Lone Echo is one of the best regarded Oculus exclusive titles, which has made its follow up, Lone Echo II, highly anticipated. Originally slated to launch in 2019 and pushed back by numerous delays, Lone Echo II is now set for a Summer release date on Oculus PC.
Today during the Oculus Gaming Showcase it was announced that Lone Echo II is finally nearing a release date.
It isn’t clear what caused such a significant delay, though between the game’s initial announcement back in 2018, developer Ready at Dawn was acquired by Facebook. That made it seem likely that the lengthy delay may have been to make time for the studio to port the game to Oculus Quest part way through development, but today’s announcement only confirms a release on Oculus PC for Rift (and Quest via Link).
Ready at Dawn has been awfully quiet about the game lately, but it has been confirmed that it is a direct continuation of the story of Jack and Liv following the original game. When we went hands-on with the game way back in 2019 it appeared to be an evolution of the same linear narrative gameplay with polished VR interactions which propelled the original game to be among the best rated on the platform; check out 15 minutes of Lone Echo II gameplay here.
Ready at Dawn has shared a few new GIFs (below), though they aren’t particularly revealing:
In any case, we’ll finally get to play Lone Echo II with a release date set for this Summer on Oculus PC; our fingers are crossed that the gameplay still holds strong in the face of the evolution of VR gameplay which has steadily progressed over the course of the game’s lengthy development.
Next week sees Facebook kick off the first ever Oculus Gaming Showcase.
On April 21st at 3pm PT the company will air a digital event filled with upcoming VR games featuring new trailers and full reveals. Naturally, the show’s being kept under wraps, but a handful of games and developers are confirmed to be taking part. Here’s what we know will be on show so far.
Confirmed Games
Lone Echo II
Facebook’s own blog post confirms that Lone Echo II will be part of the show. Honestly this wasn’t a safe bet given that the game has been missing in action for nearly two years, having last made an appearance at E3 2019. It’s currently schedule to release on the Oculus Rift.
Pistol Whip
Pistol Whip keeps on gunning nearly two years after launch. Cloudhead Games confirmed it will bring news on the game to the showcase in the blog post. Back in March, the studio said it would be releasing another campaign-driven DLC in the future.
Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge
The final confirmation direct from Facebook’s blog is Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge. Part 1 of this Quest-exclusive adventure released late last year, but details on the promised second instalment are thin on the ground.
The official Twitter account for The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners confirms that the game will be a part of the show. It’s been nearly a year now since developer Skydance released in Trials update for the zombie survival game, and it launched its final version on Quest and Quest 2 in October.
— Vertigo Games #TrafficJamsVR – April 8th! (@vertigogames) April 13, 2021
Arizona Sunshine developer Vertigo confirmed it’s taking part on Twitter. The studio didn’t explicitly say which title it would be talking about but, given the emoticon, there’s a good chance we’re talking about snowy post-apocalyptic shooter, After The Fall.
Fast Travel Games
The first ever @oculus Gaming Showcase takes place on April 21, 3pm PST, and we are part of it! Watch if you dare…
Fast Travel Games is about to launch Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife on April 22nd. Again, though the game itself isn’t mentioned, the tweet below features ghosts and, well, that’s kind of a giveaway.
That’s all we know about what’s confirmed for the Oculus Gaming Showcase. What else are you hoping to see? Let us know in the comments below!
Ready at Dawn, the developers behind Lone Echo, gave a short development update for their upcoming sequel, Lone Echo 2.
But don’t get too excited, as it looks like we’ll still be waiting for a while longer.
If you were hoping for a release date, you’re out of luck — the team has “no new information regarding a release date for Lone Echo II to announce right now.” However, the team is still “diligently working to bring you Jack and Liv’s next adventure together as soon as we are able.”
As with many studios, Ready at Dawn has had to adjust to working from home due to the ongoing global pandemic. Sadly, the team also confirmed that the accompanying challenges in this switch have resulted in a delay for Lone Echo 2, beyond the initial target release date. We had originally hoped the game would be out earlier this year. The team has, however, delivered Echo VR on Oculus Quest this year.
We know that Ready at Dawn was targeting a 2020 release, but the team has now “needed to stretch development beyond our desired timeframe” due to the shift to a work-from-home setup. Whether this means a 2021 release date is unclear. “As we push towards a launch date, we will continue to update the community with the latest information.”
Lone Echo 2 is set to release as a Rift platform exclusive, with no confirmation on the potential for a SteamVR or Quest release. Back in 2019, David tried the first-ever playable demo of Lone Echo 2 — you can read his impressions here.
Competitive multiplayer game Echo VR has left open beta and is now available for free on Oculus Quest.
In Echo VR, you play in a zero-gravity room with a single disc in the middle. There are two teams, and the aim is to push and boost yourself through the floaty environment to grab the disc and fling it into the goal. It’s a simple concept but one that could only work in VR. The game has been a multiplayer staple since it first launched for the Oculus Rift.
After a long wait, Echo VR released an open beta for Oculus Quest earlier this year. Now, after a few months of testing and minor adjustments, the game moves out of beta and into full release on the Oculus Quest store.
Despite leaving beta, if you’ve already tried the game you probably won’t notice any huge changes. In an interview with Facebook, Ready at Dawn Studios said that the beta helped them “scale to support the continued growth of the community” from the Quest launch, plus make a few tweaks to the social features as well.
“Before Quest, our players have been a dedicated core group that started on the Rift three years ago and have evolved with the game as we released updates,” said Ready at Dawn producer Johnny Wing. “The new players on Quest found it difficult to use our social controls, so in our final product, we made it easier for individuals to use our social controls like muting and ghosting. We also introduced new default social settings that help players determine how interactive they want to be with others in the lobby.”
Last month, we named Echo VR the best multiplayer experience available in Quest, so it’s exciting to see it finally move into full release.
Have you tried Echo VR on Quest yet? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Ready At Dawn Studios is the latest VR developer to be acquired by Oculus maker Facebook.
The social networking giant purchased the California-based studio for an undisclosed amount. Ready at Dawn will join Facebook’s roster of first-party game development studios working on VR titles under the Oculus Studios banner.
Ready at Dawn got its start making spin-off titles of popular PlayStation franchises for Sony’s PlayStation Portable system, including Daxter and God of War: Ghost of Sparta. In 2015, the company released a Sony-published PlayStation 4 exclusive named The Order: 1886. That same year, at Facebook’s first reveal event for the original Oculus Rift, the company confirmed it was making an exclusive game for the headset.
Lone Echo And Echo Arena
That game turned out to be two projects; 2017’s single-player adventure, Lone Echo, and a separate multiplayer game called Echo Arena. Each game utilizes a zero gravity locomotion mechanic in which players can float through the air, propelling themselves by pushing off the walls. In Lone Echo, players control a robot named Jack that assists Captain Olivia Rhodes on a dangerous mission in deep space, whereas Echo Arena offers futuristic esports. Both titles were critical successes; Lone Echo was, at least for a time, Facebook’s fastest Rift game to reach $1 million in revenue, and Echo Arena spawned an expansion in Echo Combat.
Currently, Ready at Dawn is working on a port of Echo Arena, now named Echo VR, for Oculus Quest. That’s now free to play in public beta testing, whereas Lone Echo 2 is set to release on Oculus Rift later this year. Facebook isn’t announcing any additional projects for the studio today.
Ready at Dawn is the third VR developer acquired by Facebook. In late 2019, the company bought Beat Saber developer Beat Games and then in February of this year announced the acquisition of the Asgard’s Wrath team, Sanzaru Games.
With an initial release date set for 2019, Oculus told us last year that the highly anticipated Lone Echo II had been delayed to Q1 2020. Earlier this year developer Ready at Dawn said the game’s development was “significantly impacted” by the Coronavirus pandemic, but still expected to ship in 2020. With three weeks remaining in the year and no release in sight, Q1 2021 looks like the earliest we’re likely to see the game.
The entire studio staff was said to be part of the deal, which could have made for a reasonably smooth transition. However, we’ve heard almost nothing about Lone Echo II from the studio since. The studio has been occupied to some extent with porting Echo VR (a multiplayer spin-off of Lone Echo) to Oculus Quest, though that work was ostensibly completed by August.
Since then we’ve seen the release of the Quest 2, and the announcement that Facebook plans to discontinue the Rift product line in early 2021. With Facebook’s sharpened focus on its standalone headsets—and new ownership of the studio behind the project—one plausible explanation for the extended delay is that Lone Echo II is now being developed for simultaneous release on Quest in addition to Rift. However this remains speculation for now.
Update (April 30th, 2020): While the once-delayed Q1 2020 release window for Lone Echo II had quietly come and gone, developer Ready at Dawn today acknowledged the additional delay, saying that development of the game has been hampered by the need to adopt to a studio-wide work from home policy.
In the last several weeks, we’ve all had to adapt to a new reality. Here at Ready At Dawn, we switched from the day-to-day collaboration of working in the studio, to everyone working from home. Since mid-March, we’ve had to find ways to reconnect and no method has been more impactful and effective for us than VR. As work progresses on our games, this new reality and dynamic has caused us to rethink some of our game development methodology. Development on Lone Echo II has been greatly impacted.
The studio still expects the game to launch in 2020, and is promising to share “more news on Lone Echo II very soon.”
The original article, which overviewed what was known about the game’s delays at the time, continues below.
Original Article (March 18th, 2020): Though GDC 2020 (which would have been held this week) was cancelled, Oculus has still been sharing a smattering of VR news this week. Last year the company told us the game had been delayed to Q1 2020, so we had expected to finally hear more about Lone Echo II this week, but Oculus tells Road to VR that it has no news to share.
With less than two weeks to the end of Q1, Lone Echo II looks certain to be further delayed beyond Q1, though Oculus hasn’t given us any further information on when to expect the game.
Developed by Ready at Dawn, Lone Echo II, is set to launch exclusively on Rift. The game was announced back in 2018 as the followup to one of the most lauded Oculus exclusive titles, Lone Echo (2017).
For one, the game was announced well before Facebook launched Oculus Quest in May 2019. In the months since then, Facebook seems to have shifted much of its VR focus away from its PC-based Rift and toward the standalone Quest. The company also announced that Ready at Dawn would be bringing Echo Arena—the multiplayer sibling of Lone Echo—to Quest, and this project may have been given higher priority than getting Lone Echo II out the door. Ready at Dawn indicated as much back at the initial delay telling us:
“Today we confirmed that Ready At Dawn is bringing Echo Arena to Quest. In consideration of that project, we decided to push Lone Echo II out to 2020 so that we can give all our attention to that title once [Echo Arena on Quest] is out. We’re taking the time we need to do these titles justice,” Ru Weerasuriya, Ready at Dawn’s CEO and Creative Director, told Road to VR.
We loved 2019 for its bounty of VR games and emphasis on new hardware, but 2020 is looking to bring a host of big budget titles and polished indies alike that should not only keep us all happily strapped into the headset, but attract a steady flow of new users to VR in the process too.
Here, we take a look at our top anticipated VR titles coming to the full gamut of platforms out there, which includes SteamVR headsets (Rift, Vive, Windows MR, Valve Index, etc), Oculus Quest, and PSVR.
Note: PlayStation 5 is set to arrive for holiday season 2020, which ought to arrive with a bevy of new games for the backwards compatible PSVR. Sony hasn’t announced the second iteration of PSVR yet, so we’re hoping to learn more about awesome PSVR platform games soon.
Studio description: Half-Life: Alyx is Valve’s VR return to the Half-Life series. It’s the story of an impossible fight against a vicious alien race known as the Combine, set between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Playing as Alyx Vance, you are humanity’s only chance for survival.
Studio description:Don the PlayStation VR headset to suit up as the Armored Avenger in an original Iron Man adventure! Using two PlayStation Move motion controllers fire up Iron Man’s Repulsor Jets and blast into the skies with an arsenal of iconic Iron Man weapons at your fingertips. Face off against Iron Man’s greatest foes in high stakes, action-packed battles. Upgrade tech in Tony Stark’s garage to customize Iron Man’s sleek suit and awesome abilities.
Studio description: Explore the remains of a civilization ground to a halt in an alternate 1980s, craft a range of ranged and melee weapons, and wield devastating powers with real-life movements. Go solo or join up with players worldwide as you face relentless hordes and colossal bosses in a bid to take back the city.
Studio description: Dispatched into hostile wetlands in your tactical kayak, utilise military weapons and equipment to evade and neutralise the enemy threat. Engage your targets lethally or infiltrate unnoticed from the shadows: it’s your mission to execute your way. Phantom: Covert Ops is stealth action redefined.
Studio description: Jack and Liv are back in Lone Echo II. Return to the rings of Saturn in this highly-anticipated sequel, to unravel the mysteries of Lone Echo and journey deeper into space – past the very boundaries of time itself.
Studio description: Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is an action-packed and incredibly immersive VR experience set in World War II, where you step into the boots of an agent of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in war torn Europe. A deep single-player campaign takes you through historic events on land, air, and sea, sabotaging Nazi bases, subverting enemy plans, aiding the French Resistance, and much, much more.
Studio description: You’re the sheriff of cityblock 303, a retro-futuristic cyberpunk slum where the only inhabitants of note are other “low-fi”. Humans too poor to jack into the platform, and rusting old robots that didn’t achieve the intelligence singularity. What you do with your time is up to you. Are you a good cop, hotshot?
Studio description: Vertigo 2 is a single-player VR adventure. Explore the depths of the vast Quantum Reactor as you descend to finish your journey home.
Studio description: A dedicated VR stealth-action experience from the makers of Battlezone and the BAFTA-nominated Sniper Elite 4, in partnership with Just Add Water. Fight for the Italian Resistance in a daring mission to rid World War 2 Sicily of the Nazi U-boat menace.
Description: Solaris: Offworld Combat is a multiplayer team shooter developed by First Contact Entertainment, the studio behind Firewall Zero Hour (2018). The studio is still extremely tight-lipped, having only revealed the trailer above.
Studio description: Firmament is a resplendent fantastic steampunk journey — a monumental voyage through diverse and curious realms with the ever-present assistance of a helpful clockwork adjunct, and the deep and moving instruction and emotional chronicles of an ethereal mentor.
Studio description: Saints & Sinners is a game unlike any other in The Walking Dead universe. Every challenge you face and decision you make is driven by YOU. Fight the undead, scavenge through the flooded ruins of New Orleans, and face gut-wrenching choices for you and the other survivors. Live The Walking Dead.
Studio description: Fight your fears head-on in The Walking Dead Onslaught, the official VR game of AMC’s The Walking Dead. Experience an all-new exclusive TWD story, defend yourself with real-motion melee and ranged combat, and confront both the horrors and humanity of the apocalypse.
Description: Population: One is an upcoming battle royale shooter from the studio behind VR indie hit Smashbox Arena (2016). Although it may be late to the table, as its been delayed from its original early 2019 launch window to a vague ‘2020’ release date, we’re still looking forward to what promises to be a capable, clever, and solid battle royale shooter in VR.
Studio description:Paper Beast is a playful exploration game set in a colorful ecosystem born out of big data. Undertake a virtual journey of discovery through an immersive and poetic gameplay experience.
Have me missed anything important to you? Let us known in the comment section below!
Lone Echo II isn’t due out until 2020, but developer Ready at Dawn recently offered up a glimpse of some of the gameplay to come.
Lone Echo II was first announced back in mid 2018, but the first playable demo was just revealed at E3 2019 last month. Here we have 15 minutes of footage from the demo which shows some of the new gameplay that players will encounter (including an irksome new enemy that hungers for your robotic energy).
In our hands-on with Lone Echo II at E3 2019 we found that the game will be roughly 50% larger than its predecessor, and picked up some other details from developer Ready at Dawn:
Beyond the [new enemies], the Lone Echo II demo at E3 2019 leans heavily on the well established interaction mechanics of the original. You’ll find the usual lever pulling, door opening, laser cutter panels, and battery charging stations that will be familiar (and still satisfying) to players of the first game.
However, Ready at Dawn teases that there’s lots more in the way of new gameplay systems yet to be revealed in Lone Echo II, much of which is said to come in the form of new tools that the player will attain throughout the game. There’s also new characters coming, which sound like they’ll be key to the narrative, though Ready at Dawn wasn’t ready to reveal more.
Speaking of characters, Liv is of course back, but this time Ready at Dawn says she’s been upgraded to be a more dynamic part of the game. While in the original Lone Echo her movements and actions were heavily scripted, in Lone Echo II she’s said to be able to move more freely around the environment, allowing her to more naturally accompany the player throughout.
What we still don’t know much about is what’s happened to the game’s main characters, Jack and Liv, between the end of the original Lone Echo and what we’ve seen of them so far in Lone Echo II. In the E3 2019 demo the pair seem to be exploring an abandoned facility, but exactly where they are and how they intend to get home is still up in the air.
Yesterday I got the chance to try the first ever playable demo of Lone Echo 2, the highly anticipated sequel to our 2017 Game of the Year winner, Lone Echo. In the series you play as Jack, a robotic ally to Liv, one of VR’s most emotive and well-developed NPC companions.
From what I saw during my demo, Lone Echo 2 is very much a bigger and better sequel. Rather than throwing out the entire design of the first game and starting from scratch, Ready at Dawn have taken a more iterative approach. Jack and Liv are still the center of the story, as is there constant struggle for survival in abandoned reaches of deep space, and you’ll still float around in zero gravity environments exploring, talking with Liv, and uncovering secrets. Taken at face value, it sounds awfully similar — but there’s more to it than that.
In the interview above you can see more details about the vision for this sequel, but specifically in my demo I spent about 20 minutes absolutely immersed and thrilled to be back in one of VR’s most beloved worlds.
Things started out simple enough: Liv tells me that we need to figure out how to get deeper into the ship we’re stranded on and figure out what’s going on more or less. After a bit of floating around and grappling on sections of the environment, we entered what looked like an atrium. Visually this area actually reminded me quite a bit of the main lobby area from recent sci-fi film Passengers or like some of the ships you see in BioWare’s Mass Effect games.
The first part of the demo was extremely familiar for anyone that’s played the original Lone Echo. Liv and I floated about rooms, she remarked on some objects in the world, I could ask her questions about things to get more insight, and eventually I triggered some dialog about another ship floating out in space. That’s when the Central Intelligence unit kicks on.
Having another character around really helps not only liven up moments of dialog, but it also brings out extra layers for both Liv and Jack as characters. Notably, Liv starts to sound more guarded and careful due to Central appearing as another artificial machine that’s far less warm and welcoming than Jack, whereas Jack seems less apprehensive towards Central and more open to hearing its ideas. Based on the dialog choices you have to make, you can lean into some of those new implications a bit.
Eventually I came across a room I needed to get into but the door is locked and the area is overran with biomass that’s pulsing and glowing, desperately trying to make contact with an energy source. At this point I’ve got to venture deeper into the ship to restore power to get into the room, but must be careful not to touch the biomass or else it could force Jack to reboot at a fabrication station, similar to the original game.
The first Lone Echo was notable for its slow pace and lack of physical enemies and combat and even though Lone Echo 2 mostly holds true to that same concept, it does have a bit more variety now. In particular, Ready at Dawn have done a good job of making enemies both parts of the puzzle solving and action scenes simultaneously.
Like most demos of this format, I just wanted to see more. I only got to just briefly interact with the biomass creatures before our demo time was over and I could honestly spend an entire day or more just hanging out with Liv, chatting. More than anything Lone Echo 2 is a world I want to spend more time in because despite the crippling loneliness of its setting, I can’t help but feel closer to Liv when she looks at me and smiles.
The fact that the Echo universe has expanded so dramatically to now include three total games (Lone Echo, Echo Arena, and Echo Combat) as well as the upcoming sequel is an excellent sign. Ready at Dawn have built a true universe with multi-franchise potential and Oculus appears to be all-in on supporting that vision.
Lone Echo 2 is slated for an early 2020 release on the Oculus Rift platform. Let us know what you think of what you’ve seen so far down in the comments below!
This week at E3 2019, Oculus is showing their first ever demo of Lone Echo II, the anticipated followup to 2017’s Lone Echo. While the first game was an achievement in VR locomotion, interaction, and storytelling, Lone Echo II aims to up the ante with more dynamic gameplay, which starts with a new enemy that’s a more dynamic threat than anything seen in the original game.
Released in 2017, Ready at Dawn’s Oculus exclusive Lone Echo set an impressive bar for VR locomotion, interaction, and storytelling, and remains one of VR’s most critically and popularly acclaimed games.
The game is unique from many VR titles in that it lacked weapons, combat, or even any sentient enemies. Instead, it focused more on light puzzles, storytelling, and simply surviving in hostile environments.
With Lone Echo II, developer Ready at Dawn plans to present the player with more dynamic threats and gameplay, while continuing propel the story of protagonists Jack & Liv.
Image courtesy Ready at Dawn
I got to check out the first ever demo of Lone Echo II at E3 2019 this week and got to see one of these new dynamic threats first hand. Players from the first game will recall the ‘biomass’ that was an environmental hazard that the player had to avoid. In Lone Echo II, parts of the biomass have ‘evolved’ into ‘ticks’, little floaty organic sacks covered in antenna and suckers-like orifices.
I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but these agile little critters are actually kinda cute in the way that they move and how they just want to hug you… the only problem is that you die if they do.
The ticks are attracted to any source of energy, and if you get too close they’ll make a beeline for you and attach themselves for a hug-of-death which drains all your power and forces you to shutdown and reboot into a new android body (which is effectively the game’s ‘death’ mechanic, as introduced in the original Lone Echo).
In order to avoid their deadly affection, you’ll need to figure out how to focus their attention on other sources of power in the environment (powered doors, batteries, terminals, etc), enable you to slip by safely. One way to do this is by using electromagnetic cargo cranes found on the ship you’re in, which you can intuitively manipulate using the handles at the top, allowing you to rotate it as needed, as well as rails at the top to slide it from point to point.
In that sense, the ticks are enemies, but they’re also part of Lone Echo II’s puzzle gameplay, which is made more interesting and dynamic by incorporating entities that have a mind of their own.
Beyond the ticks, the Lone Echo II demo at E3 2019 leans heavily on the well established interaction mechanics of the original. You’ll find the usual lever pulling, door opening, laser cutter panels, and battery charging stations that will be familiar (and still satisfying) to players of the first game.
However, Ready at Dawn teases that there’s lots more in the way of new gameplay systems yet to be revealed in Lone Echo II, much of which is said to come in the form of new tools that the player will attain throughout the game. There’s also new characters coming, which sound like they’ll be key to the narrative, though Ready at Dawn wasn’t ready to reveal more.
Speaking of characters, Liv is of course back, but this time Ready at Dawn says she’s been upgraded to be a more dynamic part of the game. While in the original Lone Echo her movements and actions were heavily scripted, in Lone Echo II she’s said to be able to move more freely around the environment, allowing her to more naturally accompany the player throughout.
While the E3 2019 demo set up the game’s narrative (which will continue to focus on the bond between Liv and Jack and their struggle for survival in unknown territory), and offered a glimpse of new gameplay, a Ready at Dawn developer tells me that Lone Echo II is roughly 50% larger than the original game (which took us around six hours to complete) in both actual size and gameplay content, so it sounds like there’s still much to be revealed.
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While it was initially set for launch in 2019, this week Ready at Dawn confirmed that Lone Echo II has been delayed to Q1 2020. As an Oculus exclusive title, it’ll only be available on the Oculus platform, and so far slated for release only on Rift. Last year, Ready at Dawn release a VR trailer for Lone Echo II which can be watched on Rift and Oculus Go; a non-VR cut of the trailer is also available on YouTube.
Ready at Dawn has been awfully quiet about the game lately, but it has been confirmed that it is a direct continuation of the story of Jack and Liv following the original game. When we went hands-on with the game way back in 2019 it appeared to be an evolution of the same linear narrative gameplay with polished VR interactions which propelled the original game to be among the best rated on the platform; check out 15 minutes of Lone Echo II gameplay here.
#TrafficJamsVR – April 8th! (@vertigogames) 
