A Fisherman’s Tale (2019), the VR adventure from Innerspace and Vertigo Games, is getting a sequel, launching on all major VR platforms this year.
Aptly called Another Fisherman’s Tale, the episodic tale is bringing you back for another round of mindbending VR puzzles which the team says lets you use your own body, detach and control your limbs, and find new attachments to progress.
“Discover the truth as you journey through beautiful and unique locations, brought to life by the makers of A Fisherman’s Tale. Get ready for a captivating VR experience unlike any other,” the description reads in the game’s announcement trailer.
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Image courtesy Innerspace VR, Vertigo Games
Image courtesy Innerspace VR, Vertigo Games
Image courtesy Innerspace VR, Vertigo Games
Image courtesy Innerspace VR, Vertigo Games
Image courtesy Innerspace VR, Vertigo Games
A Fisherman’s Tale puts you in the boots of Bob, a fisherman who lives in a strange, recursive world centered around a dollhouse-sized lighthouse. In the sequel, you return to the story as Bob’s daughter Nina for another round of mind-bending escape room-style puzzles.
We liked the smorgasbord of VR game mechanics in the original, although a big sticking point was its overall playtime, which we clocked in at just around one hour in our review of A Fisherman’s Tale. The sequel is slated to take around five to six hours—promising to offer up plenty of adventure to keep you scratching your head.
Creative Director Balthazar Auxietre of Innerspace VR stated that the goal was “to renew the gameplay and the storytelling [of the first game] while keeping key elements of a universe that has obviously reached the heart of VR gamers.”
He added that the studio’s recent experiences allowed them to “pursue a new level of ambition for the A Fisherman’s Tale franchise, thanks to the multifaceted gameplay and the diversity of the models’ worlds. Everything is in place for a new adventure that will take us across the virtual oceans.”
At the time of this writing, the 2019 A Fisherman’s Tale garnered a user rating of a 93% ‘Very Positive’ rating on Steam, and a [4.5/5] star user rating on Quest.
Another Fisherman’s Tale is slated to arrive sometime this year on PSVR 2, Quest 2, and PC VR headsets via Steam and Viveport.
Vertigo Games is adding Innerspace’s Maskmaker to its publishing portfolio.
A tweet from the company’s official account confirmed as much. The post says that Vertigo is “strengthening” its partnership with Innerspace, but doesn’t specifically outline plans for what it will do with the game. The game was originally released on PSVR and PC VR in April of 2021, published by MWM Interactive. Vertigo published Innerspace’s first full VR game, A Fisherman’s Tale, back in 2019.
Vertigo Picks Up Maskmaker VR
We’re strengthening our partnership with @InnerspaceVR once more!
Vertigo declined to comment on how this new partnership came about or if it might mean a Quest version of the game is in the works. In a follow-up tweet, Innerspace itself said it hoped the partnership would “bring new opportunities soon”.
Maskmaker was a VR adventure game in which you happen upon an old mask maker’s workshop and discover the ability to jump between worlds using their creations. You use this mechanic to go between environments, creating masks that mirror those you find in different worlds, allowing you to assume control of different characters.
We thought the game was successful in building out fascinating worlds, but a heavy-handed narrative got in the way of the gameplay. “Its best moments achieve an intricate balance between body-swapping puzzling that helps lift the veil on some of the story’s deeper themes, and I would have happily spent hours more making masks in the welcome confines of its workshop,” we said in our review. “But the game often feels like it’s presenting puzzles for the sake of it and could have helped its story breathe by stripping back some of the exposition.”
Shortly after Maskmaker’s release, Vertigo Games confirmed it had signed a publishing deal with Innerspace to produce its next game, which is still unannounced.
Arizona Sunshine developer Vertigo Games is publishing the next title from Maskmaker studio, Innerspace VR.
Vertigo announced the news on Twitter this week. Few details were revealed other than that Vertigo has agreed another publishing deal with the developer. The pair have, of course, already worked together – Vertigo published 2019 VR puzzling gem, A Fisherman’s Tale, first on PC VR and PSVR and then on Quest a little later down the line. Innerspace also developed and released a VR arcade game, Corsair’s Curse, under the Vertigo Arcades label.
We’re delighted to reel in another publishing deal with @InnerspaceVR! After a successful partnership on the award-winning #AFishermansTale, we can’t wait to show you more about this new VR project in the future! pic.twitter.com/JcfEjC3u9z
For its next game, however, Innerspace made a deal with MWM Interactive. The result was Maskmaker, which launched on PC VR and PSVR headsets last month. We recently charted the developer’s history in an installment in our Upload Access series. Vertigo, meanwhile, recently expanded its publishing line with frantic VR puzzle game, Traffic Jams, and is also publishing a new hand-tracking game for Quest called Unplugged, which looks like Guitar Hero for air guitar. The long-awaited After The Fall, it’s follow-up to Arizona Sunshine, is also due this summer.
No details on the project have been revealed at this time. Maskmaker is just a few weeks old and we’re still hoping that Innerspace might be able to bring it to Quest, so it’s likely to be some time before we hear about what’s next.
What game do you think Vertigo and Innerspace are working on together? Could it be a sequel to A Fisherman’s Tale or could it be something new? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Maskmaker offers arresting atmosphere and intricate design, but it doesn’t have much new to say with its base mechanics. More in our Maskmaker review!
Maskmaker wears a lot of hats or, forgive me, masks. On the surface it’s an enjoyable, if somewhat lightweight puzzle adventure that explores a similar mechanic to Accounting, Virtual Virtual Reality and The Under Presents. It’s also a remake, of sorts, of a 1975 mime performance, borrowing its name and many of its core themes. And, for people that remember Innerspace’s Firebird series, it’s even a bit of a sequel.
A typically multi-faceted effort for its developer, then, and Innerspace does a good job fleshing out the mask-swapping, world-hopping concept into a fun 3+ hour adventure that tackles ideas of mentorship and succession. What it doesn’t have, though, is quite the same spark of ingenuity of 2019’s A Fisherman’s Tale, or other recent VR puzzling highlights.
Maskmaker Review – The Facts
What is it?: A first-person puzzle adventure in which you travel between worlds by making and putting on masks. Platforms: PC VR, PSVR Release Date: Out Now Price: $19.99
The core of Maskmaker is astonishingly impressive from a technical perspective. To travel between worlds you simply put on a mask in the workshop and then lift it off to return. On the PC version you switch out between worlds in mere seconds with minimal time spent in front of a loading screen. It makes the transition between each of its six biomes (three overworlds split into two main areas) near-seamless, though not quite as fluid as the instantaneous Under Presents.
And we’re not just talking about tiny spaces; Innerspace expands its staple artistry to stunning mountainscapes dotted with rural villages, golden beaches that have you feeling the sun even in VR and dusty desert canyons that leave you longing for a glass of water. Each of these worlds has been crafted with care and has a hand-made feel, right down to the paint-like flecks of snow on a mountaintop or the lush green textures of leaves in a forest. It’s the sort of VR experience you want to see inside the best possible headset so as not to waste its beauty on distorted screen resolutions, and something I’ll want to revisit whenever new hardware is released.
World-hopping also gives the game a light Metroidvania touch, although it really is the slightest hint. You can travel between any world at any time, but the bulk of the ingredients you’ll need to make a specific mask are often located within its given biome. There was a chance to interweave between locations to gather resources more often here, but it’s never fully explored, and Maskmaker is pretty light on challenge overall. Many of its in-world puzzles, like creating bridges for mountain goats to navigate or changing cogs to operate a rope bridge, are fairly rudimentary and could have been lifted from any other VR puzzler.
They’re better when they play with the game’s themes and add to the underlying narrative. In the swamps you concoct a potion that temporarily kills harmful spores growing on trees. It’s simple in approach but, with a bit of exploration, you’ll discover a hidden meaning that gives your actions much more heft. Other moments, like directing the flow of water through a canyon, are a little more on the nose but require some intricate switching out between masks on the fly.
Maskmaker Review – Comfort
Maskmaker uses smooth locomotion and teleportation styles, and you’re free to move between the two. Movement is slow and features an optional vignette. Overall you shouldn’t have too many comfort issues with this one.
The story’s more direct beats are riddled with similar sorts of double-meanings and metaphors (there is a lot of dialogue about the many roles of a mask). It teeters on fantasy whilst tying into questions about who we have to become to surpass our mentors and sets about exploring the topic with a genuine sense of pathos (one great phrase goes along the lines of “For it is dangerous to make a face before you do not know your own”). But, while the themes are interesting and admirable, its delivery could use some work.
Maskmaker is a talky game – there’s a lot of narration and exposition and it often plays out whilst you’re jumping back and forth between worlds. Just on a practical level, it’s incredibly easy to accidentally cut someone off just as they start talking or at a pause mid-monologue by removing or putting on a mask too soon, and there’s a lot of waiting around for someone to finish their sentence before you feel you can move on. Its environments tell enough of the narrative to often negate a lot of what is being said and the experience would be better rounded had it left some of it — much like the mime performance it draws inspiration from — unspoken.
If there’s one element Maskmaker really does hammer home, though, it’s very literally the crafting. It doesn’t truly come alive until the game’s latter half when you’ve unlocked all the tools, but when it does it’s a pretty magical experience. You start out by sculpting moulds with a chisel — a trick borrowed from Firebird: The Unfinished and just as engaging today — before mixing paints, adding components sourced from the game’s worlds and even using a brush to color-in specific sections of a mask.
There’s a wonderful authenticity and atmosphere to it, capturing fleeting moments of real VR embodiment as I sat and surveyed a mask on its stand, filled in missing spots and reached behind me to pick up decorative trinkets. It’s an absolute highlight and strangely fulfilling work; I could have done it all day.
Maskmaker Review Final Impressions
Maskmaker is peppered with magic moments but also padded with more routine and familiar gameplay, plus a heavy-handed narrative. Its best moments achieve an intricate balance between body-swapping puzzling that helps lift the veil on some of the story’s deeper themes, and I would have happily spent hours more making masks in the welcome confines of its workshop. But the game often feels like it’s presenting puzzles for the sake of it and could have helped its story breathe by stripping back some of the exposition.
For more on how we arrived at this score, read our review guidelines. What did you make of our Maskmaker review? Let us know in the comments below!
Video game publisher MWM Interactive announced that it’s partnering with Innerspace VR, the studio behind A Fisherman’s Tale, to release a new VR title in 2021. The game will be called Maskmaker, set in the magical workshop of a man named Prospero.
We’ve been eagerly awaiting news of a follow-up from French developers Innerspace VR, and today we learned from publisher MWM Interactive that the studio’s next game will be Maskmaker, set to arrive in 2021. According to MWM, the game “transports players into a magical mask workshop to meet Prospero, the maskmaker who tasks them to solve the ultimate mystery behind his masks. As players travel between unique environments, they learn more about Prospero and this strange land, frozen for a moment in time. ”
From that short description alone, it definitely sounds like Maskmaker is going to follow the weird and quirky narrative style that the studio ran with in A Fisherman’s Tale, with some tantalizing puzzles to boot. We also got a peek at some key art, embedded above — it looks appropriately mysterious and a little bit spooky. Color us intrigued!
There’s no word on release platforms just yet, but PC VR seems a safe bet, with potential for Quest and PSVR ports down the line if we had to guess, like with A Fisherman’s Tale.
When was the last time you went to a virtual reality (VR) arcade? Or have you ever been to one? If the answers are a long time ago or never then now’s the time, as location-based entertainment (LBE) has rapidly improved alongside its home consumer cousin. Vertigo Games is one VR developer keenly focused on both markets, and recently demoed Innerspace VR’s Corsair’s Curse at Gamescom 2019. As VRFocus likes to do, we grabbed (nicely of course) a Vertigo Games employee to learn more.
On hand to talk about the LBE VR experience was Vertigo Games’ Business Development Director John Coleman, going into detail about this multiplayer title from the team who created A Fisherman’s Tale.
Corsair’s Curse is in fact loosely based on that puzzle title for home VR headsets, both featuring a nautical theme as well as intricate challenges to solve. But as this videogame is purely made for arcades one of the core aspects Innerspace VR wanted to introduce is co-operative gameplay.
A minimum of two players is required with Corsair’s Curse supporting up to four. You all play as pirates after the legendary Corsair’s treasure. As with any good pirate tale, this treasure is cursed and everyone finds themselves trapped in the form of wooden dolls, with the only way out being the completion of all the puzzles. You’re all on the same boat but it’s split in two, with one team larger than the other.
However, Corsair’s Curse isn’t pitting the two sides against one another, you all have to work together, as the puzzles interlink between the two areas; each one must be completed in sequence.
To get a better idea why not read VRFocus’ review of Corsair’s Cursewhich noted: “Corsair’s Curse is ideal for those stepping into a VR arcade for the first time, rather than some intense first-person shooter (FPS). There’s time to learn the basics and the joy of VR gaming, picking stuff up, the visual impact of scale and much more.”
Location-based entertainment (LBE) is becoming an important revenue stream for a lot of virtual reality (VR) developers. It’s why in VR arcades you’ll see well-known titles for home headsets reworked for venues as well as original IP’s. This is sort of the case with Corsair’s Curse a team-based puzzle solver from the Innerspace VR team, who’ve loosely based the LBE title on their last consumer release A Fisherman’s Tale.
Still featuring a nautical theme, rather than being a humble fisherman you’re now placed in the role of a pirate, and what do pirate’s always want? Treasure of course. In Corsair’s Curse you play a greedy pirate cursed by pirate captain Corsair whilst looking for his treasure. Turned into wooden dolls you and your teammates need to solve Corsair’s puzzles to break the curse.
Designed for up to four players, Corsair’s Curse always needs a minimum of two because of the way the puzzles are designed. Using HTC Vive Pro’s, backpack PC’s and Vive wireless adaptors the tech allows for complete free-roaming but the title doesn’t require major amounts of space. This is because once you’re inside the galleon most items are nearby, particularly useful for VR arcades which don’t have loads of space. Plus the fact up to four people need to occupy the area.
As an arcade experience designed to be inclusive no matter the skill level before the main game begins there’s time to get acclimatised to VR, great for new players. Set on a desert island there’s a mirror so you can see your avatar as well as a range of hats to customise your ideal pirate look. Peer past the mirror and your teammate is on the other side, so you can shout, wave or simply taunt them if you wish (great for building that pirate moral).
Inside the ship both players are separated so they can’t directly help each other but they can offer guidance – think of game shows like the Crystal Maze. For those that have played A Fisherman’s Tale then you’ll also notice another theme come into play, scale and perspective. Innerspace VR loves to play with size in VR so in Corsair’s Curse one player was huge while the other was tiny.
Most of the puzzles had a dual effect, completing one would then unlock the next for the other player. For example, playing as the tiny pirate one of the puzzles included firing a cannon. Gunpowder needed to be mixed and put in place, then a cannonball loaded before finding a flaming torch to light the fuse. The target was in the other players’ side, blasting a hole to locate a hidden object.
All of which meant teamwork was key adding to the overall experience. Neither person could succeed without the other, offering a decent sense of camaraderie once complete. It’s also worth noting that not all the puzzles were used, certain sections of the ship which looked interactive weren’t, possibly only becoming available when four players are present. VRFocus did learn however that there weren’t massive variations in the experience, so if two players came back again the puzzles would be the same.
Corsair’s Curse is ideal for those stepping into a VR arcade for the first time, rather than some intense first-person shooter (FPS). There’s time to learn the basics and the joy of VR gaming, picking stuff up, the visual impact of scale and much more. The replay factor might be somewhat muted after a couple of sessions but with a few friends, it’s still worth playing.
The Doctor from long-running television show Doctor Who regenerates from time to time.
The heart-wrenching process washes away into memory a charming and beautiful personality. In its place someone new stands bright and full of possibility, challenging you to embrace the unknown and all its charms while remembering the old with an aching fondness.
Doctor Who: The Runaway combines world-class motion capture, animation, and voice acting to successfully regenerate Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor from live-action TV to animated VR character.
This adventure packs everything you would expect from an episodic adventure with The Doctor into its 12-minute trip. There’s the Sonic Screwdriver, the TARDIS is in danger, and there’s a cute, if temperamental, alien creature threatening the entire galaxy.
Maria McClurg provides the body motion capture performance for The Doctor and references for facial animation that are so key to this incarnation. Voiced by Whittaker, the virtual version of this beloved character springs to life in front of your eyes. There isn’t a lot of interactivity in the version I experienced on Oculus Rift S, but when The Doctor needs help it is easy to give, and that’s all that matters when you’re looking back at the Police Call Box sign far behind you.
Innerspace VR developed Doctor Who: The Runaway for Passion Pictures and the BBC VR Hub in collaboration with animation from Kombo, motion capture from Mocaplab and Guillaume Moutardier for sound design. The app is available as a free download on the Oculus Home store for Rift, not to be confused with the upcoming Doctor Who: The Edge of Time VR experience.
Final Say: Essential
The Doctor you’ll meet in The Runaway is lively and captivating, exactly as you would expect, so the moment this animated story concludes, any fan of the TV show will be left aching for more adventures in VR with The Doctor that are put together with this level of polish.
In January Innerspace VR in partnership with Vertigo Games launched its surreal virtual reality (VR) title A Fisherman’s Tale. Now they’ve announced their latest project, Corsair’s Curse. But rather than a videogame for home users, this is designed for the growing location-based entertainment (LBE) industry.
Corsair’s Curse is loosely based on A Fisherman’s Tale, offering a free-roam multiplayer adventure for the whole family. Supporting between two to four players, they’ll find themselves inside an enchanted galleon, with complete freedom to walk around the virtual location. In the same way, A Fisherman’s Tale play with size, Corsair’s Curse will make players either really big or really small.
Players will need to collaborate across dimensions, utilising their size to maximum advantage to solve the puzzles and escape the vessel with the Corsair’s prized treasure in hand.
“As the virtual gatekeepers of VR, arcades play an invaluable role in converting VR enthusiasts to VR customers,” said Richard Stitselaar, Managing Director at Vertigo Arcades in a statement. “Adding the spectacular Corsair’s Curse to our portfolio brings us another step closer to realizing our vision for making high-end free-roam multiplayer LB VR experiences available to arcades worldwide, arming them with the best that VR currently has to offer to attract customers, whether they are new to VR or own VR headsets at home.”
Corsair’s Curse isn’t just a VR experience. Depending on the location, the title includes optional support for 4D effects such as vibrating floors and wind effects to further improve the immersion.
Vertigo Arcades will be using its LB VR distribution platform for the title, with arcades able to access the experience this Spring, featuring support with a fully localized English and French Game Master console. Corsair’s Curse will be at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) 2019, being showcased for the first time.
When VRFocusreviewed A Fisherman’s Talewe gave it three stars, finding that: “A Fisherman’s Tale is in many respects the VR title VRFocus hoped it would be, inventive use of the technology that oozes heart and soul, making you care about the character and his astonishing little world. The main downside, it leaves you wanting more when there’s no more to be had.
As VRFocuslearns more about Corsair’s Curse in the run-up to release we’ll let you know.
A Fisherman’s Tale puts you in the boots of a curios puppet-man named Bob who lives in a strange, recursive world centered around a dollhouse-sized lighthouse. Looking above, you see infinitely Big Bob. Looking below, infinitely Small Bob. It sounds like a trip, and it is: a quick trip into a super French storybook that’s begging to be fleshed out into something more substantial.
Publisher: Vertigo Games
Developer: Innerspace VR, ARTE France Available On: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows VR, PlayStation VR Reviewed On: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive Release Date: January 22nd, 2019
Gameplay
A Fisherman’s Tale is a single-player adventure game built around a series of escape rooms that feature light puzzle solving and much more prominent story-telling elements.
It’s main claim to fame is the innovative dollhouse mechanic, which lets you not only see a smaller in-sync version of yourself in a perfect miniature representation of your lighthouse, but also a giant doppelganger towering above. The idea is to interact with the smaller/larger recursive copy of yourself by handing up or down items with an eye for tactically resizing them to fit the situation.
To be honest, it felt like the game only scratched the surface of what’s actually possible here. I could have easily strapped in for a more serious interaction with what you might call the ‘single player co-op’ mechanic, which lets you do things like pick up a giant anchor blocking a door, but what in the context of the game is also a pint-sized dollhouse item that you can easily lift away and use for something else.
Image courtesy Innerspace VR, ARTE
The story line skews pretty young, and feels more like someone reading a storybook aloud to you. While it might be perfect for kids ages seven and up, it personally seemed a little too simplistic to be truly enjoyable. The game’s well-realized environment and mind-bending infinity were the true stars of the show here, but I would have welcomed something a little more substantial, and a little less “we must give Mr. Fishy something to drink!”
At one point, the story does turn a tiny, oh so tiny bit dark when we learn that the lighthouse keeper’s father was a negative bastard who hated his son for not being a fisherman, but a few stern words from Dad was it. There was real potential there to create some character defining moments, flashbacks, anything to get us caring about the relationship, but like the game itself, the moment slipped away upon reaching the next room.
Image courtesy Innerspace VR, ARTE
Most of the puzzles were interesting in construction, although were fairly simple even without the narrator’s hints, which can be toggled on and off mid-game. There was one puzzle where the recursive puppet world doesn’t work in the same way as previously introduced, forcing you to stretch both your arms and your imagination a little bit to solve.
I desperately wanted more of these intriguing moments but sadly was only given one. As it is, there are only six or seven fundamental puzzles to solve, a true shame considering the high production value of nearly every aspect of the game up to that point. That said, there’s no filler here, no convoluted tasks for the sake of it, which is nice. But that doesn’t play a large enough counter balance to the overall lack of puzzles, and difficulty range that spanned ‘very easy’ to ‘slightly less easy’.
My personal gameplay time was about one hour, and that was playing without hints at a leisurely pace. Even if I had played all the way through with hints, I’m not certain the time would have changed by much, as I knew basically what to do immediately anyway.
With the narrator voiced by the never-not-smoking French comedian Augustin Jacob, the game feels more akin to the sort of kitschy and experimental short film that comes on before a Pixar movie—charming for just long enough, but really only an appetizer to what should be a larger meal.
You’ll hear plenty of “zut alors!” and “sacré bleu!” to underline the fact that A Fisherman’s Tale is a French production made by people who care that you know this; it was after all co-produced by Franco-German cultural TV network ARTE France and Paris-based studio Innerspace VR.
Image courtesy Innerspace VR, ARTE
Anyway, the game’s voice acting is nothing short of awesome. The narrator’s raspy, smoky voice adds a degree of seasoned authenticity to an admittedly banal, but inoffensive storyline. Jacob’s performance elevates at every turn, pushing it in a higher direction artistically despite the low complexity both story and puzzle-wise.
Visually, A Fisherman’s Tale plays host to a number of well realized set pieces that change shape and function throughout the story, sometimes offering a different way to interact with the world thanks to the re-sizing mechanic. The visual style feels extremely cohesive, with everything in A Fisherman’s Tale tending towards the devastatingly cozy end of the spectrum. It’s easy to fall in love with the look and feel of the environment, but again, I only wish I could have had more play time to soak in what’s clearly the result of a collectively competent hand in VR game design.
A Fisherman’s Tale features basically the full gamut of comfort styles, including standing or sitting modes, and room-scale or standing snap-turn for users with front-facing sensors.
Locomotion is based on teleportation, although the game plays out in such a small physical playspace that much of it can be traversed in room-scale.
However you slice it, A Fisherman’s Tale is extremely comfortable experience, making it ideal for VR newcomers or users that are sensitive to artificial locomotion.
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