Category: job simulator

Posted on

Prepare For A [FRESH] Content Reveal From Owlchemy Labs At The Upload VR Showcase: Summer Edition Tomorrow!

We’re almost there! Tomorrow’s the big day! The Upload VR Showcase: Summer Edition kicks off June 16th, and we have one more [FRESH] content reveal to tease.

Yup, Owlchemy Labs will be joining us for a fun surprise. You’ll know these guys for their work on Job and Vacation Simulator, two of VR’s most enjoyable experiences. We can’t say too much more than that, but fans of both will definitely want to tune in!

Hold up, what’s the Upload VR Showcase? It’s our celebration of everything to come in the world of VR. Over the course of the show, we’ll feature over 20 VR games, including titles you’re already looking forward to, updates for games you’re already playing, and some brand new reveals.

Here’s a little look at some of the other stuff we’re preparing for this year.

Okay, get ready and rested because we’ll be kicking off the show tomorrow. At 8:30am PT we’ll have a pre-show with trailers both old and new, including some discussion from the Upload team in our virtual studio. Then, at 9am PT we’ll go live with the main event, following on with a post-show where we’ll talk over this year’s reveals with a little help from our sponsor, Moss developer, Polyarc!

The post Prepare For A [FRESH] Content Reveal From Owlchemy Labs At The Upload VR Showcase: Summer Edition Tomorrow! appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

‘Job Simulator’ Goes Platinum, Selling Over 1 Million Copies to Date

Owlchemy Labs has something to celebrate, as the Google-owned VR studio announced that its tongue-in-cheek parody simulator game Job Simulator (2016) has officially broken the one million unit sales mark.

Job Simulator was a launch title for HTC Vive, PSVR, and Oculus Touch in 2016, putting it in an extremely favorable position in the early days of consumer VR. It also garnered wide-spread viral attention then too thanks to its ease of use, not to mention its madcap, object-oriented gameplay.

As one of the most visible and notable games to define the early days of consumer VR, Job Simulator decidedly makes for a pretty good metric of the industry’s overall health. It’s been a constant face on PSVR’s monthly top 10 sales list, and maintains high user review scores on both Steam and the Oculus Store. Notably, Job Simulator was also launch title on on Oculus Quest, further shoeing in VR first-timers for the studio’s patented brand of casual hilarity.

SEE ALSO
'Job Simulator' Surpasses $3 Million in Sales, Becoming "most popular VR title to date"

The only other studio to publicly release a similar claim is Beat Games, the Czechia-based studio behind the breakout rhythm game Beat Saber (2019), which crossed the one million mark back in March 2019. That critically doesn’t include its sales numbers from Quest, as the standalone headset launched two months after those figures were released.

Acquired by Google in 2017, Owlchemy is also known for its franchise sequel Vacation Simulator (2019) and the Emmy-nominated title Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017).

The post ‘Job Simulator’ Goes Platinum, Selling Over 1 Million Copies to Date appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Job Simulator Has Now Sold Over 1 Million Units

Google-owned VR development studio Owlchemy Labs announced today that it had reached a massive sales milestone for its breakout hit, Job Simulator [original Vive review from 2016], which has now surpassed one million units sold.

Job Simulator originally launched for HTC Vive back in the first half of 2016, nearly four years ago, and is a great example of a game that’s easy to pick up and endlessly fun to play repeatedly. It has universal appeal with a sense of humor for all ages and requires very little in the way of tutorialization. In a lot of ways, it was VR’s truly first big hit back before headsets had even officially launched.

Since release it has also made its way to the Oculus Rift when Touch controllers released, the PSVR, and the Oculus Quest putting it on every major VR platform. Owlchemy Labs is also the developer of Rick and Morty: Virtual-Rickality and Vacation Simulator, two follow-ups that build upon the foundation laid in Job Simulator.

This is a massive sales milestone to reach. When compared to traditional non-VR video games, one million units is still seen as a huge success for non-AAA products, especially in the indie space. Few VR games have reached this point. Beat Saber revealed the number back in March of 2019 after its viral success and Sean Murray from Hello Games estimated that at least one million of his players had VR headsets already before No Man’s Sky got its VR update — counting the new copies that were sold it could likely be over that figure as well. Estimates also put around one million have played Resident Evil 7 in VR on PSVR, but it has sold far more copies overall as part of a massive Capcom AAA franchise that’s also playable outside of VR.

“We first developed Job Simulator as something that could only exist in VR. It was built for hardware that wasn’t yet available to consumers and was a very risky product.” says Owlchemy Labs CEOwl Devin Reimer in the company blog post. “Job Simulator going platinum shows that the consumer VR market is capable of generating huge hits. We’re delighted that Job Simulator has found a diverse audience that enjoys our game.“

Regardless of how you look at it, this is a big milestone. As VR continues to grow and reach mainstream adoption, expect to see more breakout success stories like this.

The post Job Simulator Has Now Sold Over 1 Million Units appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Best VR Of 2019 Nominee: Vacation Simulator Balanced Expanded Play With Wider Access

The road to UploadVR’s Best of 2019 awards starts here! We’re getting close to revealing our Overall VR Game/Experience of the Year after counting down to the reveal of our full list of categories and nominees soon. Today we’re looking at Vacation Simulator, the follow-up to Job Simulator that delivered an expanded playground balanced with wide access.

Plenty of VR games in 2019 tended toward playfulness, but you’re not going to find anything that invites as many players into such a comfortable and relaxing place as Owlchemy Labs’ Vacation Simulator.

The sequel from the Google-owned VR developer launched across PC VR, PS VR and Oculus Quest in 2019 — a feat in and of itself not achieved by many. But what makes Vacation Simulator so powerful is the way it offers so many different things for players to do — so many more than the original — while ensuring that players are almost never lost and practically never uncomfortable. Late in the year Owlchemy even added subtitle support for six languages and carefully integrated them into the game to even further expand the game’s appeal to more people.

As Jamie wrote when he reviewed it, “Vacation Simulator is limited to the things that work in VR and it’s not ready to cut corners. That’s why, for one of the first times since VR’s launch, I was able to sit back on a couch and laugh away at my partner playing for an hour without needing to explain how to carry out specific actions or convincing her to keep playing. VR should be this accessible and Owlchemy’s no-compromise approach is to be championed.”

That sentiment stands the test of the year, and should for some time longer.

You can get Vacation Simulator on Steam for PC VR headsets, on PSVR, or on Oculus Quest, and it is also available from the Oculus Store for Rift.

The post Best VR Of 2019 Nominee: Vacation Simulator Balanced Expanded Play With Wider Access appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Vacation Simulator Now Available On Oculus Quest

Time to take a holiday – after working hard in Job Simulator, you can now take some much-needed time off with Vacation Simulator on Oculus Quest.

Vacation Simulator is the latest VR title from Owlchemy Labs, which is essentially a sequel to the original Job Simulator game, expanding upon the mechanics and interactions in new vacation-themed locales. The game initially launched on PC VR and PSVR earlier this year, and is now available for the Oculus Quest.

A few days ago, Owlchemy Labs also put out a great Twitter thread showcasing some of the optimizations the development team made in order to get the game running on Quest. It’s a super interesting behind-the-scenes look, and also a great way to understand some of the differences you’ll be experiencing when playing the game on Quest compared to the PC VR version.  You can check out the full thread by clicking on the Tweet embedded below:

Job Simulator appears on our list of best Quest games, and there’s a fair chance that Vacation Simulator could make the cut when we next update the list. Jamie enjoyed Vacation Simulator on PC VR, writing in his review that “its philosophy of authenticity and intuition above all else is to be praised and preserved. There’s playful fun, immersive wonder and liberating agency all gathered under one roof, here.”

Vacation Simulator is available to purchase for the Quest on the Oculus Store now.

Will you be taking some time off work to dive into Vacation Simulator on Quest? Let us know in the comments.

The post Vacation Simulator Now Available On Oculus Quest appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Vacation Simulator Gets Subtitle Support For Six Different Languages

Today Owlchemy Labs released a major update for Vacation Simulator that adds in subtitles for multiple languages along with a slew of visual enhancements to aid accessibility for players.

Supported subtitle languages include English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish which is a great selection of option for players around the world. Coincidentally, the news comes just a day after Sanzaru Games and Oculus Studios announced similar support is coming to Asgard’s Wrath soon as well.

“Crafting subtitles in VR required a massive overhaul of industry best practices—but we truly believe in ‘VR for Everyone’ and are proud to bring VR to a whole new audience with this update,” says Peter Galbraith, Developer at Owlchemy Labs, in a prepared statement. “From the deaf and hard of hearing community to players around the world, everyone deserves a vacation.”

Just like everything Owlchemy Labs does, the subtitles feel like organic parts of the world in Vacation Simulator and are super playful. In a blog post about the update, the company details the process and methodology of adding support emphasizing the importance of making them feel like they “belong” in the world so as to avoid words simply floating for no reason in your field of view.

They’re shown at the depth of the speaker so they feel anchored and even go transparent when you need to interact with things behind them. When you’re streaming or recording footage, they’re shown at the bottom of the screen in Spectator Mode to make for a better viewer experience.

The subtitles update is out now on Steam and Oculus Home with the PSVR update coming soon. When the Quest version launches this feature will be included from day one later this year. There’s no word on if this feature will come to Job Simulator and Rick and Morty VR.

The post Vacation Simulator Gets Subtitle Support For Six Different Languages appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

OC6: Former Job Sim, MOR Devs Announce New VR/AR Studio absurd:joy

Back in June 2018 two core members of Job Simulator developer Owlchemy Labs departed the Google-owned studio. Today, they’re announcing their new AR/VR-focused venture: absurd:joy.

Former Owlchemy Studio Director Cy Wise and CEO Alex Schwartz revealed their new company during Oculus Connect 6 today. The pair are joined by Andy Moore, who worked on Fantastic Contraption and, more recently, VR art app Museum of Other Realities. In a debut blog post, the team announced it had raised $4.4 million in seed funding with backing from the likes of 1Up Ventures, WXR Fund and even former Beat Games CEO Jaroslav Beck (more on his investment aspirations here).

In the same post, Wise and Schwartz reasoned that there was “just too much left to do” to leave VR and AR behind. “We strongly believe that it’s only a matter of time for spatial computing to rock the planet and be the definitive way we interact with technology, from business to play, creative outlets to pragmatic tools, individual pursuits to social interactions,” they wrote.

Owlchemy made its name on intuitive VR interactions and commitment to immersion. Games like Job Simulator and, more recently, Vacation Simulator, put those tenants at the heart of their design. It sounds like absurd:joy will do much the same thing; Wise and Schwartz say their experiences will focus on making people feel embodied, allowing them to play in ways they want and go beyond the base definitions of a ‘game’.

Outside Of Owlchemy

At Owlchemy Labs, Schwartz and Wise worked on industry-leading VR interactions as seen in Job Simulator

So why start a new studio instead of just carrying on with Owlchemy? I asked Schwartz over email. “absurd:joy represents an exciting opportunity for a group of accomplished creators with prior success in VR to band together and combine our knowledge and expertise under one roof,” he replied. “A friend recently called Andy, Cy, and myself the “Avengers of VR” so I’ll jokingly parrot that. Why not?! And we’re just getting started. We’re talking to some additional folks and planning on collaborating with more incredibly talented experts in this space. Expect to hear more from us in the upcoming months.”

For now, absurd:joy isn’t announcing a new game or experience. The team is, however, working “directly” with Valve and Oculus on “a variety of experiments and experiences”. Schwartz said to look for more information on these later down the line. That said, the studio intends to share much of its findings online in the hopes of helping other developers.

“The plan is to post GIFs, experiments, stories, videos, examples, and other random peeks into our process,” the blog reads. “It’s wacky, we know. But secrets are dumb anyway.”

As for the developer’s significant investment, Schwartz told me this was the best way to give the team “runway” as it started to explore. “We believe that it’s certainly possible to bootstrap a business right now in XR if the company is scoped properly,” he said. “For us, in order to build a team of the best of the best and give ourselves the runway to be able to innovate and explore the space as deeply as we intend to, raising money was the optimal path for our particular goals.”

Given the developer’s pedigree, then, we’ll be keeping a close eye on absurd:joy moving forward.

The post OC6: Former Job Sim, MOR Devs Announce New VR/AR Studio absurd:joy appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

‘Vacation Simulator’ Launches Today on PSVR

Job Simulator (2016), the popular simulator parody game from Owlchemy Labs, served up a sequel on PC VR headsets back in April—its more laid-back cousin Vacation Simulator (2019). Starting today, users on PSVR can get into fun too, and just in time for the summer vacation season.

In case you haven’t heard, Vacation Simulator is a bit different from its whimsical, career-minded predecessor. Instead of running through a number of fun, but largely disconnected activities, Vacation Simulator injects the franchise with not only a story of its own, but a much larger connected world filled with a wide selection of objectives that you can choose to fulfill to move forward in the game.

While it definitely keeps the feel of the first in the franchise, Vacation Simulator offers such a larger number of activities that you can basically pursue at your leisure, from light puzzles to more physical activities, giving you the points you need to access all three vacation areas (Beach, Forest, Mountain).

If you’re looking for an in-depth look at Vacation Simulator, check out our (spoiler free) review and find out why we gave it an extremely solid [8.8/10].

Vacation Simulator goes live today on the PlayStation Store, priced at $30/€33/£27.

The post ‘Vacation Simulator’ Launches Today on PSVR appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

‘Vacation Simulator’ Among Steam’s 20 Top-selling Games Released in April

Vacation Simulator (2019), Owlchemy Labs‘ recently released sequel to their smash hit VR parody game Job Simulator (2016), seems to be garnering its fair share of kudos; Valve today announced that Vacation Simulator was one of the top 20 earners for all games released on Steam in April.

In a Steam blog post, Valve says that only games released between April 1st – 30th were taken into consideration. The company counted each game’s revenue for the first two weeks following their respective releases.

Valve hasn’t numbered the top 20 sequentially in order of revenue generated; it’s in order of release date. Here’s the full list of top games released this month:

Considering there’s been over 50 paid VR released in the month of April, and literal hundreds of paid games for traditional monitors releasing that month too, it seems that not only was Vacation Simulator the most successful VR game monetarily to be released in April, but a head-and-shoulders above many non-VR games as well. You’ll notice Vacation Simulator is the only VR game on the list.

SEE ALSO
Oculus Working on Update to Improve Rift S Audio

How the game stacks up moving forward is another issue. Supposing Valve continues the new list style in the coming months, we’ll only really gain insight into any given game’s initial success relative to others released in that time frame.

Vacation Simulator is however set to release on PSVR on June 18th, so we should have at least one reliable benchmark as to how the sequel is doing in comparison to the ever-successful Job Simulator moving forward.

If you haven’t had a chance, check out why we gave Vacation Simulator a solid [8.8/10] in our review and to learn why we dubbed it a “relaxing change of pace full of familiar whimsy.”

The post ‘Vacation Simulator’ Among Steam’s 20 Top-selling Games Released in April appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Oculus Quest: The Top 10 Games to buy on Launch Day

So you’ve spent your hard earned cash on a nice new Oculus Quest headset and now you need some awesome content to put the headset to good use. There’s certainly plenty to get your teeth stuck into, whether that’s action, horror, comedy, relaxation or to work up a sweat. The difficulty in choosing is what to purchase next, so VRFocus is here to guide you on the best videogames to add to your library.

Oculus Quest - Front

None of these recommendations will feature the free content available such as YouTube VR, VRChat, PokerStars VR or Rec Room as they’re free, so should be the first ones you download anyway.

What we’re interested in are the ones that cost you cash as they range from £7.99 GBP all the way up to £22.99. There are some instant standout titles ported over from Oculus Rift, plus some brand new originals which have arrived just for the headset launch.

So in no particular order, the 10 best videogames to buy are:

Beat Saber – £22.99

The highly popular rhythm-action title has taken the VR world by storm over the past year and shows no signs of letting up. With thumping music and addictive gameplay, Beat Saber will have friends saying ‘just one more go’ as they try again on Expert+ level. This is one videogame where you will work up a sweat and burn some calories, and enjoy doing it at the same time.

Beat Saber release image

Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series – £7.99

This isn’t a videogame, instead Vader Immortal: A Stars Wars VR Series shows you the future of VR entertainment. Mixing cinematic design with interactive gameplay, this first episode slots you into the Star Wars universe between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. While you don’t necessarily need to be an avid fan to enjoy the roughly 50-60 minute experience, it certainly doesn’t hurt – especially when the lightsaber comes into play.

Vader Immortal

SUPERHOT VR – £18.99

Another title that has an avid fan base much like Beat Saber, SUPERHOT VR is one of those delightfully simple yet gloriously engaging VR experiences where the screenshots struggle to capture the gameplay. Essentially a first-person shooter (FPS), the trick here is that time only moves when you do, allowing for all sorts of Matrix-style bullet dodging.

superhot vr - first screenshots 8

Apex Construct – £14.99

One of VRFocus’ favourite bow shooters when it first arrived on PlayStation VR, Apex Construct by Fast Travel Games doesn’t seem to have suffered from its port to Oculus Quest. Somehow the studio has managed to cram in all the action or the original whilst maintaining the all-important bow features. A great adventure for all players.

Apex Construct Oculus QUEST

Robo Recall: Unplugged – £22.99

Another reason why VR FPS videogames are the best, Epic Games’ Robo Recall stunned when it arrived for Oculus Rift. All out action that showcases VR at it’s best, whether that’s shooting robots or getting in close to get your hands dirty, the Oculus Quest version has lost none of the excitement, all it lacks is some of the visual fidelity of the PC original.

Robo Recall Oculus QuestJourney of the Gods – £22.99

Turtle Rock Studios has released two new videogames for the launch of Oculus Quest. While Face Your Fears 2 hasn’t made this list, stylish action-adventure Journey of the Gods has. Offering a large world to explore with fantastical creatures to fight, you chose to fight with a crossbow, sword and shield or mix between the two. Along the way, there are secrets to be discovered and upgrades to be had to the boss fights a little fairer.

Journey of the GodsMoss – £22.99

Easily demonstrating that all VR content doesn’t need to be first-person, Polyarc’s Moss is an adorable third-person puzzle title featuring a little mouse named Quill. She doesn’t say anything but knows you’re there guiding her, with you and Quill able to talk to each other through sign language. The studio has updated the videogame for the launch adding further content for players.

Moss TwilightCreed: Rise to Glory – £22.99

Float like and butterfly and sting like a bee in one of the more realistic experiences for the standalone headset. Creed: Rise to Glory by Survios puts you in the film, able to train with the likes of Rocky Balboa, before heading into the ring to see if you’ve got the skills to last. Another high energy videogame, this will definitely feel like a workout.

Creed: Rise to GloryShadow Point – £14.99

Coming from British VR studio Coatsink Software, Shadow Point is a nice relaxing puzzler that’s all about light and shadows. Great for first time VR players, don’t be deceived by the cartoon design work, the challenges start off easy but do become more complicated as the gameplay develops. Plus there’s the added bonus with Sir Patrick Stewart doing the story narration, which is nice.

Shadow Point

Job Simulator – £14.99

Finally, VRFocus finishes with an oldie but a goldie. Owlchemy Labs’ Job Simulator has supported almost every VR headset released and done well on all of them. The quintessential pick-up and play VR experience that’s all about using your hands, everyone who likes VR needs to have played this at least once. It’s bizarre, funny, and difficult to put down.

Job Simulator