
Humble Bundle is a charity-based bundle website in which you choose to donate however much you want. If you donate at least $1 then you get Detached, pay at least $14.67 to also get Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Surgeon Simulator: Experience Reality, Swords of Gurrah, and Espire 1: VR Operative, and if you pay at least $15 you also get Job Simulator, Sairento VR, and Borderlands 2 VR. That’s over $160 worth of PC VR games.
This is only the second PC VR-focused Humble Bundle and it’s a really solid collection of classics that all headset users should consider having in their library. The $15 price tag is a great deal for any one of the top tier games on offer here, so getting all eight really is a good bargain.
Just like all of the bundles, you get to choose where your money goes by splitting it up between the game publishers, the Stop AAPI Hate charity (or a different one of your choosing), and Humble itself as a company. You can divide your contribution up however you see fit, including all of it to just one source if you want.
When you buy a Humble Bundle you’re given a Steam key for each of the included games. If you get a key for a game you already have, you could give it away or give it over to a friend.
Find out more about this Bundle on the official page.
According to the update post from developer Pixel Toys, this is part one of the horde updates to the game. Last Bastion Solo is what’s releasing now, with a co-op version that will also introduce a new map to come later on. The new mode is available directly from the main menu.
The goal of the new game mode is to reach the final wave and survive for as long as possible as a heroic last stand. Every kill you get earns coins which can be spent back at the central requisition terminal for better weapons and more ammo. There is also a ranked progression system and leaderboards for high scores.
Here’s what the update post says about the mode:
“Hold out in the Last Bastion, an encampment in the war-torn world of Warhammer 40k, you are surrounded, and cornered on all sides by the ravening hordes of Chaos who throw ever greater forces against you and your team of embattled heroes.
The aim is simple, to survive over a series of waves and rounds, attempting to reach higher levels and ranks, unlocking weapons and competing in global and friends leaderboards for high scores and achievements – Will you survive and claim glory for the Emperor?”
Other patch notes for this update include game balancing tweaks to make it overall a bit easier with players getting a 20% bump to health and decreased delay before health regeneration kicks in. It also regenerates more quickly now as well.
Lots of behind-the-scenes tidbits and details were revealed today in a massive oral history report published by Facebook that chronicles the history of Oculus to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the original Rift launch. One of the most interesting details to me is the surprising shift in tone and genre that Asgard’s Wrath went through between its conception and its release.
Asgard’s Wrath
For those unaware, Asgard’s Wrath is a massive VR action-adventure RPG that’s exclusive to the Oculus Rift PC VR store developed by Sanzaru (now owned by Facebook) in which you take control of a Norse God that has the ability to possess mortals and control them directly. The game plays out similar to a Zelda or God of War game in which you explore various realms of Norse mythology, solve puzzles, and fight hundreds of monsters. You can also transform animals into humanoid familiars that fight with you and all have unique abilities to help you on your journey.
It’s a huge, sprawling game that captures the essence of a large-scale AAA quality RPG and puts it into VR with great results. It was the first 5/5 score we ever game here on UploadVR back in 2019 and it’s still my personal favorite VR game to date.
In the oral history report that published today, developers from Sanzaru and Oculus Studios discuss a surprising revelation: the game wasn’t even planned to be an action game at all originally. Not even close.
“Asgard’s Wrath actually started as a Touch-centric demo like VR Sports Challenge,” said Grace Morales Lingad, Creative Director at developer Sanzaru. “It was meant as a Toybox-like demo early on and grew from there… It was more focused on being the god and helping this puny mortal.”
Toybox was a multiplayer Oculus Touch tech demo in which you and another person would stand at a table and play with toys. The toys were intended to encourage interaction so there were building blocks, remote controlled airplanes, and more. That feeling of being a giant looking down at little toys on a table stuck with the developers.
Then along the way it became a tower defense game where you were picking up little
Toybox-size objects and putting them down as your defensive armaments,” said Mike Doran, Director of Production at Oculus Studios. “There’s a couple places where you still see the tower defense game, a couple of boss encounters where you’re firing these giant cannons down on massive armies in the distance. Also, not a lot of people realize that our entire inventory is a series of shelves with tiny little units or objects, and those shelves were originally the UI for selecting towers.”
Once the idea for flipping between God-mode and mortal-mode were introduced, it spiraled from there. They added more features and more concepts on top of everything else, letting you explore more of the world and take control of more types of mortals. Before long, it wasn’t a tower-defense game at all.
“With Asgard’s Wrath, we wanted to make a real-deal, big game,” said Mat Kraemer, Head of Design at Sanzaru. “I’m tired of playing the ten-minute demos and I’m tired of limited movement. I wanted to play a God of War style game. I wanted to play a Zelda style game in VR. I want to make the game that makes you buy an Oculus headset, so when people look at Oculus hardware, they say, ‘I want to play Sanzaru’s next big thing.’ That is what I want to make, and I think as a developer being given the opportunity to do that has been awesome.”
For games similar to what Sanzaru originally envisioned, check out Defense Grid 2 and Brass Tactics. And for more on Asgard’s Wrath, you can read or watch my full Asgard’s Wrath review, beginner tips, and my one-year retrospective from last October that looked back at why the game remains so great for me.
Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
After spending some time with Star Wars Pinball VR, the best way to describe it as a form of highly-concentrated nostalgia that absolutely works. This is a pinball collection from a galaxy far, far away you won’t want to miss when it releases this April on all major VR platforms.
Star Wars Pinball VR Preview
Zen Studios gave me early access to a Quest build of Star Wars Pinball VR, which I played on a Quest 2, and overall came away impressed and hungry for more. I’d drop quarters into my headset if it’d let me.
For those unaware, Zen has been making pinball video games for years and even brought over Pinball FX2 to VR headsets. Standing over a virtual table while pressing trigger buttons on motion controllers isn’t quite the same thing as actually using a real pinball machine, but it’s a pretty close approximation.
The real value benefit with VR pinball though, in my experience, is all of the other stuff it introduces. Not only are the tables creative and fun, but you’ve got characters flying around above the table and amazing collectables to show off and display in big, nerdy rooms. Star Wars Pinball VR is just teeming with nostalgia.
Star Wars Pinball VR will have eight different tables spanning several iconic entries in the franchise of films and TV shows. This includes two brand-new never-before-released tables: The Mandalorian and Star Wars Classic Collectibles. These new tables will be joined by tables based on each film in the original trilogy of movies, a Rogue One table, Star Wars Rebels table, and Masters of the Force table.
In the footage above I checked out The Mandalorian table and after a few tries was able to do okay, getting over 10,000,000 points on my fourth try. It’s pretty tough, but really fun and well laid out. As with any pinball machine, half the fun is just figuring out what exactly you’re supposed to do to trigger the different events and scenes.
Arguably the best part of the whole package though is the room everything is found in. It’s bit like a Star Wars ‘fan cave’ in a way where you can display all of your unlocked posters, collectible figures, ship models, and so on. There’s even an old timey-style jukebox where you can play various songs you’ve unlocked while playing different tables.
All in all, it seems like a really solid package for Star Wars fans and pinball aficionados alike. There’s plenty of depth to the tables that I tried and there’s a lot to unlock to keep you busy for hours.
Star Wars Pinball VR is coming to the Quest platform, PSVR, and PC VR headsets on Steam this April 29. For more on Star Wars Pinball VR make sure and watch the gameplay embedded above of the new table based on The Mandalorian and check back in April for more coverage.
Cosmodread (formerly known as Cosmophobia) is the latest game from Dreadhalls creator White Door Games. If you’re curious about whether or not this VR horror roguelike lives up to its potential, we’ve got you covered with our full Cosmodread review included down below.
White Door Games is a very small indie development studio with only seven people listed in the “credits” section of the Cosmodread site. It was founded by Sergio Hidalgo, who does all of the design and programming himself.
Cosmodread Review – The Facts
What is it?: VR survival horror roguelike about escaping a dying spaceship Platforms: Quest, Rift Store,andSteam Release Date: March 25th, 2021 Price: $14.99
Following in the footsteps of its predecessor, Cosmodread is essentially a game about the fear of the unknown. You’ll spend tons of time creeping around corners, poking your head out to see what lies beyond the next hallway, and slowly opening doors in fear of what’s on the other side. The vast majority of my time with this game was spent entirely shrouded in darkness, both literally and figuratively, and it’s the type of suffocating terror that often feels overwhelming.
You see, in Cosmodread, it’s pretty much always pitch black. You’ve got a little wrist-bound flashlight on your right hand, but other than that and the limited hall lighting, it’s very, very dark in this game.
The premise here is similar in concept to The Persistence in that you’re stranded aboard a decrepit spaceship that remixes its layout every time you respawn and you’re tasked with slowly exploring it all in an effort to escape. In practice though, Cosmodread is much more about slow, methodical stealth in an effort to avoid all of the various horrific creatures.
The lore is dolled out gradually over time by picking up audio logs, as is standard with these types of games by this point, and you’ll also collect blueprints for items as you explore. The structure is a bit like a Metroidvania in that you need to locate the appropriate keycard to unlock new sections of the ship, but the locations of items, doors, and ship regions are all procedurally placed so no two playthroughs are ever identical.
One mechanic I really appreciated is that you’ll find batteries in wall panels that are used to power rooms. This might just include lights and illuminated wall panels that light up an area, or it might include actual machines and levers that can be used. Each battery has a limited number of charges so you’ll need to stick them in your inventory and conserve them for the right moment. Monitoring your oxygen levels is key to survival as well, since you can die if you’re not careful.
Cosmodread Review – Comfort Settings
Cosmodread features the typical assortment of comfort options, ranging from teleport and “dash” movement to smooth, analog stick locomotion, You can tweak the speed of rotations, or switch to snap turning instead. I played with all options set to smooth and my turn speed maxed out, but personally chose to just physically turn my body since I was on Quest. There enough options here that I would imagine most people could find a workaround that is comfortable enough to play the game.
I spent around 10-hours with Cosmodread and, truth be told, still haven’t seen everything it has to offer. It’s one of those types of games that you can honestly play over and over and still feel like you’re getting something a bit new and unique each time. To its credit, this is exactly what fans of this genre love—however, it absolutely does get stale after a while. Cosmodread is definitely a game for fans of roguelikes first and foremost – don’t expect a campaign-like structure.
There is of course combat in Cosmodread, but it’s far from the focus. Stealth is absolutely the preferred method most of the time here if for no reason other than your options for fighting back are painfully limited for most of the time you’ll spend aboard this dying spacecraft. That, and the enemies are absolutely relentless and deadly. Setting a trap from a distance and luring them to death is usually more effective than facing them head on.
Since White Door Games is such a small indie studio, Cosmodread predictably reuses assets liberally. Virtually every hallways looks the same, the random junk items laying out on tables like canned food containers and empty boxes are copy-pasted across the whole ship, and, on Quest, all the textures have a sort of ‘muddy’ surface layer that lacks definition. You can get lost easily in Cosmodread not just because the layout changes every time you respawn, but because every room basically looks the same.
That wouldn’t be a huge issue if the quality of the visuals was higher, but as it stands it feels a bit undercooked. It’s a few steps up from Dreadhalls, for sure, but other things I’ve seen in VR recently—even on Quest natively—are leagues beyond Cosmodread. Especially when you consider how dark the game is, you’d have hoped that would have freed up resources to render higher detail environments.
Thankfully the sound design elevates things considerably. Each enemy makes unique and distinguishable sounds and you’ll often hear them on the other side of a wall or even sometimes coming from the vents above. The disgusting, tentacle-like growth that spreads throughout the ship makes a wet and pulsating sound as it extends, letting you almost feel the tendrils that coil around your feet and stretch up the walls.
Honestly, it’s some of the most effective 3D audio I’ve ever heard in a VR game and is a great reminder of just how important and impactful great sound design is for immersion.
Once you advance far enough into the ship, when you die, you’ll unlock different modifiers that can be used to alter your next run. For example, you could opt to start out with zero weapons (not even the basic crossbow) or choose to double your inventory space in exchange for lopping off a chunk of your health bar. There are tons of modifiers like this to help spice things up and keep it interesting beyond just a new map layout each time.
Cosmodread Review – Final Verdict
Cosmodread is a worthy successor to the cult-classic grandfather of VR horror games, Dreadhalls. Although it doesn’t do a whole lot to push the genre forward in many meaningful ways, it absolutely nails the suffocating terror, incredibly immersive atmosphere, and unnerving tension that makes VR horror so powerful. Visually it leaves a bit to be desired and can get repetitive due to its roguelike design, but it’s still a supremely effective and harrowing experience that all fans of spooky space adventures should absolutely check out.
For more on how we arrived at this score, read our review guidelines. This review was conducted using a digital pre-release version of the game on a Quest 2 headset.
Cosmodread is available starting today for $15 on Steam for PC VR, the Oculus Rift store, and the Oculus Quest store.
New games continue to release on Oculus App Lab, the new distribution method for VR developers that lets them release Quest games without getting full Oculus Store approval, and the latest batch has two real standouts: Space Walk VR and Crop Craze.
In order to keep up with new Oculus App Lab releases there are two primary methods. Firstly, you can visit this website which just displays them all in a big collage for quick and easy browsing—like a Store page would. However, there are no sorting options. To find things that released/updated recently or to use other filters, you can visit the SideQuest website’s App Lab section.
Space Walk VR Experience
New games continue to release on App Lab basically every day as Facebook ramps up its efforts on that team and I want to highlight two that are particularly impressive.
First up is Space Walk VR Experience from Forward Thinking Interactive for $7—which you might remember came out on Oculus Go previously. This brief little app is split into three sections: the Earth, savings the world, and the space station.
In the first section you can just hang out up in space while orbiting over the planet. You can pick which part of the planet to gaze out at and even customize things like the time-of-day while you recover satellites for the space station.
After that you’ll have to stop an asteroid that’s suddenly spotted hurtling towards the planet. You’ve got to go out and plant explosives on the asteroid as it travels through space to blow it up in time before it hits Earth.
Finally, you can float around in and explore the space station from the inside. There’s a robotic arm to control, solar panel repair puzzles, and more. Overall it’s a simple little app but they did a good job of adding some interactivity to something that could have easily just been an empty 3D environment to float around in. Probably not the best option if you get motion sick in VR, but definitely worth a look if you’re curious.
Crop Craze: Farming Simulator
Next up is Crop Craze: Farming Simulator from PicoPlanet Developing for $10. This actually came out on App Lab back on March 9th, but we missed it. As you can guess from the title, this is a lite farming simulator that’s a bit barebones right now, but has a lot of potential.
Right now in Crop Craze you can buy seeds, grow crops, and sell them for profit while exploring your serene little farm. There’s a beautiful countryside view, a campfire for roasting marshmallows, and ways to upgrade the farm so it can make more money.
Eventually you’ll even be able to get animals on your farm and even build a greenhouse as you expand with more land. As a tiny little indie game it’s off to a good start and has some real potential if the developers can support it.
Let us know what you think of these two apps and any others you’ve seen on App Lab worth recommending!
[Update 3/31/21]:Hellgate VR is out now on PC VR via Steam with a 20% launch discount price of $28 until April 7, at which point it will be available at its normal price of $35. We haven’t tried it yet, but all six user reviews so far are negative. You can see some impression footage from Paradise Decay right here.
[Original 3/22/21]: Hellgate VR is back with a new listing on Steam and a new trailer showing actual gameplay footage. We still don’t have a date, but apparently it’s hitting PC VR this month with Rift and Vive support.
Back over four years ago we heard about Hellgate VR, a prequel game that was slated to release at the beginning of 2018 presumably for PSVR and PC VR. It missed that window by over three years, but seems to be back from hell once again with a new planned release of this month only on PC VR via SteamVR as far as we can tell.
The original Hellgate: London was an ambitious online action-RPG looter shooter hybrid from some of the minds behind the Diablo series. You can play a stripped down and gutted re-release single-player only version on Steam now. The premise for the game, originally, was similar to how Destiny works now, although it was far less polished, less ambitious, and much more demonic. One of the big features in Hellgate was that it was a semi-procedural world that got shuffled a bit each time you left a region—just like in the Diablo games.
I was actually a pretty big fan of Hellgate: London, particularly the intricate loot system that really made you feel like you were growing in power. It was also nice to see a fresh take on the “beat back the demons of hell” concept.
All that being said, Hellgate VR is nothing like the original game. From what I can tell looking at the trailer, GIFs, and screenshots, is that it appears to be a glorified wave shooter with a thin veil of a story. I’m not going to hold my breath that this can bring the Hellgate series back to life and push it forward into a new generation of gaming, but I’ve been wrong before.
We’ll have to just cross our fingers that this sees the light of day because beyond the Steam page there is next to no new information about this game across the last four years.
Hellgate VR does not have a specific release date yet, but according to the Steam page it’s apparently coming to PC VR with Rift and Vive support sometime before March 2021 is over.
Let us know if you plan on checking this one out down in the comments below!
You know what’s scarier than playing ghost hunting co-op game, Phasmophobia, in VR? When the ghosts can almost physically touch you, while you’re wearing a haptic vest, that’s what.
Phasmophobia bHaptics Suit Support
According to the official Phasmophobia Twitter account, the next Beta update for the game will have bHpatics suit support, bringing an even deeper level of immersion to the already incredibly intense co-op horror adventure. Phasmophobia of course only has optional VR support and is fully playable outside of VR, but as someone that has tried both versions, I can say with confidence that it’s a far better game in VR—even if a bit jankier.
We don’t know any other details about the upcoming bHaptics suit support, but if it works like it does in other VR games, then you can expect to be even more terrified while playing than before.
The bHaptics suit is a haptic vest that transmits vibrations and haptic feedback to your body based on what’s happening in the game. The accuracy isn’t on the same level as things seen in movies such as Ready Player One, at least not yet, but it’s technology that is working towards that type of support.
I have not personally tried a bHaptics suit, but I’ve had great experiences at physical VR arcade locations when wearing their vests. They really do help sell the experience far more than just a VR headset and a horror game is the perfect application. Games like Beat Saber deliver a constant flood of stimulation, but slow-paced horror games like Phasmophobia work well for suit haptics because of how absolutely devoid of input they are 99% of the time. Then, just when you least expect it, you’ll get a jolt from the suit to amplify the scares even more.
Check out Phasmophobia over on Steam for $14, where it has PC VR support in Early Access, and visit the bHaptics website for more details on their haptic suits. You can grab one for either $300 (16 haptic points) or $500 (40 haptics points) as well as additional haptics for your face, hands, arms, and feet for even more feedback. There is already official support for games like Half-Life: Alyx, Blade and Sorcery, Onward, Boneworks, Skyirim VR, and more.
Let us know what you think of this news down in the comments below!
