Landfall is a top down action shooter with both a single-player campaign and multiplayer modes included. The player is cast in the role of a military commander, with 12 different loadouts available to unlock each featuring specialised weapons and mechs. The mechs are the major armament in Landfall, providing a varied range of high-tech offensive and defensive capabilities.
VRFocus has previously delivered a hands-on report for Landfall, stating: “While all the modes offered a reasonable amount of variety, two-on-two multiplayer was certainly the best showcase for Landfall. When there’s four mechs on the ground, objectives to be completed and ordinance flying everywhere, it can be an intensely engaging experience.”
The free weekend for Landfall is active now, and will run until 6pm BST, 30th July 2017. The free version of the videogame includes the single-player and co-op campaigns as well as online multiplayer mode. Furthermore, developers Force Field VR will be livestreaming multiplayer matches today, from 7pm – 10pm BST. Those who jump into the multiplayer modes should look for P1ForceField, P2ForceField, P3ForceField, P4ForceField and P5ForceField.
Free game alert! If you passed up on Oculus Studios and Force Field’s Landfall earlier this year then now’s the time to check it out; it’s going to be completely free to play this weekend.
From 10am PT on July 28th through to 10am July 30th you can download and play the entire game without paying anything. You’ll also be able to challenge the developers during a livestream event on Friday 7pm – 10pm CET / 2pm – 5pm ET / 11am – 2pm PT.
Not only that but Force Field is adding three new Striders — the name for the game’s mech units — across the course of the weekend. Landfall was the last game released by Oculus to use a gamepad on Rift. It combines top-down, twin-stick shooting with tactical warfare.
We were quite fond of Landfall when it launched. Our Games Editor David Jagneaux gave it 8/10. “With Landfall, Force Field has delivered one of the best examples of gamepad-focused VR we’ve seen in some time,” he said. “The action is intense, the gameplay is crisp and precise, and the tactical strategy required to emerge victorious feels both creative and fresh. Updates will be needed to keep people coming back for more, but this is an excellent twin-stick shooter that delivers on all fronts.”
Force Field VR, the studio behind twin-stick virtual reality (VR) shooter Landfall on Oculus Rift and Term1nal, a puzzle title for Samsung Gear VR, has today announced the completion of a Series A funding round, securing the company an extra €1 million EUR of investment.
In a statement Force Field’s co-founder Arthur Houtman said: “Over the past year Force Field managed to acquire a leading position in the rapidly growing VR and AR industry, delivering a number of ‘best in class’ games and entertainment experiences. For the next years [sic] our aim is to further extend our lead into two strategic directions: the development of high-end location based VR and the creation of a series of unique new IPs for the home VR market. We will use this investment for those purposes.”
The studio launched both aforementioned videogames over the last few months, and has now confirmed that six more titles are in the final stages of development. What these are and which platforms Force Field VR plans to support are still being kept quiet.
VRFocusreviewed Gear VR’s Term1nal back in May, giving it four stars and saying: “Featuring 12 missions, Term1nal is an enjoyable experience from start to finish. In fact you probably won’t notice the time fly by and complete it in one run though, over the course of around 3 hours or so. Term1nal showcases Force Field VR’s knack of creating a solid VR experience that’s a delight to play, making it a worthy addition to anyone’s Gear VR library.”
As Force Field VR reveals more details about its upcoming project, VRFocus will keep you updated.
Twin-stick virtual reality (VR) shooter Landfall was released only a few weeks ago on February 21st for Oculus Rift, and now developer Force Field VR is launching its first ever double-experience weekend.
Players of Landfall can use gained experience as a type of currency to unlock the various gun load-outs featuring specialised weapons as well as new mechs, which form the main heavy armament in the game. New weapon load-outs means more devastating and spectacular attacks, so the offer of double experience should be tempting to many players.
Landfall’s setting is one of a world devastated by a flood which has drowned much of the usable landmass, leaving the remaining population locked in a power struggle over the remaining habitable areas. The game consists of a single-player mode – which can also be played in co-op – as well as a multiplayer mode that allows for 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2 combat.
Force Field VR is launching the double experience weekend starting on Friday March 10th from 1am (PT) until Monday March 13th at 2pm (PT).
There will also be the opportunity for players to take on the development team themselves in special matches from 1pm until 3pm (PT) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
For further announcements on Landfall, VRFocus will be here to keep you updated.
Twin-stick virtual reality (VR) shooter Landfall was released only a few weeks ago on February 21st for Oculus Rift, and now developer Force Field VR is launching its first ever double-experience weekend.
Players of Landfall can use gained experience as a type of currency to unlock the various gun load-outs featuring specialised weapons as well as new mechs, which form the main heavy armament in the game. New weapon load-outs means more devastating and spectacular attacks, so the offer of double experience should be tempting to many players.
Landfall’s setting is one of a world devastated by a flood which has drowned much of the usable landmass, leaving the remaining population locked in a power struggle over the remaining habitable areas. The game consists of a single-player mode – which can also be played in co-op – as well as a multiplayer mode that allows for 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2 combat.
Force Field VR is launching the double experience weekend starting on Friday March 10th from 1am (PT) until Monday March 13th at 2pm (PT).
There will also be the opportunity for players to take on the development team themselves in special matches from 1pm until 3pm (PT) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
For further announcements on Landfall, VRFocus will be here to keep you updated.
While it might be slim pickings for Gear VR this week (as in, nothing very interesting), the Oculus Rift fights back with a vengeance. There are three new Rift games on Home this week and each is worth checking out in their own right, as well as the usual crop of new Steam titles.
One of the most popular, iconic, and transformative VR apps out there finally makes its official debut on the Oculus Rift. Tilt Brush is a 3D painting app that lets you create wondrous works of art that surround you.
Recommendation: It’s a must-buy for anyone with a creative bone in their body.
American Experience by Boulevard, from WoofbertVR
Price: Free (Gear)
VR is poised to make cultural and artistic education, such as visiting museums, more accessible than ever. With this app, you can visit some of the most iconic buildings in America.
Recommendation: You already know if this sounds interesting or not.
Landfall, from Force Field
Price: $29.99 (Rift)
Take the mechanics of a twin-stick shooter like Halo Spartan Assault (which these developers worked on), marry that with the top-down camera angle of AirMech Command, and throw in a little bit of cooperative and competitive tactical flavor, and that’s what you get with Landfall. It’s a ton of fun to play online.
Recommendation: Buy it for the multiplayer. The campaign offers 4+ solid hours of good times, but the online is what keeps you coming back.Our review.
Ultrawings, from Bit Planet Games
Price: $24.99 (Rift)
Remember Pilotwings on the SNES and N64? Ultrawings is that, but in VR, and with motion controller support. You’ll fly a variety of aircraft as you complete missions, fly through rings, and explore whimsical islands. The flight mechanics require you to actually reach out and touch buttons and knobs if you’re using the Touch controllers.
Recommendation: Lots of fun to be had for flight fans, just don’t go in expecting anything too realistic or deep.Our review.
Nature Treks VR, from John Carline
Price: $8.49 (Rift, Currently Discounted)
Nature Treks is an experience that is making a transition into VR as it was originally intended. Choose from a collection of 8 peaceful environments with over 250 points of interest as you escape the real world. The game is designed to elicit specific emotional responses and states in each area through immersive audio and visuals.
Recommendation: It’s a peaceful and visually impressive escape but not much else.
Seabed Prelude, from MythicOwl
Price: $6.39 (Rift, Currently Discounted)
Seabed Prelude introduces players to a post-apocalyptic underwater steampunk world where you discover the mystery behind the dwelling through a collection of mini-games and puzzles.
Recommendation: Very interesting idea with some low-production value Bioshock vibes.
Inception VR, from Inception
Price: Free To Play (Rift)
Inception VR is an application that takes you to a ton of exotic and exciting locales via 360-degree media. This is ultimately a collection of content from some of the best VR creatives.
Recommendation: A free collection of artistic 360-degree content. Grab it.
Stolen Steel VR, from Impromptu Games
Price: $7.99 (Currently Discounted)
Stolen Steel is a room scale combat game that recreates vicious one-on-one fencing. Steal yourself a blade and take on increasingly stronger AI opponents as your increase your bounty.
Recommendation: Great feeling combat that will hopefully evolve into a grander experience. Grab it.
MixCast VR Studio, from Blueprint Reality Inc.
Price: $9.99 (Rift)
MixCast VR Studio is an attempt to bring simple functionality while streaming or broadcasting your VR gameplay in mixed reality. Can be used with any application or game that has integrated with the MixCast VR SDK.
Recommendation: Developers will eventually be able to get this for free on the Unity store. Otherwise, only purchase if you really know what you’re getting.
Journey: Benjamin’s Adventures, from
Price: $3.99 (Rift)
Journey: Benjamin’s Adventures is a 3rd person jaunt where you’ll tackle a challenging combination of rhythm gameplay and puzzles. You control the character by hitting one of three drums through the game’s two chapters.
Recommendation: Casual gameplay with a cool input style. Catch this one on a sale.
CYBER JOLT, from
Price: $0.89 (Currently Discounted)
CYBER JOLT is an 80s inspired endless flight title where you avoid the retro cyber structures and hit markers to raise your score.
Recommendation: Cheap shot at a high score your friends can’t top. Grab it.
Housekeeping VR, from Peach Pie Productions
Price: $10.49 (Currently Discounted)
There are a handful of VR escapist experiences where you can inhabit a virtual home, but what about the cleanup? Housekeeping VR is a physics-based action title where you demolish luxurious apartments with 70s futurist style.
Recommendation: Reckless arcade fun with the heart of classic casual games. Get it if you want some stress relief.
Neon Arena, from Axyos Games
Price: $5.99 (Currently Discounted)
Neon Arena is a top-down, twin-stick shooter with a futuristic aesthetic. Taking place in 2243, World War 3 has dividing the world into factions and every conflict is resolved within the arena.
Recommendation: Casual fun with VR as a loosely supplemental feature. Not a bad grab at the price.
Several weeks ago Force Field VR held two back to back beta weekends for its twin stick shooter Landfall on Oculus Rift. This was to gauge not only interest in the title but also to iron out any issues and add fixes prior to release which happens to be today.
Landfall is a top down action shooter with both single-player and multiplayer modes available. Taking control of the commander, players are able to unlock 12 different loadouts each with their specialised weapons and mechs. The mechs are the major armament in Landfall providing a range of offensive and defensive capabilities when called upon.
Set on a world engulfed by civil war after a flood significantly reduced the landmass available for habitation, Landfall single-player campaign can also be played in co-op, while the main mulitplayer mode allows for 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2 combat. As players progress they’ll gain experience which can then be used to unlock the various loadouts for more devastating attacks. At certain points players can also activate a first-person mode to get right into the action and mow down enemies.
Landfall supports the Xbox controller and retails for £22.99 GBP. For the latest updates from Force Field VR on Landfall, keep reading VRFocus.
When I was a young child my friends and I used to orchestrate elaborate games of Lego-crafted warfare. We hadn’t heard of Warhammer 40,000 or we likely would have been addicted, so what we did instead is create elaborate bases from Lego bricks at opposite ends of my room. We would then craft vehicles and transport ships to move our troops (Lego figures) across the battlefield (my carpet). We’d roll dice to see how far we could move units and launch projectiles to see which bricks were blown off (flicked with our fingers to simulate damage). It was a scattered, imprecise, and incredibly chaotic house rule-driven game of war, Legos, and destruction.
I’ve got fond memories of those made-up games of Lego War (that’s what we called it) and Landfall on the Oculus Rift, the first virtual reality (VR) game from newly formed game studio Force Field reminds me of it quite acutely. During my recent preview of the game, I likened it to Halo Wars meets a twin-stick shooter and after spending several more hours between the single player campaign and multiplayer game modes, I can safely admit that comparison rings truer now more than ever.
In Landfall you’ll take control a super-powered soldier at the helm of a group of specially trained operatives fighting for either the red or blue team. The campaign is split up into several missions that serve as an excellent way to not only learn the fundamentals of the game, but also how to play each of the complex class loadouts. The story is trivial at best, but does feature some solid voice acting if you’re paying attention. Like most wars, the battles in Landfall are fought over the ownership of land and valuable resources. Those motivations just don’t really bleed into the shooting and killing enough to pay attention to it after the opening cinematic.
During actual battles, your soldier has a special assortment of equipment depending on which loadout you chose. They’re all controlled the exact same way, but differ in terms of which weapons they actually carry. For example, regardless of which loadout you choose, the same buttons are used for shooting your primary weapon, throwing your specific type of grenade, and calling down your massive mech suit/robot hybrid strider. They look and feel like titans from the Titanfall series, but move at a much slower pace.
Since the entire game takes place from a top-down perspective, it’s unlike any other shooter you’ve played in VR so far. It at first feels a bit like a strategy game, such as AirMech Command, but that comparison only works in terms of the visual style and perspective. In Landfall you don’t build bases or issue commands, but instead control just your single hero unit.
Every mission is a collection of smaller objective-based games that take place at different locations throughout an overall environment theme. The types of games range from simple deathmatch style battles and objective captures, to more elaborate point capture-and-hold missions, or even escort assignments. That fluctuation and variety is what kept me coming back for more while playing and will likely keep people engaged long after release. No two matches ever felt the same as I was changing loadouts, switching sides, and swapping partners frequently.
While it doesn’t add much to the experience, the Oculus Touch controllers are technically supported. There is no motion functionality, as the buttons are simply remapped to the individual Touch controllers as if they were a standard gamepad. This didn’t feel appropriate to me and I found myself using an Xbox One controller in all instances after testing Touch once in this game.
But don’t let the game’s lack of first-person antics and motion controller support fool you: Landfall is better because of VR. Your HMD lets you get closer to the action and see it from new perspectives you couldn’t otherwise. You can see where your opponent’s avatar is looking and you can inspect other areas of the map while your unit is still being controlled out of sight with the gamepad. Rather than looking at a screen, you feel like you’re floating in the sky; you become an all-powerful God of War.
While the core of single player and multiplayer is the same, the real meat of the game exists online. As a result, playing with other people comes in three basic flavors: cooperative, 1v1, and 2v2. The entire campaign is playable from start to finish in co-op, which is a great way to learn the game together with a friend. But once you’re off the ropes and know the basics, the real fun is found online.
As you play either 1v1 or 2v2 matches, you’ll gain experience points (XP) based on performance and level up. With each level you increase, you also earn the ability to choose a new loadout to unlock. For the first dozen or so levels, this creates a steady stream of fresh content to explore, especially considering it takes several matches before you can really grasp the nuances of each unit and accompanying strider.
For example, playing with a loadout that has a default short-rang burst machine gun as opposed to a single-shot long-range sniper rifle is almost like two totally different games.
Some units are better at capturing points, while others are better at getting kills. Some units are better at taking down other striders, while some are better at defending a position. You can return to your base and change loadouts at any time, or swap when you respawn.
During my time with Landfall I was just aching to see more people in the game. Playing with colleagues, peers, and developers is great — but I want to see what the VR community does once they get their hands on striders of their own outside of the Beta weekend.
Landfall feels like the type of game that will live and die by the frequency and quality of its updates. 12 loadouts is an excellent start, but new gear, classes, and maps will be necessary on a consistent basis to keep people interested. Luckily, the complete single player campaign is more than sufficient to satisfy urges if servers get quiet.
Final Score:8/10 – Great
With Landfall, Force Field has delivered one of the best examples of gamepad-focused VR we’ve seen in some time. The action is intense, the gameplay is crisp and precise, and the tactical strategy required to emerge victorious feels both creative and fresh. Updates will be needed to keep people coming back for more, but this is an excellent twin-stick shooter that delivers on all fronts.
Landfall is available starting today for Oculus Rift on the Oculus Home Store for $29.99. Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.
If you happened to have missed it, last weekend Force Field VR held an open beta for its upcoming strategy title Landfall for Oculus Rift. It seems as if the studio learnt a lot from the release, so much so that its launching a second beta for this weekend.
Landfall has been made available to download again through Oculus Store for everyone to engage in further twin-stick shooter action. This time though the experience will have been slightly changed as Force Field has added several improvements.
Taking to Reddit the studio revealed its now added a second map Wide Horizon to the beta, putting players in a lush green valley to fight it out. Also addressed were issues relating to players having problems joining matches, saying: “Our big takeaway from the weekend was that matchmaking still caused problems for some players. For the past few days we’ve been working on improving the system and we think that we’ve been able to address the biggest issues.”
Other additions for this weekend’s beta are:
Added intro cinematic.
Decreased volume of environment and aircraft in the main menu.
Decreased loading times.
Tweaked Chillbone cluster rockets damage
Reduced Roaster special ability damage for both Strider and Pilot
Reduced Heavy Strider weapon damage
The beta is free to download and play, if you want to read more about Landfall prior to playing it checkout VRFocus‘ preview, describing it as “an intensely engaging experience.”
For any further updates on Landfall, keep reading VRFocus.
Miss out on last week’s open beta for Oculus Studios and Force Field VR’s Landfall? Worry not; there’s another chance to play it this weekend.
Force Field has put the game back up on the Oculus Store for download after taking in feedback from last week’s testing. Over on Reddit the developer noted that the biggest issues it found with the first beta were in the matchmaking, which “still caused problems for some players.” After a few days spent tweaking its online capabilities, the developer believes it’s addressed some of those more pressing issues, but it wants to make sure with this second beta.
There’s a bit more to this build, too. Most importantly, Force Field has added another map, Wide Horizon, which it describes as a “lush green valley”. There’s also a new intro cinematic to enjoy and some other tweaks including shorter load times, and gameplay balances. You can expect more maps and other features to make it into the final release.
If you didn’t catch the last beta then we absolutely recommend giving this one a try. We love Landfall’s brand of multiplayer third-person isometric shooter action, occasionally mixed with some first-person gunplay too. “Above all else though, perhaps what surprised me most about Landfall, is how believably it captures the sense of scale and brutality of war,” Games Editor David Jagneaux wrote in his hands-on. “The effects that surround you in each battlefield are second-to-none in this genre of game.”
The game is compatible with gamepads, not the Oculus Touch controllers.
As for the full release, Force Field is expecting to launch later this month, making it the first Oculus Studios title of the year. Rock Band VR follows next month and Oculus is planning plenty more for the year ahead.
We’ll make sure to give you our final impressions of the game as soon as possible.
Landfall is an Oculus Rift exclusive title, available via the Oculus Store for £22.99 GBP. VRFocus will keep you updated with further Landfall promotions and other forthcoming VR titles from Force Field VR.
