Larcenauts, the upcoming VR hero shooter from developer Impulse Gear, was revealed just last week, and today we’re getting our first look at the title’s gameplay.
Impulse Gear is the studio behind the much lauded single-player VR shooter (with a multiplayer component) Farpoint (2017), and now the studio is moving into the pure multiplayer realm with VR hero shooter Larcenauts. Impulse Gear’s experience working in VR shines through clearly in the first gameplay revealed today by our friends over at UploadVR.
The game’s art and character direction definitely borrows heavily from Overwatch (perhaps with a pinch of Valorant), and reads very cleanly throughout the gameplay footage. Unlike Overwatch, however, it appears that characters will be able to select from various weapons and modifiers for their abilities, as we can see part way through the footage.
Image courtesy Impulse Gear
The game’s reveal trailer from last week gives an overview of the many characters and abilities:
From the gameplay footage we can see that player movement is reasonably paced for VR, with most characters being able to sprint if needed. Characters with movement abilities appear to be based around dashing, which seems like a good way to enhance mobility without the comfort issues that could come from traditional jumping or gadgets like jetpacks.
On the other hand, it appears that weapon reloading is done with canned animations. While this could make sense for the pace of the game, it can feel disjointed compared to a more interactive approach to reloading which is commonly seen in VR. Similarly, while some gadgets (like grenades and smoke bombs) appear to be physically thrown by the player, others (like traps) look to be placed with a sort of laser pointer cursor. We’ll be curious to see how well these choices fit into the overall gameplay.
We shouldn’t have to wait too long to find out; Larcenauts is due to launch this Summer on Oculus PC, Quest, and SteamVR.
Okay enough talk, it’s time to finally reveal the first Larcenauts gameplay, right here on Upload Access!
Nearly nine minutes of footage is below, showcasing the Relay map we revealed a little earlier this week. This is taken from the PC VR version of the game, but it’s coming to Quest too. Over the course of the montage we get to see teams battling it out for control of points on a map, and watch some of the specialist abilities in action. Each class in Larcenauts is unique and comes with three abilities, plus a secondary ability for their primary weapon.
All of this adds up to what looks like hectic 6v6 gameplay. There’s a lot going on at any one time in the footage – shields are thrown up, players zip across grappling lines, and grenades arrive from every angle. We get to see a lot of different classes in action, too. The clip also gives us a good sense of the game’s sense of humor and a look at the menu you’ll be working with between matches.
There’s plenty more to come from Larcenauts on Upload Access. Be back here next week, when we’ll interview Impulse Gear live in our virtual studio, give a stat rundown from what to expect in the game and reveal another map and class in our spotlight series. And, if you haven’t already seen it, make sure to check out our interview with the developer on the origins of the game and this week’s deep dive into the Grenadier class and Relay map!
What did you think of the Larcenauts gameplay reveal? Let us know in the comments below!
Today we’re introducing the Grenadier class, Lexi and the Relay map.
Lexi Salters – Grenadier Class
Overview
Salters originates from a deep space mining colony, where she developed a fondness for — you guessed it — demolition. As the team’s support grenadier, she specializes in explosives, laying down dangerous area attacks. But her trusty grenade launcher, Wor Lad, and a unique set of traversal abilities also enable her to get in close and carry out precision attacks before leaping back to safety.
Weapons & Abilities
Wor Lad – Given Salters is a grenadier class, it won’t surprise you to learn Wor Lad is a grenade launcher, first and foremost. But, as with every weapon in the game, it also has a secondary ‘Overcharge’ ability. This gives Salters much more precision, firing a laser cutter that lets her take steady aim at her foes.
Charge – Salters may be an explosive class, but her first ability allows her to get in close. Charge propels her forwards, damaging enemies on impact whilst keeping Salters herself protected. A quick and easy way to cut through crowds or get the right angle for a grenade.
Oscimer Gate – Poorly-timed Charge land you in a tricky spot? Never fear; Salter’s Oscimir Gate ability is essentially a teleport and lets her jump through a wormhole and back to safety at a moment’s notice.
Phonon Grenade – When a normal grenade doesn’t cut it, the Phonon Grenade steps in. This offers heavy damage, albeit limited to a smaller area of effect. Ideal for one-on-one standoffs or tight encounters where you need to be careful with firepower.
Relay
You probably recognize Relay from Larcenauts’ debut trailer last week. It’s a vibrant, grassy map with a mix of rocky canyons and more industrial environments. As the name suggests, the action unfolds across a relay station in a remote sector of space.
There are five main areas that really define Relay. Outside you’ll find the ruins, with vertical combat and grappling points to catapult players across. Closer to the station itself you’ll find the landing pad, which offers plenty of risks and rewards with its large open space.
There’s also the storage yard, where unsuspecting players might wander into a sniper scope. Moving inside, you’ll find close-quarters combat in the comms room and opportunities for quick cover in the hallways. Impulse Gear says the map is designed to be a balanced level that caters to multiple playstyles.
We’ll be back later this month to reveal another character and map with Access. We’ll also be debuting the first gameplay of a multiplayer match later this week and be talking to Impulse Gear about the studio’s origins later on in the month. Make sure not to miss our interview with the team about the game’s beginnings, too, and catch the full Access schedule below. Larcenauts releases this summer on Quest and PC VR headsets.
A bit of VR trivia for you: Farpoint didn’t have 90 degree turns. Like, at all.
Thinking back about it, I realize that’s obvious; you can play the entire campaign without ever once artificially turning the camera. In an effort to keep the game as comfortable and immersive as possible, developer Impulse Gear instead created a network of gently-winding corridors you could navigate with slight twists of your head. It was a curious and rightly cautious bit of design for a 2017 PSVR game.
Four years on, Larcenauts doesn’t exactly share the same concerns. In fact, you could say Impulse Gear has done a 180.
Aside from still being a shooter with a sci-fi setting, Larcenauts is a very different beast to Farpoint. This new hero shooter is multiplayer-focused and decidedly more playful in tone. It also reflects the team’s transition to the wider VR ecosystem, where SteamVR and inside-out tracking let players fight with a full 360 degrees of freedom. Its 6v6 matches (much bigger than Farpoint’s post-launch 1v1 multiplayer mode) are fast-paced, with sliding mechanics and grapple points to zip around maps, and the developer has ambitions to contend in the competitive scene.
How, then, did the team go from its cinematic single-player beginnings to this?
“You look at Farpoint and we learned so much,” says Greg Koreman, co-founder at Impulse Gear. “It was a really good experience, it was breaking new ground in virtual reality. And then what we did was we tried a lot of new things [..] but we knew we wanted to make something multiplayer, and that’s when we looked at getting this thing up and running that would be not just 1v1 multiplayer, we wanted something that was full teams battling.”
This ambition was, in part, spurred on by advancements in recent headsets. Farpoint did a great job of working with PSVR’s 180-degree tracking thanks to smart design choices like those subtle turns. But robust SteamVR and Oculus inside-out tracking systems aren’t as constrained.
“It gets rid of a lot of those issues that we had to deal with in past game design and allows us to focus more on the interactivity and the overall game mechanics,” explains co-founder Seth Luisi, “which is a lot of fun to do.”
Larcenauts, then, sees the developer let loose. “It’s a fast-paced game,” Koreman says. “When you die, you respawn and you have to find your team again. Some of these shooters are a lot slower paced – when you die you’re out. That’s not the case at all here with Larcenauts. When you die you’re coming back into the game, ready to go and you’ve got evolving fronts, you’ve got more frenetic gameplay.”
But let’s back up a second. Even with advances in VR tracking, Larcenauts goes quite a few steps further than Farpoint’s considered pacing. And those that know their PlayStation history will remember Luisi’s work on decidedly slower, more tactical shooters like the long-running SOCOM franchise with Zipper Interactive. Why didn’t Impulse Gear instead opt to take on the likes of Onward and Pavlov, which have seen a lot of success in emulating modern combat?
“I’ve worked on lot of those military shooters in the past with SOCOM and MAG, so I have a lot of experience working on them,” Luisi says, “and you get to a certain point where it just comes down to having different weapons.
“To be authentic to that type of gameplay you can’t really push [VR] that far. So even starting with Farpoint we were really looking at, well, what are some of these interesting weapons and different things we can do and different firings modes, and how can we really bring that to gameplay to look at offering something new. And I personally wanted to take that much further with Larcenauts where each character has their own individual abilities that are very different from what we get out of normal strategy or military sim games.”
Larcenauts, then, is all about tapping into those abilities. Not just on the character front, where each of the eight classes (or specialists) has unique perks, but also on a purely mechanical level. Maps are populated with grappling points that players can zip between for a sense of speed, and every weapon has an alternate firing mode, like a rocket that can be directed after it’s launched.
“It’s going to take a very long time to master Larcenauts,” Luisi says. “This is not a game where you play one or two rounds and you kind of understand the game. There’s a lot of depth there between all the different abilities, all the different characters.”
“And really, when you come down to it, when we’re designing a character we don’t look at what are the abilities at first,” Koreman adds. “We look at what gameplay role are we really trying to fill and then you start digging into “What would be really cool with this character that needs to advance really quickly and get into the fray and then get out?””
You will see traditional class structures, then. There’s a take on the medic, a sniper, a tank class and the like, but Larcenauts wants to harness VR to give each a unique twist. Koreman and Luisi are tight-lipped about specifics right now, but the trailer shows players generating shields they can lean out from and take potshots, and a monster with fists that stretch out and smack opponents from afar.
Again, it’s a big change in versatility from Farpoint, which was of course centered around the magnificent PSVR Aim Controller. It essentially had one weapon with different firing modes, but it gave aiming in VR tangible weight and authenticity. In comparison, miming holding two-handed rifles with Touch controllers has never felt quite as convincing. That’s why Impulse Gear wants to put its own spin on it. “When it comes to two-handed weapons, most games have this swivel thing,” Luisi explains. “We didn’t want to take it that far because I feel like it detracts from it. Unless you hold your hands perfectly straight, there’s no connection. That’s the beauty of the Aim controller, it’s a solid piece.”
Instead two-handed weapons will be more about affecting recoil and sway, and they also serve a function – in some cases gripping a weapon with your other hand will activate its special ability. Maps, too, are obviously very different from those methodical trails from Farpoint’s campaign. This time around you will need to use snap turn or, of course, physically turn yourself.
“The maps in Larcenauts are not designed around tight corridors,” Koreman says, “they’re these big enough spaces that you can get a big enough encounter to support the 6v6 gameplay […] so I think you look at the map design not at all like Farpoint, where Farpoint was very linear looking at these small turns. We’ve moved away from that, I think you need to move away from that when you’re coming into a big multiplayer game like this.”
Less of the linear corridors, then, but Luisi says they’re still designed to reduce the need for 180-degree spins and unnecessary twisting. Cover will play a part in combat but, with this being a faster-paced game, don’t expect to be rooted down to one spot and leaning out at all times like you would in, say, Firewall or Onward.
There’s one final key difference to talk about, though, and that’s narrative and tone. Larcenauts’ spritely, jokey opening trailer clearly echoes Overwatch, a game that has established its own personality and, along with it, ever-expanding lore for each of its characters. You can expect a similar approach here: “This is very much a team-based shooter,” Koreman sayd, “we’re not layering in an immediate story in that sense. But the world itself is full of narrative, and each one of these characters has a long, rich backstory, and we will be evolving that over time.”
Of course, Larcenauts as a whole is planned to evolve too. There are plans for post-launch support, of course, but Koreman is also very direct about eSports ambitions: “This is a competitive game, very much so.”
That’s been a defining through-line for the team, not just since it started working on Larcenauts, but since the creation of Impulse Gear itself. “I was thinking,” Koreman recalls of his first experiences with the medium, “this is how competitive shooters are going to be played. And I don’t just mean competitive shooters… in VR, I mean competitive shooters should be played like this.”
For everything that separates Larcenauts from Farpoint, though, the two share a key core mission; to push VR shooters forward. “Both Seth and I are huge core game fans,” Koreman says. “We look at this core shooter genre as something that I’ve played for my whole life, Seth’s made these games as he was saying. We really like that genre and this new VR medium. Those two things together make perfect sense.
“Early on there were challenges and, yeah, looking at how to overcome those challenges and how to bring that kind of game to VR is something we’re really passionate about, and we keep reinventing things on that front.”
Larcenauts is due for release on Oculus Quest and PC VR headsets this Summer. We’ll have plenty more coverage for the game as part of our Upload Access spotlight this month. Check out the full schedule of what’s to come below.
Wie Impulse Gear mitteilt, wird mit Larcenauts noch in diesem Sommer ein neuer Hero Shooter für die Oculus Quest und PC VR erscheinen. Impulse Gear hatte 2017 den PSVR-Shooter in enger Kooperation mit Sony veröffentlicht.
Hero Shooter “Larcenauts” für Quest und PC VR angekündigt
In Larcenauts sollt ihr zwischen 8 Spezialisten bzw. Helden wählen können, welche mit unterschiedlichen Skills und Waffen ausgestattet sein werden. Auf den Maps werden zwei Teams mit bis zu jeweils 6 Spielenden gegeneinander in diversen Modi antreten. Beispielsweise wird es den klassischen Deathmatch-Modus, aber auch Spielvarianten wie “Territories-Style Refuel” und “Dronehack”.
Larcenauts wird in diesem Sommer für Oculus Quest, Oculus Home PC und Steam VR erscheinen. Weitere Versionen sollen später folgen. Cross-Buy (Oculus Home PC, Oculus Quest) und Cross-Play (Quest, PC VR) sollen unterstützt werden.
Impulse Gear, the developer behind PlayStation VR shooter Farpoint has now revealed its latest project, heading down the multiplayer FPS route with Larcenauts. Having teased details back in March the studio has confirmed this will be a multiplatform title set to arrive in Summer 2021.
Taking a leaf out of videogames like Overwatch, Larcenauts is going to be a fast-paced shooter where players can choose from a range of character classes to form a strategic team before fighting across a range of arenas. Described as a “shooter where a heist crew of misfits competes for riches in the lawless fringes of the Ludus galaxy,” there will be eight Specialists to choose from, each with unique weapons and skills.
These include Evander, the sniping specialist; Calima, the infiltrator who’s fast on her feet; Chi, the group medic and Thal, a robotic guardian who specializes in defense and suppression. So far four maps have been revealed, Relay, Excavation; Blight, and Hazardpay, each set on a different planet with its own distinct look. Blight for example is a fungal planet teaming with giant mushrooms whilst Hazardpay takes place on an asteroid mine floating through space.
As players progress they’ll be able to grow their Specialist’s skills through Power Slates, customise their weapon loadout depending on the game mode, and change up their look with some stylish skins.
Teams will be able to compete across several gameplay modes from the classic team Deathmatch through to the capture-the-flag style Dronehack and Refuel, which is all about territories.
Larcenauts will support Oculus Quest and Rift as well as SteamVR headsets when it launches in a few month’s time. Cross-play will be fully supported whilst over on the Oculus Store cross-buy will be implemented. Check out the first trailer for Larcenauts below and for further updates, keep reading VRFocus.
Impulse Gear, the studio behind PSVR co-op shooter Farpoint (2017), announced a new multiplayer VR team shooter called Larcenauts. It’s slated to launch on Quest, Rift and SteamVR headsets this summer.
In the 6v6 team shooter, you can choose one of eight characters ranging what the studio calls in an Oculus blogpost “a wide set of skills and weapons.”
Impulse Gear says game modes include a territories-based capture mode, capture the flag, and classic team deathmatch. Each of the game’s characters feature what the studio calls a unique ‘Quick Skill’ and ‘Deployed Item’. The game is also said to include the ability to develop skills through something called a ‘Power Slate’, and also offer customizable weapons loadouts and skins.
Larcenauts seems to be aping many of the most popular team shooters in recent memory, with Overwatch and even battle royale shooter Apex Legends jumping to mind with its cast of characters and unique abilities—excluding of course the sentient mushroom creature Vod, which can punch things to death with your own two hands.
Larcenauts is coming to Oculus Quest, Rift, and SteamVR-compatible headsets this summer. The game will also support cross-buy between Quest and Rift, and will include cross-play as well.
At long last the developers of Farpoint have revealed their next game. Larcenauts is the new title from Impulse Gear, and it’s our Upload Access title for May!
Note: This article was originally published on May 5th.
Larcenauts is still a sci-fi shooter, but it otherwise couldn’t be more different to the developer’s 2017 story-driven single-player effort. This is a team-based multiplayer hero shooter with a vibrant art style and multiple character classes. Check it out in the in-game debut trailer below.
Larcenauts Announced
Larcenauts is playful in tone and has eight unique characters — named specialists — like the robotic commando unit, ARC L6, or the armored guardian, Thal. Each serves a different function in team-based battles, from your standard medic class to grenadiers and more. There’s also Vod, the heavy hitter, who batters enemies with his extending alien fists.
The trailer also shows a game mode in which players are fighting for ownership of an orb-like drone they carry around the map in a mode called Dronehack. The game supports 6v6 matches and also features Deathmatch and other modes.
For now, Larcenauts is confirmed for Quest and PC VR headsets. It’s coming this summer and supports cross-buy and cross-play.
Stay tuned, because this is just the beginning of a whole month of exclusive coverage for Larcenauts. Check back later this week when we’ll talk to Impulse Gear about the origins of the game before revealing the brand new multiplayer gameplay next week. We’ll also be talking to Impulse Gear live in our VR studio, showing off yet more gameplay and going in-depth on some of the character classes and arenas in which you’ll do battle. The full schedule is below!
Thanks to the success of Oculus Quest 2, the amount of stuff you can play on the Oculus Quest Store is rapidly expanding. Here we take a look at some of the upcoming titles we can’t wait to play when they land in the next few months.
Note: These are just a few native Quest titles we’re looking forward to. There’s also a mind-boggling amount of VR games to play outside of the Oculus Quest Store too. You can play via SteamVR or Oculus PC provided you can setup Link or Air Link and have a VR-ready PC. Also, don’t forget App Lab and SideQuest for unmoderated Quest content.
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge Part II
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge first came to Quest back in November 2020, bringing with it a wholly new Star Wars experience. Creators ILMxLAB announced that the narrative-driven adventure is getting its first sequel here this year; the series will conclude in its fourth installment. That sounds like a lot of pirate blasting and droid saving.
Developer: ILMxLAB
Launch Date: 2021 “later this year”
Resident Evil 4 (Quest 2)
Ok, we get it. Resident Evil 4 (2005) isn’t new, but its Quest 2 port will be. Capcom’s beloved horror-shooter is getting a first-person overhaul, which is said to include higher resolution textures, a made-for-VR UI, and positional audio for greater immersion. The only catch: it’s coming exclusively to Quest 2 and not the original Quest.
Developer: Armature Studio, Capcom
Launch Date: TBD
Ilysia
Successful Kickstarter Ilysia is coming to all major VR headsets, including PC VR, Oculus Quest, and PlayStation VR. This cross-play MMORPG is expected to release to backers sometime before the end of 2021, bringing with it plenty of beasts, world bosses, and both megalithic ‘Guardians’ and ‘Titans’ to contend with.
Developer: Team 21 Studio
Launch Date: before end of 2021
Larcenauts
Larcenauts is set to bring the hero shooter genre to Quest in a big way. This six vs six shooter ostensibly takes its cues from games like Valorant, Overwatch and Apex Legends. It’s not only natively coming Quest, but also Rift and SteamVR-compatible headsets, including cross-play.
Developer: Impulse Gear
Launch Date: Summer 2021
After the Fall
After the Fall, the long-delayed co-op shooter, is finally coming to Quest, and its launching alongside Oculus PC and PSVR. Vertigo Games first announced the post-apocalyptic zombie shooter back in June 2019, although the studio recently gave us an eye-full of some updated gameplay, so it’s definitely still coming.
Developer: Vertigo Games
LaunchDate: Summer 2021
Wanderer
Wanderer is a VR adventure game that takes inspiration from Quantum Leap (1989) and Dark (2017), letting you travel back through history to prevent the collapse of civilization. It’s coming to all major VR headsets sometime later this year, which includes Oculus Quest!
Developer: Oddboy, M Theory
LaunchDate: Q3 2021
Ancient Dungeon
Ancient Dungeon is a rogue-lite dungeon crawler that found success on Kickstarter last year. It’s aiming for launch sometime “soon,” developer Eric Thullen says, with plans to arrive in early access on both SteamVR headsets and Oculus Quest. You can test it now in beta via App Lab for Quest.
Developer: Joy Way
Launch Date: sometime “soon”
Captain ToonHead
Captain ToonHead vs The Punks from Outer Space is a whacky first-person tower defense that puts your granny’s chancla (Spanish for ‘slipper’, often used as an impromptu bludgeon) in one hand and a gun in the other as you build towers and shoot down a mess of cybernetic baddies.
Developer: Teravision Games
Launch Date: Summer 2021
Project 4 (Boneworks)
Image courtesy Facebook
Boneworks (2019) offers up some awesome physics-based shooting madness on PC VR headsets, and we were intrigued when the studio announced they’d be bringing the game’s mechanics and core systems to Quest and also put it “anywhere we can,” Stress Level Zero says. There’s still nothing out there on the so-called Project 4 game yet, but we’re hoping to learn more sometime soon.
Developer: Stress Level Zero
Launch Date: TBD
Assassin’s Creed & Splinter Cell
Image courtesy Ubisoft
After a rash of first-gen VR games and a pre-COVID foray into VR arcade experiences, Ubisoft is again renewing its commitment to at-home VR gaming with bona fide Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell VR games. The studio announced both titles in September 2020, but there’s still distressingly little information out there outside of the fact that they will be built from the ground-up exclusively for the Oculus platform, and will “include elements of the franchises that players know and love.”
Developer: Ubisoft
Launch Date: TBD
Against
Against is rhythm game that is all about fighting and wall-running to the beat through stylish neo-noir levels. We had a chance to preview Against a little while ago; it has a lot in common with Beat Saber, Pistol Whip, and FitXR, but it’s much darker in tone as you slash, shoot, punch, dodge and more.
Developer: Joy Way
Launch Date: Q3 2021
Update (May 13th): We’ve completely overhauled this list, and took out games that have since launched. You can catch many of those over at our Review section to find out where to spend your hard-earned cash.
What new games are you excited to play on Quest? Let us know in the comments below!
