Gorn – Page 7 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

July 10, 2017

Visceral VR Gladiator Title GORN Hits Steam Early Access

A couple of weeks ago VRFocus reported on Devolver Digital and indie studio Free Lives announcing a new gladiator inspired virtual reality (VR) title called GORN. Today, the bloody fighting experience has arrived on Steam Early Access.

GORN is an over-the-top, violent VR gladiator simulator, from the developers of Broforce and Genital Jousting. Featuring a ludicrous combat engine, GORN players will be able to creatively execute all sorts of violent gladiatorial moves, savagely ripping apart an infinite supply of poorly-animated opponents with all manner of weapons – from swords, maces, and bows to nunchucks, throwing knives, massive two-handed warhammers or just their blood-soaked bare hands.

GORN Screenshot 3

“While many have had their doubts about the future viability of VR and its potential contributions to society it is worth noting that in GORN you can rip off an opponent’s arm and then beat them with said arm until their head caves in,” said Devolver Digital CFO Fork Parker in a statement.

GORN will stay in early access from three to 12 months, with the developers planning to add consumer focused features. “For us, a large part of Early Access is figuring out what people like about our game – so most of the work will be prioritised by what YOU would like to see,” said the studio on Steam. “More and better content will be the focus of our work – we’d like to add many, many more weapons, more enemies to fight, and more and better champions to defeat. The feeling of progression and variety in the campaign also has a lot of room for improvement as of Early Access launch.”

If you like what you’ve seen of GORN so far it’s available to purchase now for £11.24 GBP until 17th July. After which it’ll return to its regular price of $19.99 USD/£14.99/€19.99 EUR.

Checkout the new trailer below and for further updates, keep reading VRFocus.

July 4, 2017

Ultra-violent Battle Sim ‘Gorn’ to Hit Steam Early Access July 10th

Gorn, the blood-soaked battle simulator from the makers of weird and wild games Broforce (2015) and Genital Jousting (2016), is officially coming to Steam Early Access on July 10th.

Free Lives, the studio behind the game, have developed Gorn on a unique, fully physics-driven combat engine that lets you melee battle in a single-player arena against brutal AI combatants. The game is releasing on HTC Vive, and required a 360 degree tracking area with at least 2m x 2m of space to play.

If the game weren’t already enough tongue-in-cheek, the studio says in their official description that Gorn lets you “savagely strike down an infinite supply of poorly-animated opponents with all manner of weapons—from swords, maces, and bows to nunchuks, throwing knives, massive two-handed warhammers or even your blood-soaked bare hands. The only limits to the carnage are your imagination and decency, in the most brutal and savage VR face-smashing game ever produced by man.”

‘GORN’ on Steam

First released as a free demo last year for HTC Vive, Gorn showed off some basic combat against the square-jawed, “poorly animated” gladiators. Now, while in Early Access, the developers plan on adding “many, many more weapons, more enemies to fight, and hopefully a boss encounter at the end of the game to tie it together,” the developers say on the game’s Steam page.

Check out Node Studio’s latest impressions of Gorn for a better idea of what to expect.

The post Ultra-violent Battle Sim ‘Gorn’ to Hit Steam Early Access July 10th appeared first on Road to VR.

June 26, 2017

Devolver Digital and Free Lives Announce VR Gladiator Simulator GORN for HTC Vive

Devolver Digital, the publisher behind virtual reality (VR) title such as Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope and #SelfieTennis has today announced a new over-the-top videogame coming to HTC Vive called, GORN.

Created by indie studio Free Lives, GORN is a sort of VR gladiator simulator, where players find themselves fighting for their lives inside an arena. As you’d expect from a gladiator title, there’s an assortment of ways to kill and be killed – if you’re not careful – ranging from the tried and tested hand-to-hand combat, punching and smashing opponents faces in with your fists, to all manner of weapons – from swords, maces, and bows to nunchuks, throwing knives and massive two-handed warhammers.

GORN_Screenshot_3

With highly stylised cartoon animations players can savagely strike down an infinite supply of poorly-animated opponents, that are just waiting to be dismembered or smashed to pieces.

“The Devolver Digital VR Division spent over a half million dollars to research what consumers wanted in a next generation virtual reality experience and the results were unanimous – they want to rip off someone’s arm and then beat that someone to death with said arm,” said Devolver Digital CFO Fork Parker.

GORN is set to release for HTC Vive on 10th July through Steam Early Access.

Checkout the first gameplay trailer for GORN below, and for further updates keep reading VRFocus.

March 8, 2017

Gorn Turned Me Into a Gory and Violent Colosseum Gladiator

Gorn Turned Me Into a Gory and Violent Coliseum Gladiator

With a shield in my left hand and a massive flail in my right hand, I stared down my enemies. They were heavily armored; I was not. I reached above my head, signaling to the master seated above us all that I was ready and he lowered the gates in the middle of the arena. My right hand swirled above my head, readying my flail as my adversaries inched ever closer. Once in range, I swung the flail forward with all of my power, lopping off the head of my first enemy, sending his now lifeless corpse careening into my next enemy off to the side. This fight was off to a great start.

Not every fight in Gorn goes this well. As you can tell, Gorn is a comical yet bloody gladiator fighting game currently in an early prototype stage and I had the pleasure of checking it out first-hand from the creators themselves while at the 2017 Game Developers Conference (GDC).

You can see a gameplay video of an older build of the game right here:

I’m told the version I saw at GDC was a “much more polished and brutally visceral build” of the game, hinting towards not just the visual fidelity, but content as well. For example, the walls weren’t just lined with floating heads — the leader issuing me commands to fight was actually sitting in a chair. The textures were vastly superior — especially the ground as far as I can recall — and the physics seemed to work better.

While playing I got to try out a variety of one-handed and two-handed weapons, from swords and hammers to spears and a bow/arrow. They all presented their own pros, cons, advantages, and challenges, which helped keep the game fresh. It was only a wave-based combat game, but the visceral nature of each encounter made it much more satisfying than many “full” VR games I’ve played. It’s also the most I’ve sweat while in VR in quite some time.

Melee combat is hard to get right in VR because there is no physical object you’re hitting with resistance, but with clever haptics and visual cues games like Gorn do a more than serviceable job of convincing you that you’re in an actual fight for your life.

My favorite weapons were the large two-handed ones I got to try near the end of the wave-based experience. They did a tremendous amount of damage and required even more careful use since you can’t swing them around too wildly. Sending an enemy flying across the arena as a ragdoll never got old.

The larger your play space the better the experience will be as well, since nimbly moving around the environment is a more effective method of evasion. The alternative movement method used to cross larger areas in the game wasn’t very intuitive and was extremely awkward. Hopefully the developers can work out a better solution to explore environments by the time the game is ready for release.

You can download and play a free pre-alpha early prototype of the game off of the developer’s itch.io website right now, but it’s unclear if this is the updated version I saw at GDC, or if it’s the older (albeit still fun) version that was already distributed months ago. This teaser is hosted by Ruan Rothmann of Free Lives, the same studio responsible for the exquisite sidescroller, Broforce.

Gorn is expected to hit Early Access “no earlier than April” according to a statement on the company’s website.

Tagged with: Free Lives, Gorn