Cloudhead Games, the studio known for pioneering several locomotion schemes during the creation of their well-received VR adventure series The Gallery, have just released a fresh demo for their latest game, The Gallery: Heart of the Emberstone (2017). The demo is a sandbox version of the Coliseum level that lets you get your hands on the game’s unique telekinetic powers before committing to the full game.
While dedicated game demos used to be the best way to find out if you wanted to take the full-priced plunge, in this late age of digital content distribution it seems not all developers commit to creating demos for their games, instead making users rely on refunds to get a taste of whatever it is they cooked up.
Cloudhead’s Heart of the Emberstone: Coliseum is now live on Steam for free, making for an easy way to dive head-first into the game’s magical powers, and step inside some of the game’s imposing architecture while you experience a no-spoilers slice of the story.
The studio says the demo was a way to “break up the monotony of the usual arcade fare in VR with a taste of a bigger adventure.”
Heart of the Emberstone is the second episode in the series after Call of the Starseed (2016).As a successor to one of the first room-scale games in existence, the second episode takes you deeper into the ’80s fiction-inspired universe and flushes out what proves to be a story as rich as the cinematic direction teased in the first. Far from being a one hit wonder, the second episode improves on the experience of the first in almost every way.
Find out why we rated Heart of the Emberstone a solid [9/10] in our review.
The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone erfreut sich wie schon der Vorgänger großer Beliebtheit und ist Mitte Oktober für die HTC Vive und Oculus Rift erschienen. Auf die von den Entwicklern angekündigte Umsetzung für die PSVR warten wir noch. Nun hat das Studio Cloudhead Games einen Level aus dem VR-Adventure ausgekoppelt und stellt Heart of the Emberstone: Coliseum kostenlos zur Verfügung.
Kostenloser Level Heart of the Emberstone: Coliseum erhältlich
Die Levelauskoppelung Heart of the Emberstone: Coliseum steht kostenlos auf Steam und im Oculus Store zur Verfügung und verführt VR-Spieler in die Welt der The-Gallery-Reihe. Dort muss man in einer offen angelegten Spielewelt mit Hilfe telekinetische Fähigkeiten allerlei Rätsel lösen. Coliseum dient dabei als Demo für das ganze Abenteuer und Spieler können sich so mit diversen Bewegungsoptionen vertraut machen sowie in Ruhe die telekinetischen Fähigkeiten ausprobieren.
Wer nach Heart of the Emberstone: Coliseum Lust auf das ganze Spiel bekommen hat, kann dann bei Steam oder im Oculus Store zuschlagen: Die erste Episode The Gallery: Call of the Starseed kostet knapp 20 Euro, die zweite Episode The Gallery: Heart of the Emberstone knapp 28 Euro. Im Bundle auf Steam kann man 10 Prozent sparen und zahlt für beide Titel rund 43 Euro. Mit vier bis sechs Stunden fällt der zweite Teil länger aus als der erste: Wir haben immerhin über zwei Stunden im Herzen von Emberstone verbracht und das grafisch schön gestaltete Adventure im Gameplay-Video vorgestellt.
The Gallery: Episode 2 – Heart of the Emberstone is a great game. So great, in fact, we’ve got it nominated several times in our Best of 2017 nominee list and really look forward to seeing where that series goes next with Episode 3. In the meantime, we can sink our teeth into this expanded, standalone release featuring Episode 2’s addictive Coliseum.
In the core game the Coliseum was a bit of a one-off piece of content but now the team at Cloudhead have cut out that section of the experience and released it as its very own free VR game for people to try. Think of it as like a polished, post-launch demo in a way. In fact, Episode 2 is directly linked and advertised on Coliseum’s page right under the free download button on Steam.
“Heart of the Emberstone: Coliseum is set to break the monotony of the usual arcade fare in VR with a taste of a bigger adventure. Coliseum offers a telekinetic playground where you can wield the Gauntlet, a mystical power from the planet of Ember, to build, create, and destroy with the palm of your hand…This sandbox version is a small slice from the full Heart of the Emberstone experience, allowing players to peek into the dark past of Ember and the story it holds. Coliseum was built to showcase uniquely VR-tailored gameplay to enthusiasts, with puzzles and interactions that play to the powers and strengths of VR. Coliseum also offers a jumping point for new players to experiment with various locomotion options, and to get a grand sense of scale and beauty in a risk-free environment.”
Heart of the Emberstone: Coliseum is out now with official support for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift for free. You can find it on Steam or on Oculus Home. Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone (2017) comes a year and a half after Call of the Starseed (2016), episode one in the narrative-based adventure puzzle game series. As a successor to one of the first room-scale games in existence, the second episode takes you deeper into the ’80s fiction-inspired universe and flushes out what proves to be a story as rich as the cinematic direction teased in the first. Far from being a one hit wonder, the second episode improves on the experience of the first in almost every way.
The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone Details:
Leaving off from the end of Call of the Starseed, you find yourself on the other side of the universe, searching for your adventuresome sister Elsie as you follow her footsteps onto a strange alien world. At the behest of a hunchbacked overlord, you’re told you must “fetch your grasp,” a powerful addition to your telekenetically-powered gauntlet in order to see your sister again. With the ability to move heavy objects imbibed with a magical power ore, you journey ever further into the deserted world as you become both actor and observer of a story long passed.
image courtesy Cloudhead Games
Without saying too much about the story itself, much of the action takes place in the form of holographic memories projected in front of you, and through found tapes and diary entries. The world you’ve landed on is essentially dead, except for weird little weevil-things that seem to thrive on the sandy planet. Just how it got that way is something for you to find out yourself. I will say though that the story offers salient commentary on the opposing forces of nature and man, and leaves a lot to digest as you delve deeper into the crazy power differential that results from a monarchy that’s both in charge of an entire world’s resources and is ultimately gifted with superhuman powers to maintain that order.
image courtesy Cloudhead Games
Spanning across three main areas, you’ll do some back-and-forth to get missing parts, so while the world itself isn’t giant, it also means there isn’t any wasted space. At first I wished there was more latitude for open exploration, but what I was left with was a situation where a new puzzle and a fresh storyline breadcrumb always in reach to kept me interested. This also kept it from feeling too linear, departing from what I like to call ‘IKEA adventures’.
Besides a single puzzle that’s basically a more complicated version of Simon (repeat a sequence of color-coded tones), the puzzles in Heart of the Emberstone left me feeling like I’d never experienced something similar.
Most doors and certain quest items are accessed by guiding your gauntlet’s stone through a translucent tube with moving barriers, that when you fail to guide it correctly and touch the barrier or edges of the tube, it resets everything. These range from extremely simple—a straight tube with no barriers for commonly-accessed spaces like elevators—to increasingly difficult puzzles as you move along.
You also have your gauntlet, a more powerful ‘grasp’, and an energy slingshot that helps you shoot down room-unlocking ore boxes. These boxes can be slotted into place and used as movable parts in larger room-sized puzzles.
One of my favorites was the gear puzzles, where you have to slot in the right gears within a certain amount of time in order to use a door-opening lever. The little gears have differently-shaped axle inserts, so you have to plan ahead so you can get them all in correctly before the timer runs out, or you have to start over again.
image courtesy Cloudhead Games
While neither of these puzzle types are particularly difficult, the feeling you get when you solve them is synergistic. The developers could have easily made you press a simple button to open a door, or scattered keys throughout the level and make you go on an endless hunt, but the door puzzles not only leave you feeling like you’ve accomplished something, but you’ve done it with style.
I know you’re scanning for it, so here it is. Heart of the Emberstone took me 3.5 hours to complete. There, I even put it in bold. I achieved this playtime reading every book I found, every scrap of paper, and listened to every one of Elsie’s cassette tapes. While I’m not sure how the creators can claim as far as 6 hours of playtime, to its ultimate credit Episode 2 isn’t littered with useless collectibles that would otherwise pad out the game’s length. Most everything you find broadens the story’s lore, leaving you with multiple ways to understand what’s going on.
image courtesy Cloudhead Games
Frankly, after the end credits rolled, I was ready to play again. There’s so much to unpack in Heart of the Emberstone, so much more to absorb than a single pass would allow. Although I knew what was going on and never felt confused by the events that unfolded before me as an observer, I’d place the level of storytelling on the same rung as some of the top TV dramas like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones—the sort of shows you go back to rewatch even if you know what’s going to happen (albeit in a reduced form).
It’s pretty rare that excellent voice acting, competent art direction, and a fully-realized world with a truly interesting story come together at once, so excuse me if I let out a well-deserved “wow.”
Immersion
Comparing the sequel to the first in the series, Heart of the Emberstone feels much more like a complete experience than its predecessor. You can probably chalk this up to the fact that it’s over three-times the length of the first episode, all with about the same density of puzzles and indispensable narrative elements.
Where Call of the Starseed seemed somewhat gimmicky at times and jabbed you in the face every so often with reminders that you were actually in a game and not in a real adventure, Heart of the Emberstone tosses you in a wholly new alien environment where expectations are less primed by real-world interactions, but where your actions have greater overall effect. Once you figure out how to use your gauntlet, puzzles and abilities are thrown on at formative intervals that never leave you scratching your head as what to do next. This doesn’t mean you’re led by the hand though, as the game only tells you how to do something once without nagging you to death with the usual (and frankly way overused) ‘helpful robot’ trope.
Bad storytelling is bad for immersion. Bad stories and crappy voice acting make you feel like you’re in a fake world with fake people, and this is why I tend to discuss it in both the gameplay and immersion sections of reviews. Besides being an obvious visual treat, the world feels alive even though it’s ostensibly dry as a dead dingo’s donger. Grounding you in the world further, the story shows an emotional range that doesn’t reek of the low-rent melodrama of more mediocre titles. Heart-wrenching scenes of betrayal punctuate the bubbly levity that Elsie always seems to bring to every situation.
image courtesy Cloudhead Games
There are of course moments when the devs give you a little ‘wink wink, nudge nudge’, as if to say “we’ve put this story element here conveniently to move things along, but we know you know that.” This is done maybe once or twice throughout the game though, and isn’t really a focal point.
Nuts and bolts-wise, object interaction is vastly improved, showing just how much Cloudhead has worked to create objects that give a solid haptic feedback and work equally well in both left and right hands. Picking up and reading the holographic logs scattered throughout the game was a much more plausible experience than the notepads or books in Starseed which only gave you a few ‘snap-to’ hand poses. Menus, maps, and logs take the place of your hand, leaving hand poses out of the equation entirely.
I found the hand models to be a bit of a minor visual blemish, which felt overly spindly. The position of the hands relative to the controller also felt a bit off, extending farther than my hands naturally would. Like its predecessor, hand models don’t make full use of Oculus Touch’s capacitive buttons, robbing you of some of the more true-to-life flexibility the particular controller can afford. This clearly isn’t an issue on Vive, which is why is only bears brief mention.
Loading screens are fairly quick and unobtrusive, but are numerous as you traverse back and forth on the world map—a clear, but decidedly unavoidable pain point.
Comfort
There are a number of elements that made their way from Call of the Starseed to Heart of the Emberstone, including blink teleportation. One thing that’s changed however is the inclusion of smooth locomotion (put in bold for skimmers) that should have die-hard opponents of teleportation squealing with glee. This however doesn’t include smooth yaw stick turning, meaning you’ll have to weather the game with snap-turn only—aka ‘comfort mode’.
Smooth locomotion options also include controller-oriented stick-move, head-oriented stick move, strafing options and variable movement speeds. Since these are non-default options that must be toggled by the user, the stock blink teleportation makes for an exceedingly comfortable experience for anyone, from novice to expert VR user.
One of the few misgivings I have with Heart of the Emberstone is the lack of seated option, which would be welcome when playing the game from start to finish.
We partnered with AVA Direct to create the Exemplar 2 Ultimate, our high-end VR hardware reference point against which we perform our tests and reviews. Exemplar 2 is designed to push virtual reality experiences above and beyond what’s possible with systems built to lesser recommended VR specifications.
We’ve been following The Gallery Episode 2 closely for the past several months and actually got our hands-on one of the first demos back at GDC 2017 near the start of the year. While channeling what made the first game so powerful and also implementing a stronger sense of storytelling, Episode 2 aims to be bigger and better. Note: There are spoilers below for Episode 1: The Call of the Starseed’s story.
For this preview a company representative told me the demo picks up right near the start of the game. The first Episode is all about you searching a mysterious island for your long-lost sister, Elsie. Your character never has a defined gender so it’s open-ended to allow for the highest degree of immersion. At the end of the first game you meet one of the series’ main characters as you ascend up what appears to be some sort of spaceship technology. As it turns out, you’re being transported to a world named Ember.
In Episode 2 you spend your time exploring the world of Ember and how its leaders are competing for power. At the end of the first Episode you gain this powerful new gauntlet that lets you manipulate areas of the environment and channel your energy. One of the biggest changes between Episode 1 and Episode 2 that I’ve taken note of is a heavier emphasis on solving puzzles.
The first Episode had players spend much of their time exploring environments and uncovering secrets along the way and while Heart of the Emberstone is very similar, this time the puzzles seemed to have a much more hands-on design. Near the start of the demo this is displayed in my handling of rubble using the new gauntlet tool.
After clearing a path and progressing onto a mechanical lift, I notice the strong Myst influences this time around as well. Architecture feels like a mixture of Cyan’s most recent work, Obduction, and an undiscovered alien civilization waiting to be unveiled.
In the demo I played at GDC the puzzles were all about precision, moving little stones through obstacles, while this time they’re focused more on elaborate holograms. I’m reminded of how innovative the first Episode was with its use of roomscale elements to really make you feel part of a place and Episode 2 embraces that aspect further. One of the puzzles had me ducking and leaning to gain new vantage points on the environment — something that you could never do in a non-VR game.
Near the end of the demo I step into an area and eventually come face-to-face with an enormous giant. These two moments underline a big part of what made the first game so powerful as well: the sense of scale. Just as I ended the first game with my head pointed at the sky, ascending into a bright light, I end this demo with my head pointed at the sky, in awe of my surroundings.
My preview only lasted about 20 minutes to give me a small taste, but the full Episode is expected to be closer to 4-6 hours total, compared to 1-2 hours for the first Episode.
With music by legendary game composer Jeremy Soule (The Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars, Knights of the Old Republic) even the soundtrack is building up to be an incredible audio experience and very well may end up being one of the first VR games that has a soundtrack worth buying individually.
The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone is releasing very soon for both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift; PSVR editions of both episodes are expected to be coming soon as well. You can already keep an eye on the Steam page to stay up-to-date too.
Let us know what you think of the game down in the comments below!
The sequel to Cloudhead Games’ early room-scale VR hit, The Gallery: Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed (2016), is nearly here. We got our hands on a limited preview of the soon-to-release Heart of the Emberstone, and if the little we played accurately represents the fit and finish of the final product, we’re in for quite a treat.
Note to the reader: Needless to say, if you haven’t played the first installment, Call of the Starseed, you probably shouldn’t read any further. Considering though the studio just slashed the price by 50% on Steam to only $10, it’s an easy buy for an hour-long experience that still holds up.
If you have played though, the preview only contains 10 minutes of gameplay, or two scenes-worth of what is said to be a 4-6 hour game.
Carrying on from when we left off last, traveling through space and time at the behest of our new (and clearly malevolent) acquaintance, the game begins with a disembodied monologue of your dear twin sister, Elsie, telling you that despite that fact that you settled down when she sought out adventure, that “we were meant for more.”
By virtue of the fact that you’re now traveling through space with a magical gauntlet that lets you move objects telekenetically, I’d say she was right about that.
Plopped down of what appears to be the far side of the Universe, you stand across a shimmering portal from the hunchbacked overlord, bidding you to travel to the Tower of Cogs to “fix yourself with a grasp,” a powerful tool of his own creation.
The Gallery: Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed
“It will make you better. More. Compliant. Elsie obtained her grasp with limited help. Lets see how you fare,” he bids. With your marching orders assigned, Hunchback-guy says he’ll be waiting with your sister until you get back. It’s all so deliciously ’80s as it harks back to The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986), two of the game’s main inspirations.
Sending me on my quest, a giant round door suddenly retracts behind me, casting an eerie red light as it opens to reveal a floating walkway covered in rubble. Clearing out the giant stones with my trusty gauntlet, I find a cube that fits right into the cube-shaped recess in the next door. This door retracts like a defocalized eyeball, leading me to a lift with a curious holographic control mechanism activated by your gauntlet.
image courtesy Cloudhead Games
Exiting the lift, I meet my first door puzzle. Nearing the door, a holographic tube appears, and much like the lift, I have to guide my now spinning runestone through to the other end. It’s a simple little thing, but the further I go, the more complicated the little holographic puzzles get. Later in the preview, I have to crouch down to get a good vantage point as I weave my runestone through rotating red barriers, that when touched set you back at the beginning. None of them are what I’d call particularly difficult, but it certainly puts an immersive twist on what could ultimately be a boring task of turning a lever. We’ll just have to see when we play the full game soon.
image courtesy Cloudhead Games
Stepping into what appears to be an ancient gladiatorial ring covered in desiccated corpses, a ghostly hologram of Elsie appears. She’s just as wowed as I am by the massive statues and the hot alien sun that seems to have made the planet no longer habitable.
image courtesy Cloudhead Games
Making my way to the only operating door in the gladiatorial pit, I enter into a small, windowed room that looks out over an eternal sandstorm obscuring my vision. Another hologram of Elsie appears to give me a hint. “It’s just like Operation!” she exclaims. Two more holo-puzzles down, and that’s when the roof is ripped off the room to reveal an honest-to-goodness giant lumbering forward. He seems curious, and not at all the sort that would squish me like the ant I am. A holographic map of the world appears, and I dutifully select the Tower of Cogs. The giant bends down to pick me up. Fade to black.
From my 10-minute play session, Heart of the Emberstone both looks and feels more polished than its predecessor. Although there weren’t any locomotion options in the preview, the stock blink teleportation definitely seemed more solid than Call of the Starseed.Textures also seem more ‘alive’ as well, although it could just be a fresh appraisal of the alien world combined with its intricate clockwork doors and holographic puzzles that wowed me.
Cloudhead has a really firm grasp on lighting, using it to draw your attention to smaller clues and casting it expertly to create dramatic effect, which in turn makes the experience truly feel cinematic.
There’s no launch date yet, but the Steam page maintains it’s set to release sometime in September. The game will also support both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive including motion controls. If you’re still twiddling your thumbs in anticipation though, feast your eyes on the teaser trailer—of course created to look like an ’80s made-for-TV movie.
There are a few constants in the this world. For example: The Legend of Zelda is basically perfect always, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches never sound like a bad idea, the VR community will never not ask for more AAA games, and the folks at Cloudhead will never stop teasing us reveals.
We had the pleasure of going hands-on with the game at GDC 2017 and while it’s hard to get a good feel for a slow-paced interactive adventure title like The Gallery during a convention setting, we came away very impressed. The ambiance is still there, the mystery swirls in the air around you, and there is a nagging sense of discovery pushing you forward at every turn.
You can watch the below video for more reveals about the plot and story of The Gallery: Episode 2 – Hearth of the Emberstone below. The video includes new details about where the story is going next, new characters, and new motivations. However, note that there are spoilersin the video if you have not finished Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed.
Are you excited for The Gallery: Episode 2? Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
My demo for The Gallery: Episode 2 – Heart of the Emberstone ended the exact same way Episode 1 ended for me: with my mouth open, staring up at the sky. In the first episode, you’re ascending into what can only be described as a portal of some kind as The Watcher, a mysterious and ominous character, talks to you about what’s coming next just before the credits roll. The ending of my Episode 2 demo was much more visually arresting.
At GDC 2017, Cloudhead Games allowed me to have the first hands-on preview of the upcoming sequel to their 2016 hit VR adventure title, The Gallery: Episode 1 – The Call of the Starseed [Review: 9/10]. After over $1 million in revenue and winning our award for Best VR Game Narrative of 2016, Episode 2 is picking up right where it left off.
The demo began with me standing in front of a large, circular door. I reached out with my right hand, which was laden with an ornate, clearly alien gauntlet — the same one you receive at the end of Episode 1. A crystal reacts to the glowing part of the gauntlet, triggering a mechanism that allows me to unlock the door by moving my hand forward.
From there, I’m treated to a room that I am later told will serve as the hub of the adventure. The Gallery: Episode 2 is designed as a longer journey (around 6 hours) rife with exploration. Instead of following a mostly linear path like the first game, this time you’re free to roam between different areas, unlocking secrets as you go.
For starters, this room contained plenty of secrets. In front of me was a shining pad on the ground that, when stepped upon, created a cascading effect of stones around me to spawn what looked like a topographical map. My guess is that I can use this hub portal to fast travel in the future.
To my left and right were chests that had floating crystals that I could once again activate with my right hand. This time, each of them spawned a special puzzle that needed to be solved very carefully. My hands disappeared and my right hand movements were now represented by only the crystal, which I had to slowly move through a tube.
Inside the tube I saw red obstacles that were moving around to hinder my progress. I had to carefully move the crystals through the tubes without touching the insides of the tube themselves. It sounds confusing, but you can see a glimpse of them in the teaser above.
After my demo of The Gallery: Episode 2 I spoke with the team at Cloudhead and they emphasized how small of a slice this demo was of the full game. I didn’t get to explore the greater world, I only saw one other character — a hologram of a woman exploring the room (could it be your missing sister?) and poked around with a few puzzles.
But that being said, what I did see got me very excited. This strange new alien world of Ember is coming to life in wondrous detail and I’m aching to dive back into this universe. The biggest issue with Episode 1 was the linearity and brevity; both of those elements seem to be improved, if just a bit, this time around.
The demo ended with a giant stone-like creature emerging from the smoke and shadows, standing tall above the tower I was inside, and reaching down with his enormous hand towards me as I stood there, mouth agape, looking upwards just as last time.
We don’t have an exact release date for The Gallery: Episode 2, but it is slated for Spring 2017, which means within just a couple of months. Stay tuned at UploadVR for more coverage on the game as we get closer to release.
The Gallery Episode 2 will release simultaneously for both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift with Touch this Spring. Cloudhead is also working on bringing both existing and all future episodes to PlayStation VR (PSVR) with no timeframe for release.
The Gallery: Episode 1 – Call of the Starseed [Review: 9/10] was one of our favorite VR games in 2016. In fact, it even took home the honors of being named the Best Narrative of the year. We know that Episode 2 will be called Heart of the Emberstone and the currently running series of developer diary videos are poised to divulge additional information over time. But as of now, we didn’t know much about the episode itself and what it’s all about — that is, until now.
Thanks to the second entry in the developer diary series, Cloudhead Games has peeled back a few of the layers on the strange new alien world that players are set to explore. At the end of Call of the Starseed, things end as players don a strange gauntlet on their hand and emerge through what appears to be a portal, or spaceship of some kind. It’s an epic cliffhanger. Watch the latest diary below:
We’ve spoken to Cloudhead previously about how they’re building The Gallery into an epic sci-fi property remniscent of the IPs that inspired it and that tradition is continuing in Episode 2. Denny Unger, CEO and Creative Director at Cloudhead, specially cites The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth as heavy inspirations.
“When the player gets to Ember, that’s when they start to understand the mystery of The Starseed, what it’s function is, and what your part is playing in the story of The Starseed,” explains Mike Wilson, Narrative Director.
Then Jonathan Hackett, Art Lead on the project, continues by detailing that, “When the player gets to Ember, that’s when they start to understand the mystery of The Starseed, what it’s function is, and what your part is playing in the story of The Starseed.”
Unfortunately we still know only precious little about the world itself, but the art work shown in the video and the mentions of creatures such as the pesky Wizgogs are enough to sufficiently pique our interest.
“One of the things that sets Heart of the Emberstone apart is that we’ve designed a kind of open world game flow in VR,” says Unger. “It might be the first time in VR that anyone’s attacked it from this kind of perspective…it’s a completely different ‘game feel’ than Episode 1.”
We still don’t know a release date for Episode 2, but hopefully the ramp up of behind-the-scenes footage and dev diaries is pointing to sooner rather than later.
