Virtual reality (VR) is a new medium which allows an array of creative talent to challenge the way we experience art. Whether it’s something as simple as an IMAX-style experience at home, or completely changing your viewpoint so that you’re a part of the film itself, moving between characters and breaking free of the frame.
VR has become an important part of every major film festival, and I’m excited that Viveport has become the go-to destination for film festivals. We’ve worked with the BFI London Film Festival, New Images, Raindance, IDFA, Stereopsia, Venice, and many more.
The Venice Film Festival felt like another landmark last year. The judging panel was comprised of three incredible names, one of the most exciting line-ups I’ve seen to date.
Celine Tricart led the panel – she’s a pioneer in VR and has rightly won awards at every major festival, including last year’s Venice Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Best Immersive VR. Celine’s work is captivating and pushes the boundaries every time.
Asif Kapadia joined Celine. Asif has an amazing catalogue of work and is the director of acclaimed documentaries, Senna, Amy, and Diego Maradona – if you haven’t seen them, I urge you to track them down. He is a master of storytelling, demonstrated beautifully in everything he does, so it’s great to see such an artist join the panel.
The final judge was Hideo Kojima. A legend who has helped to change how videogames are made and experienced, and make the world recognise the art of storytelling in games. Kojima-san has previously spoken about his hopes for VR, and how it has great potential for creators.
Having such a visionary panel is a great cause for optimism for the future, VR is attracting the top talent from across the world, and is only going to get better.
Hardware and content creation is also getting easier and more intuitive every day. In the past, we’ve seen VR used to help create major motion pictures like Ready Player One and John Wick – helpful in production and direction. New technology is always coming through to help high-end film making to be even more accessible, and things like face-tracking and physical trackers keep breaking down the barriers for techniques like motion capture.
And as you see with the Venice Film Festival there are more and more people creating content for VR, not just with VR. The genius mind behind The Mandalorian, Jon Favreau, also released Gnomes & Goblins this year – another new way to experience storytelling in VR.
I’ve talked about the film industry a lot, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Last year also saw the Victoria & Albert Museum in London launch its first VR experience, with Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, supported by Vive. Icelandic artist Kristjana S. Williams was commissioned to create new content for the exhibition, and Vive/PRELOADED to create a sensational immersive experience. It was the first time the prestigious museum had experimented with a VR-based exhibition and another brilliant example of how new technology can be used to share stories.
And let’s not forget the fashion show with RYOT and the Fashion Innovation Agency at the London College of Fashion, helping the next generation of talent to explore their creativity. Unencumbered by the limitations of physics, they designed some truly stunning work which changes how you think about fashion.
2021 is going to be another amazing year for content creators, and I can’t wait to see what they dream up next.
When Wevr’s Gnomes & Goblins arrived back in September it didn’t quite live up to expectations for a number of reasons. Last month the team released an update focused on addressing the performance issues and now it’s launched a second, further smoothing performance whilst adding new gameplay features.
When Gnomes & Goblins launched it was one of the most demanding virtual reality (VR) videogames, demanding an i7-9700K or higher, 32GB RAM and at least a GTX 2080. That no longer the case, dropping down the 16GB RAM and a GTX 1080. The new v1.2 update adds optimizations to the visual quality across the high, medium and low graphics settings.
There are the other performance enhancements:
Further improvements to particle systems’ performance
Reduced excessive VRAM usage to improve texture streaming
Reduced frequency and size of hitches caused by garbage collection
Reduced lightmap memory usage by forcing all LODs to share lightmaps
Fixed lightmap popping in LOW and MED graphics settings
Reduce muddiness of textures on LOW introduced in 1.1
As for the new gameplay features, Wevr has added a standard teleportation system to move around the forest – it won’t work moving between tree floor interiors. There are also new Art and Animation Galleries so you can see the designs that went into Gnomes & Goblin’sdevelopment. These galleries are accessed via the Quest Log once you’ve unlocked “Goblin Life” mode.
Here’s the full gameplay changelog:
Added Teleport Traversal option accessible via options menu (Experimental!)
Added Art & Animation Galleries accessible via Quest Log portal after reaching Goblin Life
Added hint books to Goblin Life
Fixed light pop on on characters
Removed some props from where the bucket spawns
Fix audio being lost when game doesn’t have focus
Fix audio being lost after Gnome Maze
Converted items to incremental achievements so their progress is tracked
Achievement descriptions are no longer hidden
With these improvements, Gnomes & Goblins should be more accessible to players, or simply encouraging those who were disappointed with the initial release to come back and give the videogame another whirl. For further updates from Wevr, keep reading VRFocus.
The full release of Gnomes & Goblins is now available to buy on Steam four years after a preview release.
The full Gnomes & Goblins experience launches for $29.99 from Wevr and Madison Wells Media Interactive with a main story that lasts less than an hour. G&G also requires a beefier PC than the one needed for Half-Life: Alyx. The minimum specification for G&G seeks 16 GB of RAM compared to 12 GB on Half-Life: Alyx, and G&G also requires fairly high end GPUs and CPUs as well.
“From the start of the project, G&G has been intended/designed as a high fidelity experience requiring a powerful GPU/CPU. The best experience is on a 2080+ desktop PC with an Index or Vive Pro,” WEVR co-founder Neville Spiteri explained in an email. “Video/Graphics settings can be set to High on a Recommended Spec machine, and Medium or Low setting for lower spec PCs.”
There’s also a mode that lets you explore the goblin village and collect things. I found the main story to be a delightful look into the village, the goblin culture, and their tension with the gnomes. A definite highlight was an incredibly relaxing ride down a creek listening to the goblins making music all around. The story was over extremely fast, however, and the collecting and exploration part of the game didn’t grab me afterward.
“The open world mode affords a very broad range of play styles and experiences,” Spiteri explained. “The open world game loop involves layered interactions of farming, harvesting, and brewing, and an entire collection loop tied to Achievements. The average for open world mode is around 4 hours, but can take even longer for the core completionists.”
We haven’t spent enough time with Gnomes & Goblins to prepare a review just yet, but we wanted people who were intrigued by the free preview four years ago — which was pitched by Iron Man director Jon Favreau — to know what to expect from the paid release. The default movement system in G&G is smooth locomotion with snap turning enabled. There’s a virtual “Magic Eye” tool that allow for long-range teleport to different areas of the forest, and a “bump” mode “intended to simulate walking by tapping the A button” — but there’s no medium range teleportation option built into the game for those sensitive to simulator sickness.
Four years after the release of a preview of the game, Gnomes & Goblins is finally here. Pitched as a “fantasy adventure VR simulation” with direction by film director Jon Favreau, Gnomes & Goblins delivers a beautiful appetizer with a rotten main course.
Gnomes & Goblins Details:
Available On: Oculus PC, SteamVR, Viveport Release Date: September 23rd, 2020 Developer: Wevr Reviewed On: Valve Index
Gameplay
If you only played the first 45 minutes of Gnomes & Goblins, you’d probably walk away happy for the experience.
The game’s prologue drops players info a beautifully rendered woodland realm inhabited by little green goblins. To them, you’re a giant. But soon enough you’ll befriend one which will lead you around their little realm and introduce you to the others. And in short order you’ll be taken along a largely well directed, and at times, beautiful little journey. I won’t spoil anything, but it’s an effective little bit of world building that makes it feel like the goblins really live in the forest and that there’s some history to their world.
Photo by Road to VR
Having a little NPC to guide you around and point out things to do or look at is a smart way to direct the player’s attention. Throughout the prologue this works well; it’s done in such a way that the game needs no voice instruction or text instruction to help you figure out what you need to do.
It’s everything after the prologue—when the game turns you loose to explore the woodland realm without any guidance—where it all breaks down.
Image courtesy Wevr
After the 45 minutes of prologue, the game becomes part walking sim, part farming sim, and part scavenger hunt. And you’re left entirely on your own to figure out the game’s inscrutable mechanics. The result is several layers of frustration.
Gnomes & Goblins fails to clearly lay out a core gameplay loop or even an overarching goal for the player. There’s clearly something about farming and crafting brews—but it’s unclear as to whyyou’d want to do this, let alone how.
Gnomes & Goblins asks you to go scavenge hunting for things without first explaining what you are looking for or why. And when you do find the thing you’re looking for, there’s nothing interesting to do with it; you just touch it and it disappears in a flash. This is made worse by the fact that it’s never clear at a glance which objects in the world are interactive. There may be a table full of 50 books, but only one of the books can be interacted with.
See all these lovely objects? You can’t touch any of them. | Photo by Road to VR
It should have been a hint to the game’s developers that the necessary inclusion of an always-accessible ‘hint fairy’—which highlights through walls anything the player can interact with—might be a sign of a design issue.
I could go on any tell you about the game’s various issues with player direction—like the entirely unexplained inventory system, or the inexplicable teleporting stone, or the seemingly random disappearance and reappearance of a key player ability—but it’s easier just to tell you that it took a little over three hours for Gnomes & Goblins to frustrate me to the point of deciding I was done with the game.
Make no mistake. I’ve played and enjoyed many games where the player is given little information about how everything works, and ‘mechanical discovery’ actually brings a positive sense of ‘exploration’. If that’s what Gnomes & Goblins was going for, it unfortunately missed the forest for the trees.
The lack of clear direction was so detrimental to the experience that I actually thought maybe there was a intended to be a voice-over narration explaining what I should be doing but it had simply failed to play correctly.
Photo by Road to VR
It’s a shame that the game’s inscrutable gameplay kept me from wanting to come back, because the woodland realm of Gnomes & Goblins otherwise is a beautiful and mysterious one that would be a lovely backdrop for rich gameplay.
Immersion
Image courtesy Wevr
It’s hard to be immersed with poor gameplay direction, but putting that aside, Gnomes & Goblins does offer up a very pretty world that feels like you’ve been dropped into a richly illustrated storybook—assuming you have the PC to run it (more on performance in the Comfort section below).
Especially in the prologue, there’s strong world building that strikes a nice balance between subtlety and curiosity. There’s a feeling that the world is larger than just the slice that you’re standing in.
There’s some definite immersion breakers though. For one, the game always shows a silhouette of your VR controllers instead of hands or something more thematically appropriate like a wand. There’s also many areas in the game where you’ll be walking down a perfectly clear and open path only to be met by an invisible wall. You’ll also find yourself blocked by as little as blades of grass, such that you’ll need to find your way around to a dedicated path to reach a clearing that would otherwise take two steps through the grass.
One of the biggest immersion breakers is object interactions, or the lack thereof. Gnomes & Goblins is filled with hundreds and hundreds of detailed objects. Cups, plates, plants, berries, bags, flowers, seeds, books, tools, etc, etc, etc. But 95% of the objects in the game cannot be interacted with, and unless you’re constantly sharking the ‘hint fairy’, figuring out what objects are actually interactive (and therefore possibly useful) is purely trial and error.
Comfort
Gnomes & Goblins has some strange controls out of the gate. Luckily you can dive into the Options and quickly configure something sensible, as long as you can figure out the menu which uses a few non-standard terms.
As far as I was able to find, the game supports both smooth movement (controller and head based) and a sort of shift movement (called ‘Bump’), but the latter moved in such tiny increments that it seemed unusable. Seated and standing play are both supported.
Assuming you are ok with smooth movement, Gnomes & Goblins is mostly comfortable. There are times where sensitive players might find issue, like when moving at full speed through a tunnel, but you can always choose to walk slower to keep this more comfortable.
Pretty views are a welcomed reward after dealing with the game’s iffy ladders. | Photo by Road to VR
Climbing ladders is frustratingly slow, and climbing down them generally requires walking off of the virtual edge and then leaning down to grab the ladder and then pulling yourself down. It’s… awkward.
For a game with a friendly, fantasy atmosphere, Gnomes & Goblins is surprisingly demanding in terms of performance and has a Minimum Specification which is higher than even the Recommended Specification of most VR games. Even on my machine, which surpasses the game’s Minimum Specs but doesn’t quite make the Recommended Spec, I had to play on Low graphics settings to prevent constant, uncomfortable stuttering. That’s a shame because the game world looks so good that I often found myself temporarily switching to the High setting—just to see how the world looked—before switching back to Low so that I could play comfortably.
Gnomes & Goblins is launching as a “multi-hour” experience for PC VR headsets later this month, more than four years after its intriguing enchanted VR forest debuted as a free preview.
A new trailer for the project shows off more of the world you’re likely to see in the project created by filmmaker Jon Favreau and director Jake Rowell. G&G is produced in partnership with MWM and Golem Creations four years after startup Wevr partnered with Favreau to debut the short VR project on Steam. Debuting early on as a free VR experience in 2016, lots of PC VR early adopters introduced themselves to the showcase of room-scale movement freedom in a magical forest, and the interactions you can have there with its mysterious inhabitants. G&G resurfaced earlier this year and is now scheduled to launch on September 23 for Steam, Oculus, and Viveport.
A press release announcing the release date promises “magic artifacts, mini-stories and mini-games interweaving adventure and endless exploration as players discover the underlying myth and mysterious goings-on in the enchanted world of G&G….and explore an enchanted forest world where interactions with the realm’s denizens shape the story’s evolution….Encounter goblin inhabitants, become part of their society, and save them from their foe. Freely roam the enchanted forest to discover deeper layers of their mysterious ways and reap the rewards of this magical world.”
Favreau said in a prepared statement: “I’m incredibly happy to see how Wevr has brought my original vision to life in virtual reality. From the earliest days of rough sketches and abstract concepts, Wevr’s entire team committed to fostering the kind of emotional connections that I believe will allow Gnomes & Goblins to occupy a special place in the hearts of players around the world. We worked hard to create the mood and feeling that Gnomes & Goblins is like a virtual theme-park ride, where magic and meaning are waiting around every corner.”
A small portion of G&G is being shown in connection with the 2020 Venice International Film Festival running through September 12.
We’re looking forward to seeing what the finished G&G project looks like later this month and will have impressions for you as soon as we can.
We’ve been waiting almost exactly four years now to see what would become of the enchanting, but decidedly short Gnomes and Goblins Preview, which was published on Steam back in September 2016. Now, XR developers Wevr says PC VR users will finally get the full experience later this month.
The project has attracted some serious talent, which includes Jon Favreau, the filmmaker behind films such as Iron Man (2008), The Lion King (2019), and The Jungle Book (2016). VR director Jake Rowell, known for his work on Call of Duty, Superman Returns (2006), and theBlu, is also lending his talent to the project.
Produced in partnership with MWM and Golem Creations, the studio says players will embark on “a dream-like journey and explore an enchanted forest world where interactions with the realm’s denizens shape the story’s evolution.” They’re calling it a hybrid form of worldbuilding that aims to combine agency with narrative elements.
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Image courtesy Wevr
Image courtesy Wevr
Image courtesy Wevr
Image courtesy Wevr
“I’m incredibly happy to see how Wevr has brought my original vision to life in virtual reality,” says Favreau. “From the earliest days of rough sketches and abstract concepts, Wevr’s entire team committed to fostering the kind of emotional connections that I believe will allow Gnomes & Goblins to occupy a special place in the hearts of players around the world. We worked hard to create the mood and feeling that Gnomes & Goblins is like a virtual theme-park ride, where magic and meaning are waiting around every corner.”
Gnomes and Goblins promises to take PC VR users through a multi-hour fantasy adventure experience, and will be available starting September 23rd on Steam, the Oculus Store for Rift and Viveport.
If you haven’t played it yet, definitely check out the Preview version first. As one of the early room-scale games, it’s surprising how well it holds up, and definitely creates that smurfy, magical forest vibe that rewards exploration of both the environment the personalities of the little gnomes themselves.
Nearly four years after a small but charming preview project called Gnomes & Goblins appeared on Steam, WEVR is planning to release an expanded version later this year.
WEVR shared its latest trailer for Gnomes & Goblins with us for the UploadVR Summer Showcase, offering glimpses of this magical world only hinted at in 2016. You can see fields, rivers and congregations of creatures in new environments that may finally give us a deeper understanding of the relationship between the goblins and gnomes, as well as the world they inhabit.
The project was originally conceived in collaboration with Jon Favreau, the actor and director who has since gone on to incorporate virtual reality deep into the production of movies and TV show like The Lion King and The Mandalorian. In the case of the latter, it is no coincidence the now-famous “Baby Yoda” Star Wars character resembles the goblins in this earlier VR project. That’s because Favreau himself originally sketched the big ears and expressive eyes for WEVR’s Gnomes & Goblins. In other words, you might think of the cute character who reacts to your behavior, and picks up an acorn in this trailer, as a kind of proto-Baby Yoda.
Check out the new trailer here:
WEVR is the studio behind theBlu — a project that started as one of the earliest demos for room-scale consumer VR while offering an up close encounter with a gigantic whale. More recently, that project was expanded and became an attraction at Dreamscape Immersive.
We’ll bring you details as we learn more about the expanded version of Gnomes & Goblins.
Phew! This week was a scorcher! And I’m not just talking about European weather.
A lot went on in the weird and wonderful world of VR over the last 7 days.
To make sure you don’t miss the biggest headlines, we’re introducing a new show called the VRecap. Every week, we’ll be summing up the breaking news and filling you in on the latest releases. We’ll also be highlighting some of our favorite comments we’ve seen over the last 7 days and even give you a chance to win some big prizes!
This week we’re kicking things off with news about Oculus Go emulation on Quest, updates on Valve Index shipping and the end of Starblood Arena. We’ll also be giving away physical copies of two hot PSVR games; The Wizards and Sairento VR. You won’t want to miss out on those!
Now we’re going to be building this show out over the coming weeks and months. This is a show for you, so we want to know what you think. What did you like? What could use some work? Sound off in the comments below and we’ll get to tweaking right away.
Well that about wraps it up for week one. We’ll see you next Friday!
Iron Man director Jon Favreau just wrapped up work on the live-action remake of The Lion King. It looks like his next project could finally be a full version of Gnomes & Goblins.
This compelling VR experience released in preview form back in 2016. Favreau produced the piece alongside Wevr and Reality One. In it, you met a cutesy little gnome and eventually gained his trust as you explores his forest habitat. It was an amazing early example of character interaction in VR, and how captivating it could be. Two and half years on, though, we have heard a peep about the full version. Until today.
Wevr just suspiciously posted a link to the experience’s full webpage. The site itself still says ‘Coming Soon’, but its resurgence suggests we’ll be getting more news soon. The piece appears to have MWM Immersive and Golem Creations attached to it too. For now you can sign up to hear more about the project.
The timing certainly matches up. Favreau’s take on The Lion King released last week so hopefully he’s found a little time for this promising project. In fact, the director ended up using VR to film the Disney remake. His crew created a multiplayer VR game that helped them set the stage for the big screen.
It’ll be interesting to see how Gnomes & Goblins has developed with nearly three years of progress in the VR space since we last saw it. Could we perhaps see it launch on other VR platforms like Quest and PSVR? Perhaps we could see some experiments with Valve’s Index controllers?
Those who’ve been following the virtual reality (VR) industry since at least 2016 may remember a beautiful looking title called Gnomes & Goblins, created by Wevr, MWM Immersive and Jon Favreau (director of films such as The Jungle Book and Iron Man). A free preview was released and then nothing, with the title seemingly dropped and never to return. Three years later, however, and Gnomes & Goblins has sprung back into life with a dedicated website appearing.
Wevr recently sent a teasing tweet linking to the website which lists one important piece of information ‘Coming Soon’. While that is a little ambiguous, the tweet and site point to a positive outlook for the interactive, story-driven videogame.
The site describes Gnomes & Goblins as a ‘fantasy adventure VR simulation’, were you can “Encounter inhabitants of a fantasy land, build a relationship with them, become part of their society, and save them from their foe.” The initial 2016 preview put you in the middle of a wooded area, allowing you to interact with a tree-dwelling resident. As it’s free on Steam and compatible with HTC Vive and Valve Index VRFocus recommends giving it a look.
“The appeal is to have somebody who is not a gamer and never had a VR experience, be able to enjoy this without feeling that they need to have a certain skillset, but we also don’t want it to be passive cinematic experience where people just sit and enjoy it like a ride,” says Favreau. “It needs to be something where you engage in the way that you would in life. It should feel like you’re developing a relationship with these characters.”
As yet no new content has been shown, and while the concept was original back in 2016 the art of an interactive story has been well developed in 2019. The most notable of which is Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series, with the first episode released in May for Oculus Quest (followed by Oculus Rift/Rift S), plus new details unveiled last week.
Hopefully, more information will be released soon for Gnomes & Goblins. When that does happen, VRFocus will let you know.
