From Flight School Studio, the creators of Manifest 99 (2017), comes a new survival game that maroons you on a small deserted island, leaving you with only your wits and crafting skills at your disposal. Called Island Time VR, the game is slated to release this spring on PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive.
You’ve been shipwrecked on a coffee table-sized island. With only Carl the Crab at your side, your sole task is to survive as long as possible while crafting tools and fending off dangerous animals such as sharks and seagulls. Of course, when you’re not staring at your watch waiting for your hunger meter to reach critical levels, you can always enjoy a beautiful tropical sunset.
Flight School Studio says Island Time VR features an event system that determines when and what amounts of resources are made available to players, something that was no doubt designed to always keeps you on toes.
“The game’s difficulty curve and secrets are designed to be discovered over multiple playthroughs,” said Adam Volker, Creative Director at Flight School Studio. “The player might craft a new item or find new foodstuffs they haven’t seen before. This trial and error is what teaches players to survive as long as they can.”
If you’re looking to try out Island Time VR, you’ll find public demos at this year’s SXSW in booth 2266.
MasterWorks: Journey Through History (2018) is a new app for Oculus Rift and Gear VR that takes you on a guided tour through four cultural sites spanning three continents. Created using photogrammetry and presented with audio clips from experts, collectible artifacts and 3D 360 photos, the app does more than just let you explore the sites; it preserves these sites digitally while teaching you about the real-world threats they face amidst a rapidly changing climate.
Spanning over 3000 years of human history, you’ll be able to visit:
The historical city of Ayutthaya, Thailand, the second capital of the Siamese Kingdom
Chavín de Huántar, a pre-Incan temple in the Peruvian Andes
Mesa Verde Native American cliff dwellings of Colorado
The stone carvings of Mt Rushmore in South Dakota
You can download MasterWorks: Journey Through History for Rift here, and for Gear VR here.
Norman Chan and Jeremy Williams of Tested visited CyArk, the studio behind MasterWorks, to talk a little about how they captured the sites.
Founded in 2003, the non-profit company’s mission, CyArk CEO John Ristevski told Tested, is to capture, share and archive the world’s cultural heritage.
“We capture these places in accurate 3D, we archive it in case something happens to these sites – in case of destruction or damage – and we also makes this data available in interesting ways, such as in VR,” Ristevski explained.
The studio does this by using a laser-scanning Light Detection and Ranging device (LIDAR) and photo imagery using professional-level DSLRs and imagery captured via drones. Combining these two fundamental techniques, the company can make highly-accurate recreations of scenes like the ones seen below.
As it stands now, the process of creating these experiences is still pretty arduous, requiring between 5-7 days of on-site time to capture an area about the size of a quarter-mile squared area (about 400m squared).
CyArk Director of Product Scott Lee tells Tested their team uses motion-controlled camera rigs to capture the photos, which he says ensures the required 60-80 percent overlap is obtained to generate the photogrammetric models.
EVE: Valkyrie (2016), the space dogfighter originally developed by CCP Games, just opened up its free weekend, which gives anyone with an Oculus Rift an all-access pass to play for the next few days.
The free weekend is already in effect, and will continue until February 19th at 12:00 AM PST (local time here).
The game, which recently passed hands to Sumo Digital due to CCP shelving its VR-producing branches back in October last year, has been an early VR stalwart since we first saw it in 2014 when it carried the moniker EVE-VR. The game has since seen a number of substantial updates which saw several maps and game mode types added, and eventually resulted in the refocusing of the game’s ships to be more in line with first-person shooters, offering several distinct classes to anyone regardless of playtime or in-game achievement.
EVE: Valkyrie also supports crossplay for all of its supported platforms which include HTC Vive (via Steam) and PSVR, and more recently players on PC and PS4. Console and PC support came alongside the game’s largest and most recent update Warzone, which aimed to revitalize the online multiplayer with the promise of more players.
Valkyrie is currently discounted on Steam at $15, and on the Oculus Store at $18. Download Valkyriehereto get started on the free weekend.
We’re all so busy looking at our smartphones and vying for likes on social media that we didn’t bother to check whether we were invaded by a hostile alien species or not; that’s at least the basic premise behind Viral Invasion, a game still in concept phase from Stockholm-based studio Hatrabbit Entertainment.
The object of the game, Hatrabbit says, will be to gather as many human followers as possible with the eventual goal of controlling Earth. As you progress, you unlock new missions, world cities and gadgets with achievements available in various places.
Hatrabbit describes it as a cross between Job Simulator (2016) and Tim Burton’s delectably bad film Mars Attacks! (1996), but with social elements. The studio says you’ll be able to play Viral Invasion solo, in co-op, or in PvP mode.
image courtesy Hatrabbit Entertainment
The poor egg-shaped humans are designed to make great objects for vacuuming, golfing, swatting with a tennis racket, and shooting at targets—whatever causes the most havoc while gaining followers. Watch out for cats though, because they’ll instantly steal your followers when they’re around.
The studio hasn’t made any firm commitments regarding specific headset support, only saying that they aim to build support for VR-platforms with six degrees of freedom (6DoF) positional movement, although there’s the possibility they’ll expand further into other platforms.
The studio released their first VR game, Merry Snowballs (2017), last December on Vive and Rift. The room-scale game proved to be a highly polished experience among users.
Because it’s still a concept, there’s no release date as such – although Hatrabbit has a sign-up form for prospective beta testers, which they say will help them gauge interest in the game. Sign up for beta testing here.
Brass Tactics Arena is the free version of the upcoming real-time strategy game Brass Tactics from Hidden Path Entertainment, the studio behind the Defense Grid franchise and Age of Empires II HD (2013). Available today on Oculus Home for free,BT Arena is definitely looking to hook you into getting the full paid game with its unlimited online gameplay and bite-sized campaign.
While more of a demo than a game unto itself, casual and hardcore RTS players will likely appreciate the chunk of content available in the free Arena version, which includes competitive and co-op play, and player vs. AI on single map. For comparison, the full paid game boasts 20 maps and 3 AI personalities, each with four difficulty settings. One of those AI enemies is played by Aidan Gillen, aka Lord Petyr Baelish of Game of Thrones fame.
With dozens of units and upgrades to outfit your tiny army, it’s easy to see from BT Arena that the full game won’t be pulling any punches in the balance department; and it’s definitely a game of balance. You’ll be swooping around the map trying to see what the other player is doing while physically conducting troop movements, creating units, and upgrading buildings—all while trying to crush the enemy. Because you can’t hotkey to home, or parts of your sprawling node-based fortresses, multitasking is a significantly slower experience than traditional PC RTSs, but this actually gives you more time to choose the right units for the right job.
Check out our latest hands-on with Brass Tactics to learn more about the base game. We’ll of course have a review out next week in time for launch that will go into greater depth.
We’ll update this article once the download link for Brass Tactics Arena go live.
Carbon Studio, the studio behind Alice VR (2017), today announced their Early Access spellcasting action-adventure The Wizards is slated to launch in-full on March 8th. The Wizards supports HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets.
Carbon Studio says that the full release will bring new content, improvements and bug fixes. Here’s the list, taken from the studio’s announcement on Steam:
Two new stages on the Ruins
Final stage on the Shrike’s Desert that will conclude the story
Boss fights with fearsome creatures
Wave-based Ruins stages will be moved to the Arena Mode
Master Enchantments – powerful upgrades for all the spells
Steam Achievements
The Wizards is also getting LIV Mixed Reality support, which easily lets you set up mixed reality capture. Games already supporting LIV mixed reality capture include Space Pirate Trainer (2017), Audio Shield (2016), The Blu (2016), and Hover Junkers (2016).
Carbon Studio says this isn’t the end for The Wizards however, and that the full release “will not be the end of [their] work” on The Wizards.
“We will keep working on new features and improvements based on your feedback,” the studio says. “Details on the new content coming after leaving Early Access will be revealed soon.”
The Wizards is currently selling for $20 on Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR, the Oculus Store (Rift), and Viveport (Vive).
Fantastic Contraption (2016), the building puzzler from indie studio Northway Games, is getting its first big update since launch, which includes double the levels and a few new tantalizing features that didn’t make the cut back in April 2016 when it hit Steam.
The free update, dubbed Version 2.0, comes with what Northway calls in a blogpost “a whole new ‘B-Side’ playlist,” which puts the game to 100 levels strong. The creators say the new levels help smooth out the introductory learning curve and add some high-end challenges in the later part of the game.
The ‘B-side playlist’ also includes a number of levels featuring all-new gameplay mechanics: contraption-destroying Cactuses, and Balloons which can carry your creations past obstacles to safety. Northway says the new features should be considered “little teasers […] things that we’ve been working on since version 1.0, way back when VR was just a baby.”
As a result of building support for several different platforms—including Vive, Rift, Windows MR, and PSVR—Northway says that on PC you’ll also be able to play Version 2.0 with a below min-spec computer. Since Valve hasn’t established a minimum spec, and only a recommended spec, we assume the studio is referring to Oculus’ Min Spec, which sets that bar at an NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti / AMD Radeon RX 470 or greater, and an Intel i3-6100 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200, FX4350 or greater (older equivalents included).
Fantastic Contraption is also seeing a 33% permanent price drop, bringing the game from $30 to $20. Check it out on Steam, Oculus Store, Microsoft Store, and PSN.
If you own either Rez Infinite (2016) or Thumper (2016), it might just be music to your ears this Valentine’s Day. From now until February 20th, you can get either (or both) VR games for 50% off on Steam. Here’s how:
If you already haveRez Infinite or Thumper on Steam, just add the missing game to your cart and it will automatically update to 50% off. If you don’t own either, you can also get both for 50% off too. Rez Infinite normally sells for $25, and Thumper for $20, which with the sale puts the total at $22.48.
The sale lasts until Tuesday, February 20th at 8am PST (your local time).
As a VR take on the classic rail shooter Rez (2001), Rez Infinite originally launched on PSVR back in 2016 from Japanese production studios Monstars Inc. Since launching on Steam last summer for Rift and Vive, the game has garnered a 91% rating among users, making it a ‘very positive’ reaction to the heart-thumping, psychedelic game. The game has since launched on the Daydream mobile VR platform.
While both games feature pulsing soundtracks, Drool’s Thumper (2016) is a beautifully weird rhythm game, sending you along your way as a strange little space beetle tasked with violently hitting all the right beat-inducing obstacles. Released back in October 2016, Thumper is currently rated 92% positive among Steam users, putting it too at a ‘very positive’ rating.
Until February 14th, you can also enter in a chance to win both Rez Infinite and Thumper collector’s edition vinyls from iam8bit.
The contest ends February 14th at 11:59PM PST (local time). Enter here.
Sprint Vector (2018) is a VR racing game of a different stripe. Dubbed an “adrenaline platformer” by production studio Survios, the developers behind Raw Data (2017), it actually sticks to some pretty well-established arcade racing tropes pioneered by the Mario Kart franchise. Still, it’s something entirely different; it’s not only a fast-paced, technical sort of game that depends on the user’s ability to memorize every map’s twists and hazards, and ultimately understand how to best get from point A to point B, but it’s almost what you might call legitimate exercise.
Developer: Survios Available On:HTC Vive (Steam), Oculus Rift (Steam, Oculus Store), PSVR (PSN) Reviewed On: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift Release Date: February 8th, 2018
Note: Sprint Vector is discounted 20% off the retail price of $30 through February 22nd
Gameplay
You can’t really talk about Sprint Vector without first mentioning the main reason for its existence: a unique locomotion method Survios dubs “Fluid Locomotion,” a system which requires you to pump your arms as if you were running in place in order to move. You can also think about it as if you were skiing with ski poles, but instead of pushing off the ground with a pole, you thrust your arms downward while activating the trigger button on your controller, thus moving you forward.
Survios has put a certain amount of faith in the median VR user’s ability to change from what they know, i.e. lackadaisically pushing a single button to move. Thankfully, that faith is well-founded. I’ll get more into this in the ‘Comfort’ section of the review, but suffice it to say that Sprint Vector‘s locomotion scheme is magnificent.
One more thing. If you don’t like breaking a sweat when you play in VR, maybe now’s the time to look into another game. If you don’t mind getting your headset a little damp, then you’re in luck. According to my Fitbit, when I play Sprint Vector, I consistently boost my heart rate into the ‘fat burning’ zone.
Image courtesy Survios
At launch, Sprint Vector offers 9 solo challenge maps with 3 modes each, and 12 competitive maps which can either be played solo vs AI, or in an 8-player online races. As a point of comparisons, Mario Kart 8 (2014)boasts 32 competitive maps, several cups, and a battle mode. I would have liked to see more maps, although 12 seems to be a good starting baseline.
Competitive maps are linear, and not looped, which means you only get one run to determine the winner. I kind of wish they were looped, if only to get more practice on each track, but I see why they aren’t: racing requires physical effort, and a 15-minute race might just scare away your competitors.
On competitive maps, there’s a standard mix of strategically placed powerups that fall in line with other kart racing games; nitro, bombs, slow-downs, guided missiles, etc. Unlike other kart racers though, you’re expected to get vertical by climbing, riding ‘slip steams’, double jumping and soaring forward through the multilayered level, leaving your opponent with several ways to get around your carefully placed trap. Many competitive maps are also densely packed with environmental traps like crushing pistons, nuclear waste spills, giant fan blades, and explosive barrels, making for an incredibly dynamic gameplay experience. Despite some minor flaws, Sprint Vector is ultimately a visceral, heart-pumping racer for genuine speed freaks.
Solo Mode
Like many kart racers, Sprint Vector‘s AI essentially follows the ‘rubber banding’ principle – the game will give human players the ability to catch up by slowing down the NPCs in front of them. When this is done right in games, you don’t really notice it. When it isn’t, well, you get NPCs doing silly things like nonsensically skating back and forth on the track with no urgency to find the fastest possible route, or waiting for no apparent reason. The latter example is unfortunately the case with many single-player AI races I played in Sprint Vector.
As far as I can tell, there’s no way to manually change the AI’s difficulty setting. The game also doesn’t offer any of the cups or standard single player racing progressions. With only a few different leader boards to beat, the game’s competitive emphasis is clearly on the online multiplayer portion. That said, the solo challenge maps, which features time trial, coin collection, and a non-stop nitro-fest called ‘hardcore one-life’, are a welcome addition that makes up somewhat for the lack of cup races.
Multiplayer
The skill differential from single player to multiplayer wasn’t huge when I played the pre-release version (identical to launch version), but you can chalk that up to the general level of inexperience in my fellow racers. Once people start to intimately understand the in and outs of each track though, multiplayer is probably going to get pretty tough. In one such online race—after thinking I did fairly well playing the same track in single player mode moments before—the first place racer finished a full minute ahead of me. Since races take about a 2-3 minutes to complete, it was a stark realization that there must have been a secret passage that I missed, or a booster that I should have found.
The only way to interact with others is through the game’s powerups, so there’s no way for you to, say, punch a fellow racer or push them off a ledge. This would have been a fun addition, but I rarely found myself within that sort of range anyway, so it’s a bit of a non-issue.
Image courtesy Survios
As far as I can tell, characters don’t seem to have any differentiating qualities besides their exteriors, which is kind of a shame. Unlike other arcade racers which give you a selection of max speeds and accelerations, it appears as if you’re basically just choosing a skin to wear. This too is a minor niggle, but still worth mentioning.
Immersion
Sprint Vector works on many levels. The worlds and characters are interesting and visually cohesive, the locomotion system is rock solid, and the environment offers consistent interaction across the board. These are some of the most important ingredients to achieving Presence (yes, I used the capital “p”), that moment when you fully engage with the virtual world and mentally leave your office or bedroom behind.
As for the world around you, I’ll say this: It’s not easy creating an entire universe for the benefit of a single racing game, but Sprint Vector manages to make you feel at home in its absurd reality show-driven future. Considering it’s not relying on existing IP like, well, freaking Mario, this is a great accomplishment. To that, I’ll add that voice acting is on point, and character design and rigging is well done. I would have loved to get more of a chance to interface with the world besides just racing through it though, but that’s far from an admonishment.
Also, if you have a hard time focusing, or you’re not into social multiplayer games, you’ll be happy to learn that you can mute nearly everything in Sprint Vector, including the jabbering announcers, AI characters, and your fellow multiplayers, leaving only the pulsing soundtrack in the background if you so please. You can also mute that, although I personally enjoyed it.
Comfort
Creating a comfortable VR game is hardly a mistake. Even in this early stage of development, there are some tried and true methods for creating a fast but comfortable experience, and Sprint Vector uses every trick in the book.
Giving VR users a way to associate virtual locomotion with larger physical movements seems to side-step some of the issues that may cause nausea in VR games. Like Echo Arena (2017), the zero-G multiplayer sports game, Sprint Vector (in a way) makes you use the world around you to move, which is why I compare it to using ski poles instead of running. Executing good form in your arm’s stride determines your speed, and the smoother you can get that stride, the faster and more consistently you’ll move. You have to pay constant attention to this relationship though, more so than just jamming down on a button mapped to the accelerator.
Not only that, but accelerating, flying, or drifting places particle effects in your near field of view, which keeps your vestibular system happy as you fling across the map at 50 mph. Because of this pseudo-cockpit effect, fast acceleration and deceleration isn’t nearly as jarring as it could be too.
There’s also the option to enable click turning for players on Rift and PSVR, something I didn’t use too frequently thanks to drift-turning.
Quill, Facebook’s VR painting tool, has been a great way to sketch in VR since its launch back at the end of 2016, but today a new update transforms it into something entirely new. Now, with tools for animating Quill artwork directly in the app, users have a new dimension for artistic expression: time.
If you’ve ever made a stick figure flip book using the corner of a notebook or a stack of sticky notes, you already understand the fundamentals of key frame animation: arrange a sequence of slightly changing pictures back to back and watch them come to life as you quickly flip through.
Image courtesy Facebook
That’s the foundation of today’s Quill update, which Facebook says is the biggest to date. The program now includes a set of animation tools which will let you draw and arrange discrete frames into animation sequences. With helpful tools to visualize previous frames and quickly create new ones, artists will be able to express not just a moment in time, but an entire scene. This video gives a glimpse of the new tools in action:
Facebook says that the in-VR animation tools bring major time savings compared to using a combination of VR and traditional animation software. With direct access to animation tools in the app, the update should make VR-drawn animations—like this impressive piece from artist Nick Ladd that we saw last year—easier and faster to produce. Facebook claims that the company’s VR resident artist, Goro Fujita, was “able to complete his animated short film Beyond the Fence in just three weeks, an undertaking that could have lasted over a year with traditional 3D animation software.”
Image courtesy Facebook
The company also says they’re working to integrate Quill content with Facebook Spaces, so that artists can share their work, and friends can watch stories together; a sensible move considering Quill is being developed under the umbrella of the Facebook Social VR team after the shuttering of Oculus Story Studio, where it was originally conceived. There’s no mention of when Facebook Spaces viewing will be deployed, but the company says they’re in development of that and “many more Quill updates and features” for the future.
Update (2/8/16): An earlier version of this article stated that Quill is being developed by Oculus. While the tool was originally built by the team at Oculus Story Studio, its ongoing development was formally moved to Facebook’s Social VR team after the Story Studio group was closed down in 2017.
