A release date is set for VR puzzle game, The Last Clockwinder.
The single-player ‘co-op game will release June 2 for Meta Quest 2 and PC VR via Steam.
The Last Clockwinder Release Date Revealed
There’s also a new release date trailer, embedded above, giving us a proper dive into the actual story and voice acting that will accompany the automation puzzle gameplay.
As we’ve seen in previous trailers, you’ll be solving puzzles by acting out actions to create a chain of automated robots performing tasks. Here’s a description from the developers:
The Last Clockwinder is a VR puzzle-automation game set in a cozy sci-fi world. Your mission is to repair the Clocktower, an ancient haven for the galaxy’s plants and seeds built into the trunk of a colossal tree. Use the Clockwinder’s gloves to turn every simple task into a looping clockwork automaton. These clones can do everything you can do, from planting to storing to passing items around.
Create an interconnected system out of your own clones. Grow plants, harvest resources, and work together to save the clocktower!
The latest version of the Quest system software, v40, adds more Bluetooth keyboard support and more.
Despite ‘The Big 4-0’ headline on the Oculus Blog, it’s a rather low key set of updates for the Quest in v40. The biggest focus is on a suite of new privacy and security-related features across different areas of the OS.
One such feature is the ability to lock individual apps behind an unlock pattern of your choosing. This was originally announced in March, as part of Meta’s plans for increased parental controls on Quest.
Per-app lock will now allow parents to prevent children from accessing select apps without their permission — every time you want to open a locked app, the user will have to enter the custom unlock pattern. This can be different on an app-by-app basis, and is available in addition to the existing headset-wide lock pattern feature.
Another new security feature is the addition of 3DS-enabled credit card payments in VR, which is now an opt-in feature for developers with in-app purchases. This allows you to enter and charge a credit card solely in VR — previously, credit card information had to be entered through the Oculus mobile app.
Messenger on Quest now also offers optional end-to-end encryption for both messages and audio calls in VR.
For Bluetooth keyboard owners, more models are now supported with tracking in v40. A second Apple Magic Keyboard model — the one with a full numeric keyboard — is now supported, alongside the Logitech K375 and Logitech MX Keys models.
A few audio accessibility options are now available as well — there’s a mono audio option, as well as balance controls for left and right audio channels.
As usual for Team Beef ports, you can install the app completely free of charge, but some functionality won’t be available until you take extra steps to add the full PC game files yourself, from a copy you own. You’ll also need to enable developer mode on your Quest first, as per usual for SideQuest. If you haven’t done this before, you can read more in our guide to setting up and using SideQuest.
As it stands, installing the Quake 3 Arena port directly from SideQuest includes the official (and free) id software demo. This means you’ll be able to play some of the single-player for free with just the SideQuest install, alongside multiplayer on specific servers marked as ‘DEMO’.
The SideQuest install also comes with a companion app called Q3 Launcher that adds additional functionality, such as changing your player name and installing mods, new single-player campaigns and map packs.
If you want to play the full game, you will need to own a legal copy of Quake 3 Arena for PC on Steam or elsewhere. Once you locate your installed PC files for Quake 3 Arena, all you need to do is copy all the PK3 files in the baseq3 folderinto the /ioquake3quest/baseq3 folder on your Quest, using SideQuest or Windows explorer.
The port includes full tracked VR weapons, intuitive VR weapon selection, support for 90, 80 and 72Hz framerates, along with cross-platform play with PC and Android players.
An update from Pavlov developer davevillz shed some light on the progress of Pavlov Shack.
Pavlov Shack is a new version of the popular multiplayer VR shooter, and has been in development for Quest for quite a while now. But it might finally be making its way over to the official Oculus Store soon. Over a year ago, Shack made its App Lab debut, bringing a sudden rise in players.
As we prepare shack for release on the oculus store, We've made the decision to drop Quest1 support as we encountered performance regression/issues on the new engine; this forced our hand to focus on Quest2. We'll be releasing a final beta soon and submit to oculus qa for release
However, a new update from developer davevillz indicates that the team will soon release a final beta of Shack, which will be sent to Meta’s QA team in submission for an official full release on the Oculus Store for Quest.
In the same tweet, davevillz also revealed that Shack will be dropping support for the original Quest headset. This is because the team “encountered performance regression/issues on the new engine” on Quest 1, which “forced [their] hand to focus on Quest 2.”
Pavlov started its life as a competitive shooter for PC VR, heavily inspired by the Counter-Strike franchise. Pavlov Shack is the Quest spin-off of the original, scaled-down for Quest’s standalone hardware and currently available for free in beta on App Lab.
A version of Shack is also planned for release on PSVR 2, once the headset is available. Both versions of Shack, on Quest and PSVR 2, will support cross-play with each other, but not with the original PC VR version of Pavlov.
Given the level of polish and detail in Little Cities, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a Quest release developed by quite a large team of people.
But speaking to Purple Yonder’s James Howard last week revealed to me just how small the studio really is. “[My wife] Kelly and I both worked on the design,” he tells me. “I did all the programming for the game, so I ended up working out the technical systems for the code and stuff. And then she works on a lot of the stuff like the UI design and getting the levels just right — thinking what each item could be, the different buildings you can get, working all those things out.”
James and Kelly Howard make up the indie UK studio, which is the driving force behind Little Cities. They were helped along by some contracted artists across the development cycle, as well as an audio designer and a composer. nDreams also came on board later in the process, for publishing support, but for the most part, it was quite a tight-knit group.
Could such a little team be what helped Little Cities expertly deliver on a VR-first approach to a city simulator game?
Starting Small, Expanding Out
Little Cities had a curious launch. Sandwiched next to Cities VR, there was an unavoidable risk of being overshadowed on release, perhaps looking like a simplified version of the former. As it turned out, the underdog came out on top; Cities VR failed to fully deliver on its expansive vision, marred by under-performing visuals and overwhelming VR design decisions. Little Cities, meanwhile, came away with a focused approach to the genre that puts intelligent VR implementation first.
But how did this tiny indie studio go from inception in 2018 to releasing a nDreams-supported title on the biggest VR headset of the moment just a few years later?
Long before the days of VR, James began his game development journey as a kid, making games in BASIC. A few years and a computer science degree later, he went on to cut his teeth with opportunities at some big name studios — EA, Rockstar and then, Ninja Theory.
“I did a lot of cool stuff there [at Ninja Theory], and that was where I really started to get involved with VR,” he said. “We had a really small team. I think there was about two or three of us, depending on when it was. But we were just concentrating on VR and just exploring VR stuff.”
He ended up working on the VR version of Ninja Theory’s 2017 title Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. “I did most of the work for Hellblade VR, and mapping that to VR, which had a lot of challenges,” he said. “And then, Ninja Theory got acquired by Microsoft and they didn’t really have as much of a focus on VR, but that was something I still wanted to do.”
As that experience came to a close, he began thinking about pursuing his own VR projects. “Working on something like Hellblade VR was interesting, because people weren’t doing third person VR games, and it works. It works quite well. And it left us with a feeling of like, ‘Well, which other genres could work in VR, which no one’s attempted?'”
He had always been a fan of the city simulator genre — one that, at the time, had yet to be tackled properly in VR — and began thinking about how early inspirations, like the original Sim City and Sim City 2000, might be adapted for VR.
It was at this point, around 2018, that James began work on what would become Little Cities. “I had this prototype that I was working on, and Kelly, my wife, was like, ‘This is something really special here. We should actually take this a bit more seriously. What do you think? What do you want to do with this type of thing?'” They presented the prototype to the UK Games Fund, and the resulting government grant allowed them to kick Purple Yonder, and Little Cities, fully into action.
“We just like went and jumped into the deep end, set up a company. We built [the prototype] up a little bit more and we ended up taking it to nDreams and they loved it too. As soon as they saw the game, they just got it. They just saw what we were trying to do and they were able to give us some support on the publishing side.”
Interaction, Intuition, Innovation
Four years later and Little Cities is available on the Quest platform, a masterclass in made-for-VR design that presents an experience that is equally accessible and enjoyable for newcomers and experts to VR and the city simulator genre alike.
However, early versions of the game weren’t quite as intuitive as the final product. The user interface itself — one of the game’s shining accomplishments — underwent four or five complete redesigns over the course of development. “Really early on, it was just taking concepts like big flat panels, like you’d have in a PC title. It was just like, ‘Well, this isn’t fun. This isn’t really using VR to its best. What else can we do?'”
It wasn’t just clunky PC-to-VR menu translations that were avoided – every traditional aspect of the genre was reassessed and adjusted accordingly for the new medium. “Say you’ve never played VR before and you go buy a Quest and you bought our game,” explains James. “We want you to have a good experience. We don’t want it to be difficult to get into. We wanted it to be really accessible. And the same if maybe you’ve never played a city builder before either [and] you don’t know any of the general rules that you have around these types of games. We just wanted to make it so anyone can pick up and play it.”
Gridlocked Traffic
All vehicles in Little Cities come from seaports or an airport. This includes construction vehicles, which need to arrive at a vacant space of land before construction can begin. “Traditionally in a game like this, you build your road networks, and then if there’s a lot of traffic, you just get like a stat somewhere, like, ‘Oh, the traffic’s bad.’ And you’re like, okay, guess I have to do something about it.”
Little Cities shifts this stat to a visual representation — you can actually see traffic building up and blocking construction vehicles from reaching their destination, slowing your progress. “That’s not affecting the citizens so much as it’s affecting the player. So now they just naturally get that feedback. That’s directly affecting them instead.”
Adapting the simulation language in this way – away from stats and notifications, focusing on a visual-led approach – avoids overwhelming the player with complex menus, budgeting, finance options and the like.
“When you’re building a game based on a simulation, you can go really deep with what you’re simulating — what your citizens are doing and the reasons they’re coming or leaving and stuff like that. But what it comes down to is… If you can’t show the player all those things in the simulation, then it’s sort of wasted.”
Creating Little Moments
When James asked his non-gamer dad if he wanted to try Little Cities, he only expected him to last 10 minutes before taking off the headset and giving some pleasant remarks. “We lost him for like about two and a half hours. He just played until the battery ran out. It was like, ‘Oh, okay, that’s interesting cause he doesn’t play games, so…'”
It’s easy to get lost in Little Cities, and the backbone of its immersion is a plethora of small yet poignant details at every turn. A whale breeching, hot air balloons taking to the sky, or a flock of birds scattering around you – these charming moments add hugely important depth to the experience. “We got traffic in the game, working with the cars driving around. And suddenly that brought a little bit more life to the game. And then from there, the next natural step was police cars, fire engines, stuff like that. The game’s even more alive.”
“And at some point, we were like, ‘Okay, these little details are really cool.’ That sort of became like a bit of a pillar in our development — little stories, little cities. The idea that there’s actually a whole subsystem in the code which is working out like, ‘Okay, what’s another cool thing to show to the player?'”
A Strong Foundation, Ripe For Expansion
There’s lots on the horizon for Little Cities. Work has already begun on hand tracking support, set to arrive in June, thanks to requests and feedback from players. The game wasn’t designed with hand tracking in mind, but the existing virtual hand-based menu and watch system feels like it was. “That just naturally translates really well to hand tracking,” says James. “It just fits, it’s great.”
Cosmetic and decorative items, arriving in July, will give players more personalization options with new one or two tile decorative options. “Maybe you can put a statue or a fountain, or there might be things that you can put [like] benches by the roadsides and stuff. Those are the kinds of things we’re thinking. If you ‘re already building a city, but you want to just make it look a bit nicer.”
Purple Yonder has lots of ideas on where else they can take them game, but they’ll also be listening to the community and shaping support around what they hear. “The one thing about Little Cities is that every time someone plays it, they’ve got ideas,” says James. “There’s just so many ways you can build on it and extend it, and we’ve got a whole host of ideas of how we can do that.”
With such a strong foundation, the only way for Little Cities to go is up.
Each week we will be taking a look at some of the upcoming videogames, demos and unique experiences available through Oculus App Lab for the Meta Quest headsets. Many of these videogames come in varying states of completion, so each title is subject to change.
This week we’re testing our cognitive function, swinging through the air and building racetracks.
Upgrade VR
Remember when every platform was bringing out a Brain Training game or app? That feels a bit dated when it comes to VR platforms, but the use of motion controls and freedom of movement opens up that formula. With Upgrade VR, you won’t really be exercising too much of the old great matter, though it’ll nudge you occasionally. This app tests your coordination, concentration, reaction and memory.
This is achieved through various mini-games, which start off very simply. Reaction, for example, fires balls towards you from portals. If it’s a green ball, you use the green coloured hand, if it’s blue, then it’s the other hand. At first, the balls move through the air slowly, over time they speed up and introduce balls that must be avoided. In memory, you’ll be shown strings of 3D models and must remember the order they appeared and place them in the correct spots.
All of this adds up scores, which depict your cognition ability. This all takes place within a sci-fi environment which feels pulled straight from a Hollywood movie. Everything is clean and well designed, there are no errors in the motion controls, it can be played standing or sitting and when you come back to the games in order to break your high score, it feels tremendous.
Grabble
Straight out of the gate, I have to say, the soundtrack to Grabble absolutely slaps (do people still say ‘slaps’?). The music has this great futuristic, funk feel which goes really well with the action. What’s the action? Well, I guess you could say this is a Spider-Man simulator. You have a grappling hook in each hand and they must be used to move through the air, between blocks.
The game ends if you fall into the infinite void below, which seems to happen quite a lot. You see, when grappling, the player moves very quickly. Often before the blocks even get a chance to spawn in. Thankfully, also attached to your hands, are boosters which can help propel you in particular directions saving you from danger, or even slowing your speed a little.
Grabble is pretty ‘bare bones’ currently, but the basis is there for a bigger and better experience. Plus, who doesn’t love swinging through the air on grapple hooks?
Racemaker VR
Full disclosure – I pride myself at being able to play pretty much all VR games without feeling ill. Racemaker VR broke me, however.
Before we get to that, let me first recommend the game, because it’s kind of brilliant. You start in front of a gridded table with a toolbox of racetrack sections in your hand. The goal is to create a fun and frantic racetrack using curves, tunnels, speed boosts, jumps and straight sections of track.
Aside from some moments where the track pieces sometimes don’t snap together easily, building a track is engaging and enjoyable. You can make it as simple as you like or create a complex track of inclines and bridges constantly running at high speed. Once the track is complete, it’s time to race, and here is where I almost threw up my lunch.
Getting behind the wheel of the car is, at first, very smooth. Almost too smooth. Taking the corners felt like my view was overshooting my brain and stomach, cresting the bumpy track was like being thrown into a washing machine and when I hit a speed boost to jump through the air, I felt like I left my stomach behind on the track. Now, you might fare better than I. So, I would never not recommend the game, but be aware that the actual racing might cause some stomach upset.
Resolution Games unveiled a teaser for its next Demeo campaign, titled Curse of the Serpent Lord, which is arriving soon.
The new campaign will arrive on June 16, available as a free update on all platforms. It will be the fourth campaign for the game, following on from the initial launch campaign, The Black Sarcophagus, and subsequent expansions, Realm of the Rat King and Roots of Evil.
There’s no other details available about Curse of the Serpent Lord besides the image above, but safe to say we can expect to hear more across the next few weeks before launch.
The most recent campaign, Roots of Evil, took us to a slightly different enviornment from the first two campaigns and added a new class, the Bard. Here’s an extract from our hands-on:
If you loved what was on offer with Demeo’s base launch and Realm of the Rat King expansion, there’s little reason not to jump into Roots of Evil. There’s enough new twists here to give your party of 4 some welcome new challenges, and it’s great to see the game quite literally branching out (sorry) into new territory. VR’s best social gaming experience just keeps getting better.
The first post-launch Cities VR patch dropped yesterday, addressing several issues that emerged at launch two weeks ago.
The patch doesn’t include any new content, but instead makes changes, fixes and adjustments to various areas of the game to improve the overall experience.
Most notably, the tutorial has been expanded and restructured with new steps and improved text and images. There’s also now a save reminder, which will pop up if you haven’t saved your game in the last 10 minutes. Exiting to the main menu will also prompt you to save as well, ensuring players don’t lose progress accidentally.
• An enhanced tutorial to help players get a good start as mayors • New controls menu • Brightened the darkest part of nights • Added a day/night cycle option to the New Game menu • AND MORE!
The patch also addresses the darkness of the night cycle across all maps, brightening up the darkest points of the nights for further visibility. Plus, you can now turn off the day/night cycle when starting a new map, if you so wish.
In the release version, tunnels weren’t cutting through terrain properly — something I noticed myself, while playing for review — but this has now been fixed. There’s also some changes to the controls, with the bulldoze button moving from Y to X. Helpfully, the Y button will now be used as a back button for navigating menus, in addition to the existing B button option on the right controller.
We weren’t the biggest fans of Cities VR in our review a few weeks ago. While it does bring the core Skylines experience over to VR, it doesn’t feel as satisfying to play as it should and really misses the mark with its visuals. You can read our full review here.
On Reddit, the developers also teased a content update coming in June — the “Metro and Traffic Routing Update”, for which you can see some key art embedded above.
Accessory company Kiwi announced its take on a Quest 2 battery strap, available soon.
Since the launch of the original Quest, we’ve seen a bunch of official and third party takes on battery straps that extend the playing time of standalone headsets in various ways.
Just like other options, this strap from Kiwi will not only extend the time you can spend in Quest 2 in one session, but should also act as a counter-weight to balance the weight of the headset more effectively.
Kiwi says it is using a battery from Amprius, a California-based company that claims to ship batteries that are “the industry’s highest energy density cells”. Looking at the tweet above, it seems this 6400MAh Amprius battery will be located right at the back of the strap, similar to Meta’s official battery-clad Elite Strap option. In our testing, Meta’s Elite Strap provided about “double” the playtime to Quest 2.
Wanadev Studio announced its second piece of Ragnarock DLC this week — a collaboration with Hellfest Summer Open Air festival coming to the game in June 2022.
Following on from the first DLC pack, the Gloryhammer RAID in March, the Hellfest RAID pack will be a collaboration with the French heavy metal festival, featuring news songs and a new environment.
Hellfest is an annual open-air festival held in Clisson, France and one of the biggest metal festivals in all of Europe.
Arriving next month, the Ragnarock x Hellfest collaboration DLC will include songs taken from this year’s lineup at Hellfest. There’s no details on the exact tracks to be included yet, but the 2022 lineup includes some massive rock and metal bands — Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Nine Inch Nails and Deftones, just to name a few.
Bringing some iconic tracks from a few of those bands would be a huge boon for Ragnarock. I’m personally holding out for Enter Sandman and Sweet Child O’ Mine, though that’s probably dreaming pretty big.
Alongside the new songs, the Hellfest DLC will also include a new environment, presumably a visual tie-in with the festival itself, and a new hammer.
The first patch for 