Finally! On October 13th Beat Saber is getting its long-awaited multiplayer update which includes support for five players. The update launches on the same day as the release for the newly unveiled Oculus Quest 2. Also, a BTS music pack is coming to Beat Saber later this year!
One of the big highlights of Facebook Connect today if you’re a rhythm game fan was undoubtedly the news that Beat Saber is finally getting multiplayer support. This is a feature that has literally been teased for years by Beat Games, so it’s long overdue. In fact, just about two years ago, the developer indicated on Twitter that multiplayer support was 85% complete and would be added “quickly” after finishing the PSVR port. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.
Details are scarce still on what exactly multiplayer will entail for Beat Saber, but according to a press release from Facebook you’ll be able to, “pick your avatar, join a private party or random match, and prepare to dance off with your friends” which makes it sound like more of a party game mode. Hopefully there is some mode variety to do things like head-to-head real-time Beat Saber battles or even some creative modes that involve taking turns or dueling, similar to classic Guitar Hero games.
Additionally, we learned that BTS is getting its very own music pack for Beat Saber with 12 hit songs coming this November. The BTS pack will include multiplayer mode support and the TinyTAN characters, shown in the image above.
The press release only lists Rift and Quest for both of these updates, but since that press release came from Facebook that makes sense. We don’t have confirmation from Facebook on this particular issue yet, but we expect both of these updates will release on every other platform on the same day just like previous recent updates. They stated support for other platforms will continue when Facebook purchased Beat Games last year.
What do you think of the news? Will you be checking out Beat Saber multiplayer? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below!
Though the PS4 is known for its single-player adventures, the system has numerous fantastic multiplayer games, too. Here are the best multiplayer games on PS4.
For today’s livestream we’re playing the co-op dungeon crawler RPG, Karnage Chronicles! If you’re curious about how we livestream the way we do then look no further than this handy guide for general tips and this guide specific to our Oculus Quest setup.
Karnage Chronicles has been in Early Access for years but is now finally fully released. Today, Jamie will be joining me in VR as we embark on our quest together to slay monsters and uncover valuable loot in this co-op VR dungeon crawler RPG.
We’re also giving out four Karnage Chronicles Steam keys during the stream so you’re not gonna want to miss it!
Our Karnage Chronicles livestream is planned to start at about 9:30 AM PT and will last for around an hour or so, give or take, depending partially on how well-behaved my small toddler child will be while left alone. We’ll be hitting just our YouTubeand I’ll likely be streaming from my Oculus Rift S. Zeena will also be there on webcam and audio to help with chat.
Check out the Karnage Chronicles stream embedded right here and down below once live:
You can see lots of our past archived streams over in our YouTube playlist or even all livestreams here on UploadVR and various other gameplay highlights. There’s lots of good stuff there so make sure and subscribe to us on YouTube to stay up-to-date on gameplay videos, video reviews, live talk shows, interviews, and more original content!
And please let us know which games or discussions you want us to livestream next! We have lots of VR games in the queue that we would love to show off more completely.
A new update for the competitive VR melee game Ironlights has added a whole new class to the game, alongside voice chat functionality and official tournaments.
Ironlights is a 1v1 multiplayer melee game that released a few months ago for Quest and PC VR. We enjoyed the game, but had some gripes and said we looked forward to content updates and tweaks in the future.
Well, the new Scythe update is available now for Ironlights, and the biggest addition is a whole new class called the Reaper. The developers describe the reaper as “a swift and deadly fighter who wields a grim, heavy scythe. With great reach and a long blade, this fearsome weapon is tough to block and even harder to dodge.”
Online matches now also support voice chat between opponents. To avoid toxicity and trash-talking, both players will need to opt-in to voice chat before the match starts for it to be enabled.
The game also now has official tournaments with cash prizes. We got some preliminary details on how they will work in Reddit post:
Here’s the basic idea: you can enter any Minor League tournament, and if you finish in the top 3, you’ll win $30. Winners will graduate to the Major League and can’t compete in the Minors again. The idea is to prevent the same people from winning the prizes over and over again, and we want to ensure that talented newcomers will have a realistic shot of winning!
The developers plan to run the tournaments every 2 weeks, but there’s no further details on the tournament system or how winners will claim the cash prizes. Players can find out more soon on the Ironlights subreddit or Discord server.
The Scythe update is available now for Ironlights on PC VR and Oculus Quest.
Terraria's fourth major content update is here, and despite the changes, multiplayer remains the core focus. Here's how to set up a dedicated Terraria server.
Spaceteam VR launches its “cooperative shouting game” on Oculus Quest and PC VR on May 21.
A PlayStation VR version of the game is planned for later this year.
The multiplayer party game adapted from the popular phone and tablet title allows up to six players to work together on ” increasingly complex and baffling technobabble filled instructions to keep their ship hurtling through space.”
Spaceteam VR features three different difficulties, with the harder difficulties giving players many more controls to be responsible for while amping up just how tough the anomalies that occur are. In easier modes, you might only be responsible for a handful of duties, but tuning things to the hardest difficulty will require you to be on your ‘A’ game. According to Cooperative Innovations, some of the tougher anomalies will include player’s heads shrinking, instructions being presented backwards or with missing letters, and in-game voices on players becoming high pitched and hard to decipher.
Elsewhere in the game, controls are pretty standard for VR titles. You’ll have levers to reach out and grab, buttons to push, and items to grab on the fly as you try to complete your specific instructions. Putting out fires, taking down aliens that try to invade the ship,and having to hammer out mistakes are just some of the many other trials you’ll face while attempting to stay alive. The longer you go, the tougher the challenges you face become, until you eventually find yourself frantically yelling at a teammate to repeat orders as a fire rages on in front of you.
Developer Cooperative Innovations licensed the title from Henry Smith of Sleeping Beast Games. You can play online or locally with mobile devices mixed in with headsets.
Hyper Dash is a new fast-paced multiplayer shooter available on SideQuest featuring cross-play with PC VR.
You can try the alpha testing release right now and Hyper Dash is free while still in development.
The game supports up to 5 versus 5 player matches in VR with spectators who can log in without a headset. The non-VR participants control a drone that can be seen in game. There are eight weapons currently in the game that are all one handed so you can dual wield. It features three modes:
Payload is like Overwatch and Team Fortress 2
Domination challenges teams to capture three points and hold them for five seconds to score and the first team to three points wins
Capture Point is a mode where you try to hold a point in the middle of the map for 300 seconds
The game combines multiple movement systems including smooth locomotion and rail grinding that gets you around a map quickly after a respawn. There’s also a dash/teleport mechanic described as the main way of moving around in the game but it is limited to three dashes at a time. The dashes recharge and you can boost the dashes to five with a pickup located around the map.
“You can point your dash preview arc to where you want to dash. If you let go of the button you dash to the highlighted location in a fraction of a second,” Triangle Factory developer Jeroen Dessaux explained in a direct message. “The dash leaves a visible trail so players see where you went and it’s not too disorienting.”
The alpha release available now publicly also includes new sprinting features the developers are testing where “if you click the joystick button you will use 1 dash bar, but start sprinting for a few seconds,” Dessaux explained. “This is useful in a few situations. Some players wanted this and using the dash bar to restrict it seems like a good tradeoff. It also leaves a dash trail to make you more visible.” You can also sprint on the rails as well.
No price has been decided for the final game yet but it will be a paid title when it is finished and the developers say Facebook gave them the go ahead for eventual release on the Quest Oculus Store.
“We’ll keep working on the game and take in community feedback, and release new builds at the end of each month until we release,” Dessaux explained in an email.
Check out the latest trailer here:
You can find the PC version of the game — which should work with both Oculus Rift and SteamVR headsets — in the game’s Discord server. You can also find the development version of Hyper Dash on SideQuest here.
SpellPunk is a newly announced magic-dueling VR game with a bright, neon-tinted art style featuring vibrant magical effects and immersive hand-gesture gameplay that tasks players with drawing runes in the air to cast spells.
Incineration Productions is a new indie game studio established in 2018 and SpellPunk is set to be their first release and it’s coming exclusively to PC VR headsets via Steam and Viveport in Early Access on April 24th.
SpellPunk is a magical dueling game. In many ways, it looks and seems similar to both The Unspoken and Wands, except with a very heavy and specific focus on drawing particular runes in the air to cast spells at your enemy. There is no spellbook and no menu, you’ve just got to master your magic and use it to win in battle.
Notably, Penka Kouneva is in charge of the music, she is best known for her work as the composer on AAA games like Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands, World of Warcraft: Legion, Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. Her talents should help make SpellPunk feel even more distinct and magical than its already abstract and vibrant art style.
Rather than your typical fantasy sounds though, Kouneva is employing a more modern musical style with hip-hop and EDM tracks instead to mirror the Jet Set Radio-style cel-shaded aesthetic.
Check out these amazing screenshots to get a feel for the impressive art style:
You can get a glimpse of what the game is like in the reveal trailer up above and keep an eye out for our impressions of the game closer to its Early Access launch on April 24th on Steam and Viveport.
Ironlights is a new 1v1 multiplayer dueling game for Oculus Quest and PC VR headsets that offers a new approach to melee combat in VR, but does it land the swing or miss entirely? Read our review to find out!
The first time you stand in an Ironlights arena and grab your glowing weapon as it flies towards you, it’s an epic feeling. You’re a gladiator, performing in front of thousands of spectators, and nothing can phase you. Even many games later, the feeling never properly wears off. I still find myself gesturing to amp up a non-existent crowd or making aggressive motions towards my opponent before the round begins. However, it’s everything that comes after the initial pre-game ritual that makes Ironlights a bit harder to judge.
Ironlights was first revealed earlier this year, and it was already a significant way through its development cycle at the time. That’s why the game’s Kickstarter campaign back in January presented a playable game, not a conceptual one. With the Kickstarter only attempting to raise extra funds for non-essential elements of the game (such as additional armor models), Ironlights set itself on a quicker (and less hypothetical) path to release than most other VR games that use crowdfunding platforms.
At its core, Ironlights is a 1v1 melee multiplayer VR game that offers 5: Knight (two-handed greatsword), Duelist (rapier and buckler), Monk (staff), Ninja (duel katars), and Crusader (flail and shield). Each have their own pros and cons, and players will no doubt find themselves drawn to certain classes over others.
After a closed beta for Kickstarter backers and reviewers, Ironlights releases this week for PC VR and the Oculus Quest, with cross-platform online play and the ability to run LAN matches if two users are playing on the same network.
Players are able to host their own private matches or search for a match online. While it is a multiplayer-focused game, it’s accompanied by a skeleton, if still welcome, single player ‘campaign’. The single player content is pretty bare, offering a tournament system that allows you to play matches against AI and move up through different leagues of increasingly more difficult competition. You’re able to play single player games while searching for a multiplayer match, so it’s good that it exists, but the single player content on its own gets quite repetitive very quickly. But for what it’s worth, expanding the single player offering into a more fleshed-out campaign is on the roadmap for potential updates.
Re-Inventing The Sword And Shield
What is most interesting about Ironlights is the way it tries to rethink, and re-invent, melee combat in VR.
Melee combat has always been an interesting virtual reality puzzle for developers to solve. The lack of advanced haptics in current VR controller technology means that when steel meets steel in VR, you don’t get that satisfying clank and the force feedback that you would expect in real life. Your weapons are missing physical weight, and VR controllers have no way to simulate the effect of a swing that’s stopped short by an obstacle. This hasn’t stopped developers from making VR melee games, and there are plenty of good examples, but it’s rarely quite as satisfying as you might want it to be.
Ironlights has taken a new approach in an attempt to accommodate and circumvent these problems. In Ironlights, your weapon is only good for one hit. It sounds counter-intuitive, and at first it is. After every hit, your weapon disintegrates and you have to swing it behind your back to replenish it. The reason for this is simple – disintegrating the weapon means your swing can hit an enemy or an object, disintegrate and therefore allow your physical swing to continue on its natural path. In removing the clash of objects from the equation, there’s less disconnect between your actions in real life and your actions in VR.
All combat in Ironlights also takes place in slow motion. This allows you to make measured, calculated attacks and blocks which will, once again, minimize the disconnect between real life and in-game movements. This system has good conceptual intentions, but it does require you to really play along and train yourself to move in slow motion. If you swing wildly fast and with reckless abandon, you won’t get very far.
On paper, these measures seem like a truly valiant effort to solve the ‘melee problem’ of VR, or at least circumvent it. In my hands-on back in February, I was even quite bullish on the system. However, after more time with the game, it ultimately falls short of being a practicable and enjoyable solution most of the time. I frequently found myself frustrated, especially because the game tells you that faster attacks do more damage, but the faster you move the more out-of-sync you get with the slow motion action. It seems very contradictory by design.
It’s very hard to tell when you’re playing the game correctly. If you move too fast and don’t play along with the slow motion concept, it doesn’t feel like the game is punishing you for a mistake. It just feels confusing and takes a while for you to get your bearings, as your in-game hands and weapons are on a different trajectory to your real-life movements.
A few tweaks to the system might be able to help this in future updates, but as it stands, the system feels like the perfect example of good in theory but frustrating in practice.
The Feel of the Fight
Weapon logistics aside, the matches have some other integral systems as well, each of which heavily impacts the flow and feel of fights.
Both players have two resource bars – health and power. These are displayed on a big jumbo-tron behind your opponent and, as you would guess, you lose the match if you lose all your health.
In order to attack, you need to expend power. You can charge up power, but it comes at the expense of portions of your health becoming more “vulnerable” (meaning you take more damage). You can also wait for power to naturally recharge, but that takes significantly longer.
Players can only attack one at a time – one player attacks and can inflict damage, while the other tries to block. Initiating a round of attacks expends power – the maximum length of time you’re able to attack for is determined by the amount of power you have charged up.
The problem with this system is that once you’re low on both health and power, you’ve basically lost the game. However, you’re reliant on your opponent to end it. You can’t charge enough power to attack yourself (as you’re too low health) and the natural power recharge builds incredibly slowly – it’s rarely quick enough to turn around a lost match. Because of this, you become a sitting duck until the enemy has enough power to kill you, which can really stall out the end of some games.
In a situation where both players are low on power and health, the game really slows to a crawl. Neither player can sacrifice health to charge up power, so you both have to wait for the natural regeneration. You end up standing in place, waiting for power to recharge and the whole match becomes very underwhelming.
The question of class balance is also still up in the air since you cannot see which class an opponent has picked until you’re already in the arena. Given the limited playtime and the small pre-release playerbase, it’s hard to accurately judge whether each class is balanced just yet, but there’s definitely some areas for concern. The Monk against the Crusader, for example, is a difficult match-up for the former – the Crusader can combo the flail and shield one after the other to easily blocks Monk’s attacks, leaving very few openings. However, some UploadVR staff felt that the Crusader was quite under-powered compared to the other classes when it came to actually attacking due to how slowly the flail swings.
Additionally, the Knight’s greatsword is so large that it actually counts as two hits at once since the sword is divided vertically into two parts. As a result, a swing through an enemy has a high chance of landing two hits. The Ninja is a good counter because they can block with a katar in each hand, negating both halves of the greatsword at once. The Monk, on the other hand, only has a single staff, making it nearly impossible to fully block the greatsword at all.
It’s hard to see where each class will land, but some future balance changes might be needed.
Close Quarters Combat
An area in which Ironlights truly excels is the replay client. Ironlights allows you to save a replay of any match, which you can then open in the replay client and easily fast-forward through. You can also use the replay client to create GIFs, which are emailed to you. There is lots of flexibility in choosing the right angle, rotation, and position of the replay camera for GIFs, so I think this feature is going to be absolutely fantastic for content creators to take advantage of.
The replay client is also going to be expanded post-launch to include a spectator mode, so that in-progress matches can be spectated in a similar fashion, but in 2D mode on a computer. This will be a huge post-launch addition that bodes incredibly well for broadcasting and any potential Ironlights esports tournaments.
Given the fantastic replay client, it’s a shame that there’s a noticeable lack of variety in the game’s environments and the music. The visuals of the arena do change slightly, but it feels like a huge area of missed potential. Themed arenas could really spice things up a bit, as could a few more music tracks (although more menu music will be added in an update the week after launch). The armor and the character designs are fantastic and are a highlight of the game, with lots of customization on offer – it’s just a shame that the environments and music doesn’t have the same amount of depth.
Ironlights Review Final Verdict
While it might seem like I’ve had a lot of negative things to say about Ironlights, there is a lot to like about it as well. The development team should be congratulated on coming up with a system that aims to avoid some of the issues associated with VR melee combat. Even through it doesn’t always work and is not entirely successful, it remains an intelligent and valiant attempt at innovation. Few other games have come as close to the mark with mechanics that are this experimental.
However after so many matches, the gameplay started to feel repetitive and the flow of combat never really clicked for me. This repetitiveness was only compounded by the lack of variety in music and arena environments.
Maybe with a stronger player base and a developing meta, this might change. Likewise, others might not have the same qualms and really enjoy the flow of the slow motion combat – anecdotally, I’ve read posts from other beta players online who are much more enamored with the system than I am.
Being a multiplayer game, balance patches and adjustments to the system can result in quick adjustments as needed – it’s hard to say where the innovative system will land in a few months time. Developer E McNeill has been very clear – the full launch is not the end of the road for Ironlights, but the beginning. In fact, the post-launch roadmap has already been laid out. And for that reason alone, I have a lot of faith that Ironlights can develop into something that is much more than the sum of its current parts.
For now though, the game does fall just short of being something great. It’s probably worth checking out if you’re a fan of melee VR games and are looking for a 1v1 multiplayer title, but it’s also hard to gauge the longevity of the game and its mechanics at this point.
Ultimately, Ironlights has set itself up very well as an enjoyable game with lots of potential for improvement. For all its faults, it still has good bones – it just needs to make some changes here and there before it can call itself a sparkling piece of armor.
Ironlights releases April 9th for PC VR, through the Oculus Store and Steam, and for Oculus Quest. This review was conducted primarily on the Oculus Quest version of the game, along with the Oculus Home for Rift version via Oculus Link using an Oculus Quest.
Long-time independent VR developer E McNeill successfully funded his latest project on Kickstarter and recently sat down with us in our virtual studio for an interview.
There aren’t many developers with as much experience making VR games as McNeill. He’s built strategy games like Astraeus, Skylight, Tactera, and Darknet for VR. His latest project is a cross-platform sword-fighting project built with design considerations like slow-motion and one-hit swords that force players into a rhythm in multiplayer battles.
“I can’t just make sort of smallish, niche strategy games anymore,” McNeill said. “I want to make something that is a lot more ambitious, that has a better chance of standing out.”
The game is planned for Steam and the Oculus Store (with cross-buy between the Rift and Quest versions) and McNeill says he received tentative approval of the idea for Oculus Quest. The crowdfunding project added more than 500 backers and $21,000 to his development efforts. Ironlights ends its fundraising on Kickstarter at 8:45 am Pacific on Thursday February 13 and a beta release of the game is slated to go out when the campaign ends.
We discussed McNeill’s path from the Oculus Rift Kickstarter project in 2012 to now. He launched his first game on the Gear VR Innovator Editor in December 2014 and that was so early he couldn’t even sell the project since there wasn’t a payment method available. He’s been an independent VR developer for so long, and working mostly on his own for much of that time, that it was great to have him in our studio to discuss the challenges of VR development and his plans for Ironlights.
