Over 5 Games Coming This Week for PlayStation VR Including Vacation Simulator

Last weeks Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) had a few exciting updates when it came to virtual reality (VR) news but there was a noticeable absence when it came to Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) and PlayStation VR. Well fear not, as the headset has a nice little lineup of titles coming this week.

Mini-Mech Mayhem

The popular headset has six videogames scheduled for release this week. For those after a beautiful fairytale there is Funomena’s Luna. An interactive, narrative-driven experience, the story focuses on a young bird enticed to eat the last piece of the waning Moon by mysterious Owl and is subsequently blown far from home. Players must untangle the bird’s memories, solving a sequence of celestial puzzles to unlock each level’s tree, plant and animal spirits. In doing so they can then plant and cultivate plants within terrariums, making them grow a flourish in a bid to bring life back to the moonless world.

For a more sci-fi vibe, there’s Mars Alive. Developed by Winking Entertainment, Mars Alive is a survival experience where you will have to monitor the status of your Oxygen, Food, Water and Temperature. You’ll be able to grow a variety of crops, controlling the temperature, humidity, and water alternately in the cabin as well as exploring the Martian landscape.

Mini-Mech Mayhem, on the other hand, is designed for some strategic multiplayer gaming. A comedy-infused tabletop battle experience, Mini-Mech Mayhem sees players take the form of robot avatars partnered with cute little mechs to battle opponents as a team. With both single-player and up to four-player online support, Mini-Mech Mayhem is very much like a colourful game of chess.

Slum Ball screenshot1

If you’re after something slightly different then there’s visual novel Project Lux by Spicy Tails. Originally due for release in 2018Project Lux tells the tale of a court trial set in a futuristic world where most humans have cyberbrains. On trial is an agent who coordinates with artists to create data for cyberbrains which can interact with people’s emotions. The victim is a girl artist named Lux, and the jury has to investigate what really happened by reliving the memory data of the defendant.

Already out for European players and coming to North America this week is Slum Ball. The videogame is a photorealistic physics-based paddle ball game with a creative twist – instead of a regular wooden bat, the player has a shabby flip flop and rather than slugging a ball, the player gets a beverage can to use as a ball.

Last on the list is probably the best known out of all the videogames arriving this week, Owlchemy Labs’ Vacation SimulatorLaunched for PC a couple of months ago, the title is a charming parody on taking time off from work. Set across three areas, a beach, forest and mountain, you’ll be able to engage in all sorts of activities to while away the hours.

All these titles will be available by Friday at the latest. For further PlayStation VR content updates, keep reading VRFocus.

Vacation Simulator, Mini-Mech Mayhem Headline Crammed Week For PSVR

Vacation Simulator, Mini-Mech Mayhem Headline Crammed Week For PSVR

Hopefully you enjoyed a look at some of the upcoming PSVR games in our E3 VR Showcase last week. More importantly, though, you can start playing some of them as early as this week.

A whopping six PSVR titles are due for launch over the next five days. It’s one of the headset’s biggest weeks in a while. Leading the pack is the long-awaited PSVR version of Vacation Simulator. Owlchemy Labs’ excellent interactive playgrounds usually take a bit longer to hit PSVR but are always worth the wait. Look for it to arrive on June 18th (tomorrow!).

Also dropping tomorrow is Mini-Mech Mayhem, which featured in the E3 VR Showcase. This is made by Futurlab, the team behind the excellent Velocity games and Tiny Trax. It’s an adorable and hilarious tabletop VR game in which players try an anticipate their opponent’s moves and then outsmart them using a tiny robot buddy.

But that’s not all. The long-awaited PSVR version of Funomena’s Luna also arrives this week. This is an adorable little puzzle-driven experience. You follow a bird on its journey with stunning visuals to behold. Project Lux, meanwhile, is another long-awaited PC VR port. This one’s essentially a VR anime, you partner up with a girl as you attempt to solve a murder.

Next up is Mars Alive, a PSVR survival game. This one’s from Winking Entertainment, the publisher/developer behind games like Unearthing Mars. You have to survive on the red planet as you uncover ancient secrets. Finally, we have Slum Ball VR. It’s literally just a brick-breaking game in VR. Could be fun, if that’s your thing!

Whew, that’s a lot to get through. What are you planning on picking up this week?

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Fairy Tale Puzzler Luna Gets a PlayStation VR Release Date

Last summer indie developer Funomena announced that its puzzle experience Luna would be getting a PlayStation VR version and that it should arrive Fall 2018. That didn’t happen, with the studio going rather quiet for a while. Today, that’s all changed, with Funomena confirming a June launch date for Luna.

Luna

Called Luna – Storybook Edition, it’ll work with or without PlayStation VR and will feature a new component, with the gameplay accompanied by a guided voiceover with localized subtitles in 18 languages.

This will be Funomena’s first title for PlayStation 4 – founders Robin Hunicke and Martin Middleton previously worked together on Journey for PlayStation 3 – having originally launched for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift back in 2017. An interactive, narrative-driven experience, Luna’s story focuses on a young bird enticed to eat the last piece of the waning Moon by mysterious Owl and is subsequently blown far from home. Players must untangle the bird’s memories, solving a sequence of celestial puzzles to unlock each level’s tree, plant and animal spirits. In doing so they can then plant and cultivate plants within terrariums, making them grow a flourish in a bid to bring life back to the moonless world.

“Creatively, Luna is also an incredibly personal title, with elements of each team-mate woven deeply into its environments and storyline,” states Hunicke on PlayStation Blog. “As the team grew, we spent a lot of time talking about how being creative is one of the best ways to communicate how past experiences have shaped us. We took this notion of making art to heal into the mechanics, building a tactile audio-visual experience that defied traditional game labels.”

Luna

In VRFocus’ original review of Luna we noted that: “The artwork is gorgeous, a bright, detailed, hand drawn style that really makes the title standout from a lot of other VR content, perfectly intertwined with a musical score that’s light, refreshing and filled with depth. This really is something that’s aimed at a younger audience as they’ll certainly be enthralled by what Funomena has created.”

The text and subtitles in Luna now support Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. Luna will be available from 18th June in North America and 19th June in Europe. For further updates keep reading VRFocus.

Funomena Launches ‘Luna: Moondust Garden’ for Magic Leap One

Funomena, the indie studio behind VR puzzle game Luna (2017), today launched their first app for Magic Leap One. Called Luna: Moondust Garden, the AR game is billed as “a playful extension” of it VR big brotherallowing players to plant a musical garden and interact with its cute inhabitants in AR.

Luna: Moondust Garden is the platform’s second paid app following the release of Insomniac Games’ Seedling (2018) earlier this month, an experience that also focuses on planting and growing your own otherworldly garden in AR.

Moondust Garden lets you explore Bird and Owl’s charming garden, bringing a new story from Luna’s storybook to your living room. It focuses primarily on casual gameplay such as hunting for moondust that’s been hidden throughout the garden, using the moondust to grow plants, and eventually building a big garden so that the sad Fox will cheer up and come out from hiding.

 

Funomena says Moondust Garden “crafts a unique, intimate experience by leveraging Magic Leap’s scene reconstruction (room scanning) and spatialized audio which allows you to see the story coming to life in your environment.”

Luna: Moondust Garden launches today on Magic Leap World for $5.

SEE ALSO
Insomniac Launches 'Seedling', Magic Leap One's First Paid App

While queuing up a second gardening game so soon may feel like a misstep by Magic Leap, the company’s AR headset is still very much intended for developers and enterprise users willing to shell out the $2,300, so it’s not like the company is swinging for the fences in terms of content sales just yet. If anything, these early days will serve as important times for the company to address how it handles user feedback, payment processing, etc. as it gears up for a consumer release at some point.

The company’s digital distribution platform, Magic Leap World, already features a few free experiences and games including Weta Workshop’s InvadersAngry Birds: First Person Slingshot, Sigur Rós’ music experience Tónandi, and Magic Leap’s sandbox experience Project Create.

We’re also waiting to see what results from the company’s massive developer grant program, which has earmarked an “eight-figure number” for prospective devs looking to create apps for Magic Leap One.

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Studio Behind ‘Luna’ to Launch ‘Luna: Moondust Garden’ on Magic Leap One This Fall

Indie game studio Funomena, known for their interactive VR experience Luna (2017), announced that the company is bringing a new Luna experience especially made for augmented reality. Called Luna: Moondust Garden, the experience is slated to launch on Magic Leap One this fall.

Funomena calls Luna: Moondust Garden a playful extension of the original Luna which brings a new story from Bird and Owl’s forest into your living room.

In Moondust Garden, the studio says, players “explore the storybook world of Luna from a new, intimate perspective by bringing its animals & forest right into their own reality. By planting and tending a variety of plants, flowers, trees and islands within their physical space, players can create a lovely garden where Fox can come out to play.”

Activities

  • Plant and interact with a musical landscape directly into your own physical playspace
  • Discover & collect the moondust that’s hidden throughout the forest
  • Sprinkle moondust on the plants and flowers to help them grow and transform
  • Build a beautiful garden so that the sad Fox will cheer up, come out and play!

Funomena co-founder, CEO, and designer of Luna Robin Hunicke will be at Magic Leap’s L.E.A.P. conference on October 10th to talk more about Luna: Moondust Garden and discuss the design and development process that the team applied in building the experience for Magic Leap One. During the session she will talk about the creative inspiration, design and best practices for developing experiences for AR.

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Funomena To Bring Fairy Tale Luna: Moondust Garden to Magic Leap One

Having created beautiful fairy tale experience Luna for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and most recently PlayStation VR, developer Funomena has today revealed a new project based on the virtual reality (VR) title, Luna: Moondust Garden.

Luna: Moondust Garden isn’t a VR experience however, with Funomena developing it exclusively for the Magic Leap One Creators Edition.

Designed as a playful extension of the original Luna: Moondust Garden brings a new story from Bird and Owl’s charming forest, with players able to explore the storybook world from a new mixed reality (MR). Using Magic Leap’s technology users can plant and tend a variety of plants, flowers, trees and islands within their physical space, sprinkling moondust on the plants and flowers to help them grow and transform.

Hidden throughout the forest, moondust needs to be discovered and collected, helping to build a beautiful garden so that the sad Fox will cheer up, come out and play.

Luna screenshot 2

To help developers working on Magic Leap One content Robin Hunicke, co-founder and CEO of Funomena and designer of Luna, will be at Magic Leap’s L.E.A.P. conference on 10th October to talk more about Luna: Moondust Garden, its design and development process , and how the team applied their original idea with Magic Leap’s spatial computing. During the session she will touch on the creative inspiration, design and best practices for developing experiences for emerging platforms such as AR and MR.

Luna has won numerous awards across the globe, including ones from Brazil’s Independent Game Festival, The Taipei Game Show, VRCORE Award in China, and the Windows Developer Award for Game Creator of the Year. VRFocus’ review found that it was an: ‘unusual marriage of interactivity and storytelling’ and ‘perfect for those who’ve got kids old enough to try VR and want to see what it’s all about.’

Luna: Moondust Garden will come to the Magic Leap One Creator Edition headset this fall. How many will actually get to play the experience on the expensive headset is another matter. For further updates keep reading VRFocus.

Luna erscheint im Herbst für PlayStation VR (PSVR)

Das interaktive VR-Märchen Luna von Entwicklerstudio Funomena ist bereits seit Oktober 2017 für Oculus Rift, HTC Vive und Windows-VR-Brillen erhältlich. Nun kündigten die Devs auf der offiziellen Webseite den Release für die PlayStation VR (PSVR) an, der noch im Herbst 2018 stattfinden soll.

Luna – Ab Herbst 2018 für PlayStation VR (PSVR) erhältlich

Der Indie-Titel Luna ist in naher Zukunft für Konsolenbesitzer/innen mit PSVR-Brille erhältlich. Bereits im Herbst dieses Jahres soll das atmosphärische Rätselspiel für die PlayStation VR (PSVR) erscheinen.

In Luna übernehmen die Spieler/innen die Kontrolle über einen kleinen Vogel, der aufgrund eines starken Sturms von seinem Heimatnest verweht wurde. Zu allem Überfluss ist an diesem verhängnisvollen Abend auch noch der Mond verschwunden, was die Orientierung besonders beeinträchtigt. Also gilt es in den eigenen Gedanken nachzuforschen, um den Weg nach Hause wiederzufinden und den Himmelskörper wiederherzustellen.

Dabei kommt ihr mit zahlreichen Waldbewohnern in Kontakt und müsst diverse Rätsel lösen. So setzt ihr beispielsweise Sternkonstellationen zusammen, damit diese eine gewisse Form bilden, bis sie der kleine Vogel wiedererkennt. Oder ihr gestaltet Waldabschnitte um und könnt euch somit eine eigene kleine Welt kreieren. Die Flora und Fauna ist dabei ebenso veränderbar und kann sogar mit Musik unterlegt werden.

Nebenbei gibt es einiges freizuschalten, unter anderem Soundtracks, neue Pflanzen- und Tiergeister zum Dekorieren und vieles mehr. Das Team hinter dem VR-Titel ist unter anderen bekannt für Spiele wie Sims 2, Journey, Flower und Boom Blox.

Luna soll ab Herbst für PlayStation VR (PSVR) im PlayStation Store erscheinen. Für PC-Brillen ist der VR-Titel bereits auf Steam sowie im Oculus Store erhältlich.

(Quellen: Upload VR | Funomena | Video: Upload VR YouTube)

Der Beitrag Luna erscheint im Herbst für PlayStation VR (PSVR) zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

Gorgeous VR Fairy Tale Luna Hits PSVR This Fall

Gorgeous VR Fairy Tale Luna Hits PSVR This Fall

One of VR’s best-looking games is coming to PlayStation VR (PSVR) very soon.

Luna, the storybook puzzle game from indie developer Funomena, will launch on the platform this fall, the studio confirmed today. If you want to try it out early then good news; Funomena will be showing it off at PAX West in Seattle this weekend, running on the Sony booth.

The game features varied puzzles in which you try and help a young bird find its way back home. You’ll be linking up stars to form musical notes, reshaping forests and creating lilypads for frogs to navigate (aww!). The main draw, at least for us, is the game’s amazing visuals, which look like they’ve come straight out of a children’s fairy tale. Check them out in the trailer above.

Luna’s been out on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive for some time already, though we always hope that a PSVR release will help a game find a bigger audience. That should definitely be the case here.

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VR Fairy Tale Luna Coming to PlayStation VR This Fall

Having brought its playful virtual reality (VR) fairy tale Luna to Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in 2017, developer Funomena has announced it’ll be porting the title to PlayStation VR this fall. And for PlayStation VR fans eager to get an early look ahead of its official release, Luna will be on Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE’s) booth during PAX West this month.

Luna is an interactive, narrative-driven experience whose story focuses on a young bird enticed to eat the last piece of the waning Moon by mysterious Owl, and is subsequently blown far from home. Players must untangle the bird’s memories, solving a sequence of celestial puzzles to unlock each level’s tree, plant and animal spirits. In doing so they can then plant and cultivate plants within terrariums, making them grow a flourish in a bid to bring life back to the moonless world.

Adding to the bird’s own story it will meet other animals along its journey, each of which offers help to guide the bird home.

Funomena has created a striking visual design for Luna, almost mixing cardboard and modelling clay stop-motion designs together, creating a rich vibrant world for young VR players. As VRFocus noted in its review: “Luna isn’t the sort of title that’s going to draw VR players away from their first-person shooters (FPS) or RPG’s, looking for the next amazing VR experience. It’s the type of title that’ll suit those who liked Gnomes & Goblins for example, an unusual marriage of interactivity and storytelling. Or perfect for those who’ve got kids old enough to try VR and want to see what it’s all about.”

Luna has won numerous awards across the globe, including ones from Brazil’s Independent Game Festival, The Taipei Game Show, VRCORE Award in China, and the Windows Developer Award for Game Creator of the Year.

You can see it for yourself on PlayStation VR during PAX West in Seattle at the Sony booth fro 31st August to 3rd September 2018. When the Fall date is announced VRFocus will let you know.

Funomena Heads to VRDC to Talk About the Story of Luna

With CES 2018 now done and dusted for another year you maybe looking at that’s next on the calendar for the videogame industry and virtual reality (VR) in particular. Well there are plenty of little of niche events taking place over the next few weeks and months but the next big one for actual game news is going to be the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2018 and its subsidiary event the Virtual Reality Developers Conference (VRDC). A good portion of both events will be talks and sessions by industry professionals, and Luna creator Funomena will be hosting a session.

Luna screenshot 2

Titled: The Story of ‘Luna’: Designing Accessible PC and VR Experiences, Robin Hunicke, CEO, Co-Founder & Designer at Funomena will explore design challenges and solutions faced while developing Luna for both PC and VR players. The reason being, PC games are established with the possibility of being more profitable, while VR, augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) experiences tend to be less so, so why not build for both audiences?

Luna is an interactive fairytale experience whose story focuses on a young Bird who is enticed to eat the last piece of the waning Moon by mysterious Owl, and is subsequently blown far from home. So players must must untangle the Bird’s memories, solving celestial puzzles to unlock each level’s tree, plant and animal spirits. By planting and cultivating plants within terrariums, players bring life back to the moonless world.

The title originally launched back in October 2017, seeing a multiplatform release across Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. Then a month later Funomena released the standard PC version for those that don’t own a VR head-mounted display (HMD).

In VRFocus’ review of Luna, we said: “It’s the type of title that’ll suit those who liked Gnomes & Goblins for example, an unusual marriage of interactivity and storytelling. Or perfect for those who’ve got kids old enough to try VR and want to see what it’s all about.”

Funomena won’t be the only studio giving a talk at VRDC 2018. Baobab Studios will be there with ‘Invasion!’: Crafting a VR Story, Survios will be on hand to discuss Sprint Vector‘s Fluid Locomotion Technology, Against Gravity will have a session called Room for Everyone: The ‘Rec Room’ Approach to Community VR, plus many, many more.

Check out the GDC/VRDC 2018 website for the full roster and as always, keep reading VRFocus for the latest VR, AR and MR news.