Vertigo Games is adding Innerspace’s Maskmaker to its publishing portfolio.
A tweet from the company’s official account confirmed as much. The post says that Vertigo is “strengthening” its partnership with Innerspace, but doesn’t specifically outline plans for what it will do with the game. The game was originally released on PSVR and PC VR in April of 2021, published by MWM Interactive. Vertigo published Innerspace’s first full VR game, A Fisherman’s Tale, back in 2019.
Vertigo Picks Up Maskmaker VR
We’re strengthening our partnership with @InnerspaceVR once more!
Vertigo declined to comment on how this new partnership came about or if it might mean a Quest version of the game is in the works. In a follow-up tweet, Innerspace itself said it hoped the partnership would “bring new opportunities soon”.
Maskmaker was a VR adventure game in which you happen upon an old mask maker’s workshop and discover the ability to jump between worlds using their creations. You use this mechanic to go between environments, creating masks that mirror those you find in different worlds, allowing you to assume control of different characters.
We thought the game was successful in building out fascinating worlds, but a heavy-handed narrative got in the way of the gameplay. “Its best moments achieve an intricate balance between body-swapping puzzling that helps lift the veil on some of the story’s deeper themes, and I would have happily spent hours more making masks in the welcome confines of its workshop,” we said in our review. “But the game often feels like it’s presenting puzzles for the sake of it and could have helped its story breathe by stripping back some of the exposition.”
Shortly after Maskmaker’s release, Vertigo Games confirmed it had signed a publishing deal with Innerspace to produce its next game, which is still unannounced.
Videogame collectors looking for new PlayStation VR titles will have to look for more shelving space this summer as Perp Games readies a selection of new virtual reality (VR) games. First to arrive is InnerspaceVR’s creative puzzler Maskmaker which is set to hit European retail locations this week.
Originally, the physical release was due to take place a couple of weeks ago, before being quietly pushed back until 2nd July. It’ll offer the same content as the digital version which launched back in April for PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, Valve Index, and Oculus Rift.
If you’ve not tried Maskmaker yet it is InnerspaceVR’s biggest production to date, crafting a magical world where you become an apprentice to a local mask maker. You soon discover that mask making isn’t just about carving colourful masks, opening up doorways to new realms which can only be accessed by certain designs. Part adventure part creative sandbox, you have to travel to the various biomes to discover the masks worn by the inhabitants.
It’s only through this process that you can carve the masks before applying them with paints and other adornments found on your travels. Become stuck in one area and it’s worth going to explore another to find the crafting materials required for the next stage in the journey. All the while uncovering more of the mysterious story and the King who rules these strange lands.
Reviewing the PC VR of Maskmaker, VRFocus said: “Maskmaker is very much a slow burner which you need to give time to develop past the first three levels, after which you’ll be rewarded with a rich puzzle experience.”
As mentioned, Maskmaker isn’t the only VR title on Perp Games’ publishing list. Another puzzle videogame Gravitational will be launching in July, Psytec Games’ Windlands 2 arrives later this summer and Arashi: Castles of Sin by Endeavour One is also due this summer.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of the latest PlayStation VR releases, reporting back with further updates.
French virtual reality (VR) developer InnerspaceVR only launched its latest title Maskmakerin conjunction with MWMi a couple of weeks ago but work is already underway on its next project. This was confirmed today with Vertigo Games announcing that it would be publishing the as yet unannounced VR title.
The Arizona Sunshine developer previously worked with InnerspaceVR on its puzzle experience A Fisherman’s Tale as well as The Corsair’s Curse, a cooperative puzzle adventure for location-based entertainment (LBE) venues. “After a successful partnership on A Fisherman’s Tale, we’re delighted to add Innerspace’s next VR title to our publishing line-up. It’s a magnificent game that we are confident will once again hook VR players in the signature mind-boggling way only Innerspace VR games can,” said Richard Stitselaar, Managing Director at Vertigo Games in a statement.
Considering InnerspaceVR’s penchant for unusual puzzle titles interwoven with deep narrative, whatever the studio has planned will likely go bigger and bolder than before. Maskmaker is a testament to the team’s skill in crafting engrossing VR experiences, where you can carve and decorate magical masks to explore worlds and take control of inhabitants whilst uncovering the mystery of the mask maker.
“We’re really happy to strengthen our partnership with Vertigo Games once more and we can’t wait to work together on engaging lots of players from all around the globe with great VR,” adds Balthazar Auxietre, Creative Director and Co-founder of InnerspaceVR. “As working with them on our first game was a tremendous step forward for us as a studio, we’re confident that this new project will be another important milestone for us. We believe that this one reaffirms our passion for the VR medium and its ability to amaze us.”
No details have been released at this stage about how early in development this new project is or when the studios might release further information. When they do VRFocus will let you know.
Looking for some mind-bending puzzle games to play through on Quest 2? Here are our picks.
The Oculus Quest library is only growing larger and stronger by the day with a few options available in most genres. For puzzle fans, we’ve put together this list of some of the best in the genre available on Quest. Some are inventive and creative, some are mind-bending and challenging, but there should be something for everyone.
Here are our picks for the best puzzle games available on Oculus Quest.
A Fisherman’s Tale
Before its more recent game Maskmaker, Innerspace released the acclaimed A Fisherman’s Tale on Quest in 2019. It’s a short yet incredibly charming puzzle game, with ingenious puzzles will make you rack your brain until you finally reach that critical ‘a-ha’ moment that feels so satisfying.
Cubism is a deceptively simple game. Each level features a 3D wireframe shape into which you have to fit different Tetris-like block pieces. The puzzles get harder and the pieces more complex – it’s a slow and measured puzzle experience.
Even better, the game’s recent updates include 120Hz and hand tracking support. The latter in particular is a near-perfect fit for Cubism – all you’re doing is picking up pieces and placing them into the wireframe, but it’s enough to create a sublime hand tracking experience. This isn’t a ranked list, but if it were, Cubism would be my personal #1.
Floor Plan 2 feels like a VR episode of The Muppet Show, not just in the hilarious absurdity of its world but also in the constant, invigorating ingenuity of its puzzles. It is a logic-based puzzle game in a completely illogical world and one of the best recent releases on the Quest platform.
This game takes the staples of 2D jigsaw puzzles and brings them into VR with a new element — all of the puzzles are 3D models of real-life places, brought to life through highly detailed photogrammetry captures. The 16 included puzzles range from landscapes to individual objects, each with accompanying ambient sounds that build up as you solve. It’s a slow, meditative but also appropriately challenging puzzle game that offers a similar yet fresh take on traditional jigsaw puzzles.
This is a tough, short (1-2 hours), claustrophobic puzzler that will set you stuck in the cramped confines of a submerged submarine. There’s no hand-holding here, resulting in an immersive yet excruciatingly slow set of submarine-based puzzles. If you’re looking for an incredibly short but difficult experience, then this might be the best option.
If you’re a fan of Tetris, then Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Tetris Effect is an absolute must-play. It launched first on PSVR and PC VR before finally making its way over the Quest platform in 2020.
It is exactly what it sounds like – it’s Tetris in VR. However, it’s matched with a spectacular, powerful and at times hypnotic amount of visual and audio flair. While these visuals have had to be pared down slightly for the Quest release, we still deemed it the definitive version of the game across all platforms – the lack of tethered wires on Quest remains priceless.
Five years on from the release of the original, I Expect You To Die 2 is a game that executes a specific style of grueling puzzle game incredibly well. It’s a trial-and-error affair where you’ll spend an hour testing things, only to realize that the solution was obvious and right in front of you the whole time. It’s the mark of a quality puzzle — one where the solution is hidden not through obscure design, but through your own short-sightedness — but it can also mean a slow burn and periods of heavy frustration.
The latest installment in The Room series is also its first installment in VR. This isn’t a mobile or PC port either – The Room VR: A Dark Matter is made entirely for VR from the ground up.
Developer Fireproof hasn’t lost its penchant for incredibly clever and creative puzzles in the transition. Read more in our review.
Myst
This seminal PC game made its way over to the Oculus Quest late last year. It’s an upgraded and all-around solid port of the original PC title that will have you reaching for a notebook or a friend to help work your way through the tough puzzles.
It’s a game everyone should play once and the Quest 2 port provides you with a modern but faithful way to do so. You can read more in our review.
Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs
While the Angry Birds franchise started on mobile, its first foray into VR is a completely natural transition and results in an extremely fun VR puzzle game. It’s an intuitive VR title that’s perfect for VR beginners and veterans alike.
The campaign levels do veer slightly to the easy end of the spectrum, but it’s also a game primarily targeted at kids. This isn’t to say it’s not enjoyable for all ages though, and the custom level builder and online sharing functions mean that you’ll be able to create and play more levels long after you’ve finished the campaign.
In a way, Maskmaker’s wonderful crafting system is a little like game development itself.
You start out with a foundation – one that’s comparable to a lot of other titles, and then you make it yours. Components like mechanics help define your creation, whilst it’s the decorative painting that truly brings it to life. Of course, we’re simplifying a little bit and not mentioning the many, many stressful hours of prototyping, bug fixing and bashing things into shape. In fact, we’re probably better off letting Ethan Stearns from publisher MWM Interactive take over here.
In the video above, Stearns shares early prototypes of the gorgeous VR game, which released last week. First, we get an early look at puzzle design in the ‘grey box’ stage, long before developer Innerspace has implemented the game’s stunning environments. Next up there’s a really fascinating look at the early stages of the mask making itself.
There was a time, we learn, that the team was working on actually dipping a mask into paint and having the paint cover only the area submerged, and not the whole mask. “The only problem was it was very difficult to be precise for things we need in puzzles later,” Stearns explains of its omission.
It’s a pretty eye-opening look at the tireless work that goes into something like Maskmaker. That’s not all though, we also have some early concept art for the game. It shows some of the first designs for the architecture, which is one of the best parts of the experience.
Maskmaker is available now on PSVR and PC VR. In our review, we said the game was wonderfully intricate if a little familiar. Make sure to check back tomorrow as we round out our month of exclusive coverage on Upload Access with a (rescheduled) Q&A with Innerspace live from our virtual studio!
Maskmaker offers arresting atmosphere and intricate design, but it doesn’t have much new to say with its base mechanics. More in our Maskmaker review!
Maskmaker wears a lot of hats or, forgive me, masks. On the surface it’s an enjoyable, if somewhat lightweight puzzle adventure that explores a similar mechanic to Accounting, Virtual Virtual Reality and The Under Presents. It’s also a remake, of sorts, of a 1975 mime performance, borrowing its name and many of its core themes. And, for people that remember Innerspace’s Firebird series, it’s even a bit of a sequel.
A typically multi-faceted effort for its developer, then, and Innerspace does a good job fleshing out the mask-swapping, world-hopping concept into a fun 3+ hour adventure that tackles ideas of mentorship and succession. What it doesn’t have, though, is quite the same spark of ingenuity of 2019’s A Fisherman’s Tale, or other recent VR puzzling highlights.
Maskmaker Review – The Facts
What is it?: A first-person puzzle adventure in which you travel between worlds by making and putting on masks. Platforms: PC VR, PSVR Release Date: Out Now Price: $19.99
The core of Maskmaker is astonishingly impressive from a technical perspective. To travel between worlds you simply put on a mask in the workshop and then lift it off to return. On the PC version you switch out between worlds in mere seconds with minimal time spent in front of a loading screen. It makes the transition between each of its six biomes (three overworlds split into two main areas) near-seamless, though not quite as fluid as the instantaneous Under Presents.
And we’re not just talking about tiny spaces; Innerspace expands its staple artistry to stunning mountainscapes dotted with rural villages, golden beaches that have you feeling the sun even in VR and dusty desert canyons that leave you longing for a glass of water. Each of these worlds has been crafted with care and has a hand-made feel, right down to the paint-like flecks of snow on a mountaintop or the lush green textures of leaves in a forest. It’s the sort of VR experience you want to see inside the best possible headset so as not to waste its beauty on distorted screen resolutions, and something I’ll want to revisit whenever new hardware is released.
World-hopping also gives the game a light Metroidvania touch, although it really is the slightest hint. You can travel between any world at any time, but the bulk of the ingredients you’ll need to make a specific mask are often located within its given biome. There was a chance to interweave between locations to gather resources more often here, but it’s never fully explored, and Maskmaker is pretty light on challenge overall. Many of its in-world puzzles, like creating bridges for mountain goats to navigate or changing cogs to operate a rope bridge, are fairly rudimentary and could have been lifted from any other VR puzzler.
They’re better when they play with the game’s themes and add to the underlying narrative. In the swamps you concoct a potion that temporarily kills harmful spores growing on trees. It’s simple in approach but, with a bit of exploration, you’ll discover a hidden meaning that gives your actions much more heft. Other moments, like directing the flow of water through a canyon, are a little more on the nose but require some intricate switching out between masks on the fly.
Maskmaker Review – Comfort
Maskmaker uses smooth locomotion and teleportation styles, and you’re free to move between the two. Movement is slow and features an optional vignette. Overall you shouldn’t have too many comfort issues with this one.
The story’s more direct beats are riddled with similar sorts of double-meanings and metaphors (there is a lot of dialogue about the many roles of a mask). It teeters on fantasy whilst tying into questions about who we have to become to surpass our mentors and sets about exploring the topic with a genuine sense of pathos (one great phrase goes along the lines of “For it is dangerous to make a face before you do not know your own”). But, while the themes are interesting and admirable, its delivery could use some work.
Maskmaker is a talky game – there’s a lot of narration and exposition and it often plays out whilst you’re jumping back and forth between worlds. Just on a practical level, it’s incredibly easy to accidentally cut someone off just as they start talking or at a pause mid-monologue by removing or putting on a mask too soon, and there’s a lot of waiting around for someone to finish their sentence before you feel you can move on. Its environments tell enough of the narrative to often negate a lot of what is being said and the experience would be better rounded had it left some of it — much like the mime performance it draws inspiration from — unspoken.
If there’s one element Maskmaker really does hammer home, though, it’s very literally the crafting. It doesn’t truly come alive until the game’s latter half when you’ve unlocked all the tools, but when it does it’s a pretty magical experience. You start out by sculpting moulds with a chisel — a trick borrowed from Firebird: The Unfinished and just as engaging today — before mixing paints, adding components sourced from the game’s worlds and even using a brush to color-in specific sections of a mask.
There’s a wonderful authenticity and atmosphere to it, capturing fleeting moments of real VR embodiment as I sat and surveyed a mask on its stand, filled in missing spots and reached behind me to pick up decorative trinkets. It’s an absolute highlight and strangely fulfilling work; I could have done it all day.
Maskmaker Review Final Impressions
Maskmaker is peppered with magic moments but also padded with more routine and familiar gameplay, plus a heavy-handed narrative. Its best moments achieve an intricate balance between body-swapping puzzling that helps lift the veil on some of the story’s deeper themes, and I would have happily spent hours more making masks in the welcome confines of its workshop. But the game often feels like it’s presenting puzzles for the sake of it and could have helped its story breathe by stripping back some of the exposition.
For more on how we arrived at this score, read our review guidelines. What did you make of our Maskmaker review? Let us know in the comments below!
Maskmaker, a VR adventure game from A Fisherman’s Tale (2019) studio InnerspaceVR and publisher MWM Interactive, brings a host of unique puzzles and scenic environments to PSVR and SteamVR-compatible headsets today.
In Maskmaker, you step into a magical realm where you take on the role of a “Maskmaker’s apprentice” to the powerful Prospero. Here you learn to craft mystical masks while also “unraveling the mystery of the Maskmaker along the way.” The game promises plenty of mystical biomes to explore using your new found crafting skills.
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Image courtesy InnerspaceVR, WMW Interactive
Image courtesy InnerspaceVR, WMW Interactive
Image courtesy InnerspaceVR, WMW Interactive
Image courtesy InnerspaceVR, WMW Interactive
“With Maskmaker, we wanted to challenge ourselves and expand beyond the little world we had created in our previous game, and get away from the linear structure of storytelling. We also wanted to create a longer experience – which was the most critical feedback we heard with A Fisherman’s Tale,” said Balthazar Auxietre, creative director and co-founder at InnerspaceVR.
Auxietre says the studio’s previous adventure game helped inform what he calls a more open-ended world. “Maskmaker is definitely our biggest game to date, and it’s certainly not an easy task, especially for a VR game,” he says.
Maskmaker is now available for $20 on Oculus PC platform (Rift & Quest via Link), PSVR and SteamVR-compatible headsets. We’re expecting all store links here today, although it seems to already by live on Steam.
French studio InnerspaceVR’s first puzzle title A Fisherman’s Talewas a delightful mix of storyline and out-the-box challenges, yet it was over so quickly it barely had time to ground you in the world. The team’s next title sets out to capture what made that 2019 project special whilst building upon it with a bigger, more extravagant world, finely tuned virtual reality (VR) interactions, and a keener sense regarding your place within it. Time to learn and become a Maskmaker.
And a mask maker you do become, because in this nicely woven VR tale you’re introduced as an apprentice tasked with learning this ancient and mystical art form, highly praised at carnival time. You soon learn that mask making isn’t just about creating colourful wooden faces to wear one day of the year, the craft enables you to unlock magical worlds and step inside their inhabitant’s, trying to solve the secret which ails their lands.
Maskmaker is a single-player puzzle adventure that you have to explore to find new resources to use on the masks as well as locating new designs to facilitate travel. Everywhere is locked behind a new mask, from the various biomes to the level design, mixing creative puzzle-solving with creative crafting.
Your hub is the mask maker’s workshop, filled with old tomes, figurines and most importantly the crafting bench where you’ll build all the designs. This is very well laid out with a central moveable head to place masks upon, various small selves to store the items you find and a paint station with mixing capabilities to really give the masks some flair. More than any other area in Maskmaker it’s the workshop that’s definitely had the most love and attention spent on it, with an array of interactive features to play with as the story opens up.
Elements such as the wooden block carving instantly delight, simple yet thoroughly satisfying using a hammer and chisel to notch away at a wooden block to reveal the next mask design underneath. It’s a shame that the feature is only required three times during the entire experience to make the three initial base masks – a further three are then automatically added halfway through your journey – as it worked so well.
Naturally, it’s the building of the masks in Maskmaker which provide the most enjoyable element – that’s not to say the environmental puzzles aren’t fun, just different. Once you’ve managed to unlock everything you have 24 items to adorn the masks with as well as three extension pieces for further flourish. So you can get really creative in this little sandbox area yet this opens up one of Maskmaker’s biggest flaws (or misses), being left to your own device.
As mentioned, in Maskmaker you need new designs to explore with a total of 30 across the various regions. The levels are sparse, with regions like the mountains offering beautiful vistas, yet the only souls are wooden inhabitants who are out of reach. Using a telescope you can copy their mask design, head back to the workshop to build it then put it on, jumping into the new body to continue on. This is the core puzzle loop.
Then as you progress and discover all the masks in a world you’ll be able to switch between them, required to solve the large environmental puzzles. Maskmaker uses this mechanic to great effect, not only in the region you’re in but across all of them. If you happen to get stuck in one location it’s more than likely you’ve picked up a new resource to build a mask for one of the other biomes. There’s a reassuring natural order to the whole process, so there was never any frustrating or tough, head-scratching moments. This means you get a nice flow to the storyline albeit with mostly easy to medium difficulty puzzles.
InnerspaceVR has really ensured you can get involved in Maskmaker, with levers and switches to push and pull alongside the mask making itself. One of the most detailed parts of the process is the painting where you have three primary colours – red, yellow and blue – to mix in a vat with two further tubs enabling you to have three colours on hand for painting. You’re not quite given completely free rein as the masks are split into regions, a quick dab of the paintbrush will fill that particular area. Yet there’s still some fun to be had. As mentioned, you’re always following a design, it’s not until the final moments of the story where it asks you to create your very own. Once you’ve collected everything you could ignore the rest of the story and design away, yet there’s no way to store and save them.
Maskmaker also has a few other VR surprises in store. The studio has really put in an impressive amount of effort when it comes to particular sequences. There are dance moments showcasing excellent motion capture and choreography where you’re also instructed to move and copy the motions, even adding some drumming in for good measure. It’s also worth pointing out the narration and overall storytelling is superb, so you never feel alone in some of the sparser environments.
Now let’s talk about comfort. There’s a lot of walking in Maskmaker so be prepared to cover a fair few miles. You’ve got both continuous locomotion as well as teleportation on hand, with snap/smooth rotation, vignette settings and more so most players should be well catered for. Most of Maskmaker you can stroll around quite comfortably as it’s not a fast title. Annoyingly, moments do crop up like getting into the mine carts where you have to use teleportation, offering no way to walk in. Quite odd considering the rest of the experience.
Maskmaker is very much a slow burner which you need to give time to develop past the first three levels, after which you’ll be rewarded with a rich puzzle experience. It took just over four hours to complete, feeling a lot less because the narrative is so engrossing. Much like A Fisherman’s Tale, Maskmaker is mostly a one and done title, there are hidden memory pieces to find if you didn’t manage to the first time around but that’s about it. Some sort of unlockable sandbox mode after the campaign ends to fill the mask makers store with your own designs would’ve been the icing on the cake. Even so, in Maskmaker InnerspaceVR has created a fine puzzle experience.
April has been a jam-packed month for virtual reality (VR) videogames and it just keeps getting better. Not only does next week have some big arrivals but there’s the Oculus Gaming Showcase to look forward to, with more details set to arrive for Resident Evil 4and more. First, take a look at what VR titles are about to keep you busy with their puzzles and creative tools.
Maskmaker – InnerspaceVR
The next puzzle title from A Fisherman’s Taleteam InnerspaceVR, Maskmaker is set to be the studios’ biggest VR title to date. Taking place in a magical world where masks transport you to new locations, you play a mask maker’s apprentice, learning this ancient craft. Part puzzler, part exploration and part crafting, you need to explore 8 regions to uncover the Maskmaker’s secret, picking up new resources on route to create new masks. As you do so you inhabit the inhabitants’ bodies, switching between them via the masks they wear.
A Steam Early Access title, Cards & Tankards is a strategy card game set in a pub. With two factions to choose from (4 in the final version) players will have 80 cards to customise their decks from before going into battle, either in the Solo mode against AI or via the cross-platform multiplayer.
Not a videogame as such, Argil is a sculpting app for creating organic 3D models quickly and seamlessly. It provides a range of tools so that it almost feels like manipulating real clay. Offering a meditative and relaxing space so creators can focus on their models, they can pinch, squeeze, carve and stretch their designs as they see fit.
Everyone loves free stuff, right? Well, Gamedust’s swinging puzzle title, Yupitergrad, which launched last year is about to offer a slice with Yupitergrad: Sneaki Peaki. The free, standalone edition features a short version of the tutorial as well as selected Time Attack levels giving new players a nice taster of the mechanics.
Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife – Fast Travel Games
Now time for some good old-fashioned horror from Fast Travel Games. Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife is set within the World of Darkness universe,putting you in the shoes of Ed Miller, a photographer who dies during a seance at the luxurious Barclay Mansion. Stuck between the living world and the afterlife, you have to roam the hallways looking for clues as to what happened. However, being dead doesn’t mean to say you’re entirely safe. As a wraith, you can walk through walls and pick items up at a distance but you must also avoid Spectres. These are spirits of wrath and vengeance. With no way to defend yourself from them, you must tread carefully and hide.
It’s fair to say that Innerspace’s Maskmaker isn’t your average VR game.
At a time where many developers are doubling down on action-packed zombie-slayers and online shooters, Innerspace’s upcoming puzzle adventure represents a rare moment of calm. It’s a game about exploration and making things with your own two hands and the resources the world gives you. It’s also something that, like Innerspace’s A Fisherman’s Tale before it, can be tough to instantly communicate to a wider audience. Funding and publishing an experience like this would be risky even in the traditional games industry, let alone in VR with its comparatively tiny install base.
That’s where MWM Interactive comes in.
The gaming arm of MWM is still relatively young, but has already established a deliberate tone with its publishing choices across both VR and traditional titles. It also worked on Dan Carlin’s uneasy visualization of WW1 in War Remains and re-envisioned A Christmas Carol with a sinister twist in Chained: A Victorian Nightmare.
“I think as a publisher MWMi — outside of VR and even in other games that we’re working on — try to find games that aren’t leaning on those traditional [gaming] tropes, doing something interesting mechanically that is true to the form of games but presenting things in maybe a slightly more approachable way so that anyone could come in and play it,” says Ethan Stearns, EVP of Content at MWM Interactive.
“It’s rewarding and an experience for that core gamer, but also is something that someone can come in who’s not a core gamer and play it and experience it and get to that richness, that core of what games can be as a personal connection to the narrative that you’re part of creating. To me, that’s one of the most amazing things [as to] why games are the most powerful entertainment medium in the world, and it makes me sad that people write that off as just being like a murder simulator or whatever.”
Innerspace’s body of work feels uniquely in-step with this philosophy, gradually growing out from the experimental beginnings of the Firebird series into the accomplished puzzling of A Fisherman’s Tale. In fact, it was the team’s last game that really sold Stearns on the developer.
“It’s a strong narrative, unique gameplay and just a beautiful standout art design,” he says of the game. “And just the tone and motif of the game was so pleasant to be in. I feel like in VR we tend to go into like a super scary shooter like Arizona Sunshine direction which is awesome or we go into the sort of playhouse sort of fun bombastic sort of Fantastic Contraption sort of direction, and rarely do we get those sort of almost like Nintendo-themed kind of titles; like beautiful new worlds that are like totally different and were calm.”
Innerspace’s Balthazar Auxietre met with Stearns a few years back at the Tribeca Film Festival. That was where Auxietre — as we learned last week — pitched Maskmaker.
“It was interesting,” recalls Stearns, “because I’m really close with the Tender Claws guys and after seeing what they had been working on with The Under [Presents] and some other sort of ideas I had seen and the idea of being able to use mechanics that are very specific to VR.”
He later continues: “I think VR is interesting in like being able to turn a traversal mechanic into a really interesting, something new and different. I think Budget Cuts was one of the first ones to really open my eyes to that. It’s like, “Okay, when I shoot this little tennis ball thing, that’s how we’re moving around.” And it’s like, we have to solve the idea of how we’re moving the player around the map. Let’s turn that into something deeper and something more VR-specific.”
Innovative as these ideas are, they’re not immediately graspable, and require explanation to truly communicate. That would no doubt make Maskmaker a less attractive proposition for many publishers. “We feel like we have to plant a flag and prove who we are and what we represent as a piece of the game’s ecosystem as part of the VR ecosystem,” Stearns says. “And so, yeah, there’s risk in that.”
But it was MWMi’s trust in Innerspace itself that really helped cement the partnership. “They really know games. They really know how to build something and they’re very responsible in the process in which they do that, but they’re also achieving this artistry. So I think as a publisher when we’re looking for titles, when we’re looking for partners to work with, developers to work with, that is definitely an element of it like, “Is this team capable of getting it over the line? Games get tough at a certain point, are they strong enough?”
Still, following VR for the past few years, there’s been a lot of trepidation about any developer’s chances of success. The direction of that conversation is only just starting to change with the introduction of the Oculus Quest 2. But here’s the thing – Maskmaker isn’t coming to Quest. At least not yet.
“When we first started this game, the Quest hadn’t come out yet,” Stearns explains. “We were looking at it and we thought it would be an interesting thing to do, but it wasn’t until way into production that the Quest really proved itself as a platform it is now. And we had to make a choice at that time; do we reduce the complexity of the game dramatically and to basically lead to Quest? Or do we stay on track to make the game that we wanted to make? And we decided on the latter. We thought that let’s build the game that we wanna build, and then after its release assess going to Quest.”
“What I’m really hoping is that we have a great launch and then we have some time when hardware accelerates on the standalone all-in-ones that are coming out.”
For now, Maskmaker arrives on PC VR and PSVR on April 20th. We’ve got plenty more coverage for the game coming up on Upload Access this month, so stay tuned.
