Category: Oculus Rift Games

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Oculus Flash Sale: Get up to 75% Off on 80+ VR Titles, Sale Lasts Today Only

It’s been exactly one year since Oculus launched Touch, the motion controller that made Rift a truly competitive room-scale headset. To celebrate, the company is hosting a dedicated flash sale of up to 75% on 80+ major Touch titles. The sale expires today (December 6th) at 11:59 pm PT (your local time).

The flash sale features a number of big titles, including Lone Echo (2017), Superhot VR (2017, From Other Suns (2017), and The Gallery Bundle with Episodes 1 & 2 to name a few. Check out the full list below.

You can find links for each game on the official flash sale page here.

Lone Echo $30 $39 Fly to Kuma Maker $6 $15
SUPERHOT VR $10 $25 Dig4Destruction $6 $12
From Other Suns $30 $40 Titan Slayer $4.50 $13
Tilt Brush $10 $20 Final Goalie $10 $20
Arktika.1 $15 $30 Sketchbox $7.50 $15
I Expect You to Die $10 $25 VR Toolbox $8 $10
Skyworld $20 $40 Super Kaiju $10 $20
Dead & Buried $1 $20 Old Friend $1.50 $3
Ultrawings $13 $25 Show Must Go On $6 $15
theBlu $4 $10 Unearthed Inc. – The Lost Temple $10 $25
Gunheart $14 $35 Twisted Arrow $10 $20
Loco Dojo $10 $20 Fantastic Contraption $15 $30
Star Chart $4 $10 Giant Cop $10 $25
Job Simulator $18 $20 Sneaky Bears $7.50 $15
The Gallery – Episode 1: Call of the Starseed $5 $20 The Tower $3.50 $7
The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone $24 $30 Archangel $15 $30
The Gallery Episode 1 & 2 $24 $45 The Pierhead Arcade $4 $10
The Wizards $10 $20 Trickster $4.50 $13
Don’t Knock Twice $10 $20 VR Invaders $9 $18
Racket NX $10 $20 Zero-Gravity Tennis Plannes $7.50 $15
Masterpiece VR $15 $30 Konrad the Kitten $5 $10
Crowe $4.50 $9 Kittypocalypse $6 $15
Blasters of the Universe $6 $15 Overkill VR $10 $20
Carnival Games VR $5 $20 Boogeyman $2.50 $5
Mervils $10 $20 Dead Hungry $10 $20
Smashbox Arena $8 $20 Gnomelings $2.50 $5
Sports BarVR $10 $20 Jam Session VR $1.50 $3
Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope $30 $40 Guns ‘N’ Stories: Bulletproof VR $5 $10
Ancient Amuletor VR $10 $20 Gravity Lab $10 $20
Guided Meditation VR $6 $15 Holoball $6 $15
Elven Assassin $5 $10 Music Inside $7.50 $15
Chocolate $1.50 $30 Beats Fever $6 $15
VR Everyday Golf $15 $30 Counter Fight: Samurai Edition $5 $10
Form $6 $15 Cosmic Trip $10 $20
Nanite Fulcrum – Issue One $2.50 $5 Drunkn Bar Fight $6 $12
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes $6 $15 Kingspray $6 $15
Crashimals $10 $20 Snow Fortress $7.50 $15
Island 359 $10 $20 ZR Zombie Riot $10 $20
Range Day VR $9 $18 Space Dragon $7.50 $15
DisasSembled V3 $6 $15 Karnage Chronicles $10 $25
Perfect $4 $10 Ramen Shop Simulator $4 $8
Firebird La Peri $4 $10 VR Sports Challenge $15 $30
Final Approach $6 $15 Makebox $5 $10
Annie Amber $4 $8 Mars Odyssey $4 $8
Obscura $5 $10 Enigma Sphere $10 $20

 

Miss the sale? While we can bet they’ll at least be one more sale before Christmas time, you can always keep an eye on Oculus ‘promotions’ section on the Oculus Store for new savings.

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‘Wands’ Comes to HTC Vive via Viveport Today, Cross-play & Steam Launch Coming Soon

Wands (2017), the first-person magic-dueling game, is available today for HTC Vive via Viveport. Already supporting Gear VR, Daydream, and Oculus Rift platforms, developing studio Cortopia confirmed with Road to VR that cross-play with other headsets is coming today, or at very latest “later this week.”

The studio also confirmed that Wands is hitting Steam at some point “in the near future,” although they weren’t specific when it would occur. The Steam version predictably also advertises Oculus Rift support, which may also be the case for the Viveport version, although this remains to be seen.

Pricing still isn’t available at the time of this writing, but if the Viveport version holds true to the Oculus Home version, it should cost $15 when it officially launches later today. The game will also be available through Viveport subscription, HTC’s monthly games’ subscription service.

Wands features fast-paced 1v1 magic duels across a number of battle arenas. Wielding a wand with access to 22 different spells, you battle it out to the death in competitive and casual matches. Locomotion is achieved through node-based teleportation, much like The Unspoken (2016).

The game first released on mobile platforms in summer 2016, later followed with its Oculus Rift launch back in September 2017. As a part of its mobile VR legacy, Wands for HTC Vive also features equal support for gamepads and motions controllers.

You can download the Viveport version here. The purchase link should be live later today.

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‘Catan VR’ to Launch Free Closed Beta Soon, First Images Emerge

Famous board game The Settlers of Catan (simple called ‘Catan‘) is coming to VR soon, and you could get a chance to play it before anyone else in the closed beta.

Created by Experiment 7 in conjunction with Asmodee Digital, and Klaus and Benjamin Teuber, Catan VR is headed to Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR sometime soon (including cross-play).

While there’s still no precise launch date, you can now sign up for the closed beta. The game is said to offer all of the classic gameplay of the original with the added benefit of player vs. AI as well as online gameplay.

With the news of the impending beta, the studio has also released several images of the game, revealing a little more about what to expect.

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image courtesy Experiment 7
image courtesy Experiment 7
image courtesy Experiment 7
image courtesy Experiment 7
image courtesy Experiment 7

We’ll be going hands-on at some point, so check back soon for our impressions.

In the announcement trailer, game’s original inventor Klaus Teuber said he was “fascinated by what VR has to offer,” and that he “never imagined actually stepping into the world of Catan when we first started making cut-outs and dreaming about exploring new lands.”

VR game studio Experiment 7 also created Magic Table Chess and Dungeon Chess, two fantasy-based VR chess game for Oculus Rift.

Experiment 7 says additional VR platforms are to follow, possibly meaning HTC Vive users will get a crack at it too.

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Madcap Puzzle Adventure ‘Elevator … to the Moon!’ Comes to SteamVR Headsets

Elevator … to the Moon! (2017) has been available for Oculus Rift and Gear VR since its release in October. Now, the stylish low-poly puzzler is available on SteamVR headsets via Steam, including HTC Vive, Windows VR headsets and Oculus Rift.

You’ve been placed in the space boots of an astronaut tasked with fulfilling the ridiculous demands of President of the World, the very Schwarzenegger-esque Doug-Slater Roccmeier. President Roccmeier needs you to not only build his massively unstable elevator but follow his orders to the letter, no matter how silly and pointless they may seem. If you choose to disobey, you can cause what the Roccat Games Studio calls “hilarious havoc.”

The game includes both classic point-and-click controls and full motion controls so you can physically rummage around in drawers, press buttons, etc.

The Steam version of the game can be had at a temporary 20% discount, knocking it from $10 to $8. Check out the trailer below to get a better idea of what madness is in store.

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‘Titanic VR’ Dives Deep into the History of the Fateful Sinking in Educational VR Experience

Getting kids excited about learning isn’t easy, especially when the little glowing rectangle in their pockets provides endless distractions. Enter Titanic VR, a new educational experience by Immersive VR Education that brings the sunken wreckage of the RMS Titanic to life once more.

Titanic VR was built from the ground-up for VR and was made using what the studio says were “comprehensive maps to create a realistic 3D model of the wreck site as well as motion capture, face-scanning technology and professional voice actors to immerse users in the story.” The studio worked with the BBC to obtain real life testimony from the survivors themselves, creating an even deeper opportunity for learning about the disaster.

For now, the experience features a storyline set in the near future that takes you to the wreckage as well as a sandbox mode for free exploration. There’s also bonus missions such as rescuing a lost Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), creating a photo mosaic, placing research equipment, and cleaning and preserving recovered artifacts. Since it’s currently in Early Access, there’s still more to come, including an animated 1912 experience being released later this year where players will witness historically accurate events through the eyes of a survivor.

Titanic VR was the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign created by studio founder David Whelan. Taking in over €57,000, the studio has built the educational experience for all major VR platforms including HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlayStation VR. Support for Windows VR headsets is slated to come later this year.

“Increasingly, educators are realising that simulated learning can make a real difference in learning outcomes. With the improved availability of affordable hardware led by major internationals such as Apple, Samsung and Google, the VR/AR market will inevitably gain traction and eventually become an everyday technology,” said Whelan. “We are leading this revolution, utilising leading edge VR/AR technologies to enhance digital learning through our fully immersive social learning platform, Engage and our proprietary experiences.”

The team is also known for Apollo 11 VR, a similar dive into history not only lets you blast off with a Saturn V rocket and let you land and walk on the Moon, but also injects actual audio from the mission into the experience. According to Whelan, Apollo 11 VR has sold over 80,000 copies so far. Immersive VR Education hopes to replicate that success with the new Titanic VR experience.

You can download Titanic VR herePSN on Steam Early Access , which includes support for Vive and Rift. The PSVR version hasn’t appeared to hit yet, but we’ll update once it does.

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Penn & Teller’s ‘Desert Bus VR’ is a Bad Simulator with a Good Heart

Penn & Teller’s Desert Bus VR is finally here, letting you take the wheel of a crappy old commercial bus for a mind-numbing 8-hour trip from Tuscon to Las Vegas. It’s not great (at all), but it’s built for a truly noble cause.

You may ask yourself: “why would I want to simulate driving an old bus at the top speed of 45 miles an hour through a depopulated desert road for 8 hours straight?” The quick answer: you wouldn’t.

Originally created in 1998 as a mini-game to the never-released Sega CD game Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors, Desert Bus is less of an actual game and more of a commentary in response to the famous ’90s brand of zealotry against video game violence that dominated political discourse at the time, spearheaded by the likes of Jack Thompson, Janet Reno, and Hillary Clinton to name a few. The 2D version was originally built to highlight the ridiculousness of the idea that popular video games of the time adequately prepared players for real-world interactions (martial arts in the case of Mortal Kombat, and shooting guns in the case of Doom) and that not all video games are designed to ‘corrupt the youth’. Despite its political beginnings and failure to launch due to the game studio’s bankruptcy, Desert Bus garnered cult-status as it was later released on a number of platforms.

The new VR version was brought to life by Borderlands developers Gearbox Software, making it their first VR production.

image courtesy Desert Bus for Hope

Now that times have changed and VR developers strive to make their experiences more realistic, it’s hard to say if the VR version is trying to revitalize Penn Jillette’s hypothesis. While I haven’t done the full 8-hour drive, I found it purposely misses out on some more common aspects of VR driving simulators in favor of presenting the player with a less realistic, but decidedly more boring experience.

Because it doesn’t make the same effort to present the player with realistic driving, like one you might find in Euro Truck Simulator 2 (2013), it presents a bit of a bad argument if it’s truly trying to prove that games can’t provide you with the skills applicable to the real world. Jillette himself rehashes his hypothesis during an AM-style radio transmission that plays at the beginning of the drive, but doesn’t acknowledge that it’s a little less defensible in the era of virtual reality.

image courtesy Gearbox Software

Just like the original 2D version, in VR you can go only go left, right and speed up to a max of 45 mph. The wheel pulls slightly to the right, so you’ll have to recorrect every few seconds to keep yourself on the road. Going off the road will overheat the engine, and its game over. Making it all the way to your destination—some 360 miles away—awards you with a single point.

The VR version uses the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift’s respective motion controls, but annoyingly maps acceleration to the left trigger. Steering is done either manually or through trackpad/thumb stick, the later of which is way too jerky for comfortable play in VR. The render distance isn’t great either, making you feel like you’re more of a treadmill than in an actual desert. Although the bus itself is pretty attractive, it lacks some finer interactive touches you might find in a built-for-VR game like the car level from I Expect You to Die (2016).

Funnily enough, the game includes an online multiplayer mode which lets you ride along with others as either a driver or passenger. At the time of this writing I didn’t get a chance to play an online session, but I can imagine myself getting to know someone pretty well over the course of an 8-hour drive.

image courtesy Gearbox Software

While all of its flaws bear mentioning, it’s hard to knock a game that’s both entirely free and was built for charity, as Jillette helped renew the game for the volunteer organization Desert Bus for Hope that holds a titular annual event to raise money for the game-focused Child’s Play Charity. In a recent telethon-style event, the organization raised $650,250 with a total of 158 hours logged behind the wheel.

Even though it’s boring in all the wrong ways, if it can impact positive change in the world for even one person, it’s a resounding success that we can only hope to see more of in the future.

The game is out now for free on Steam for Rift, Vive and traditional monitors. You can download it here.

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New ‘High Fidelity’ Partnership Makes it Easier to Host Your Own Virtual World

VR metaverse company High Fidelity recently released an update that allows users to easily deploy their own High Fidelity domains to the cloud. The project was created in collaboration with DigitalOcean, one of the largest hosting and cloud service providers in the U.S.

High Fidelity is a free, open source, multi-user VR platform founded by Second Life creator Philip Rosedale. With hopes of building the foundation of a social VR space capable of scaling to the massive numbers of users yet to come, the company has now made a move to allow cloud hosting of user-created online ‘domains’.

According to a High Fidelity blog post, integration with DigitalOcean’s cloud server technology (called Droplets) allows High Fidelity users to create their own cloud-hosted VR domain “in minutes with very little configuration or system administration work.”

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“Early on, High Fidelity made a strategic choice to pursue a development model based on distributed ownership of the virtual spaces running our software,” writes High Fidelity COO Thomas Schofield. “We believe that our users, nascent virtual reality entrepreneurs and creators, will want to own the environments they create (rather than having those spaces be owned to High Fidelity). There are challenges that come with making this choice, not least being that it obliges creators and VR entrepreneurs to take the technical steps to set up the servers needed to run our software.”

Schofield maintains that cloud-distribution of online spaces is an important element to the future growth of VR. Typical computers, even those capable of running VR applications, aren’t suited to reliably act as servers to distribute content with high-bandwidth requirements. Cloud hosting puts the content’s point of distribution in a virtual space much closer to users, giving the platform a great ability to scale.

You can download High Fidelity here for SteamVR-compatible headsets. Check out this handy guide on how to deploy your own domain using DigitalOcean’s cloud tech.

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Indie VR MMO ‘OrbusVR’ to Launch in Early Access in December

OrbusVR, an upcoming indie VR MMO for SteamVR-compatible headsets, has seen several closed betas since it’s successful Kickstarter back in March 2017, but starting December 15th the plucky quest-driven MMORPG will head into Early Access on Steam.

Having garnered more than $34,000 from its Kickstarter and undergoing several closed betas (and an open weekend), OrbusVR is shaping up to be one of the first ‘native VR’ MMORPGs to combine traditional sword and sorcery elements like quests and dungeons in a cooperative, social VR space. While the genre persists unabated on traditional monitors, there simply aren’t any great examples in VR.

Created by six-person team Ad Alternum, the developers promise to deliver what they call “a huge open world with thousands of players, dozens of hours of quests following an intriguing story, interesting lore and characters, five-player group dungeons, world bosses, and more!”

OrbusVR is launching with a $40 pricetag on Steam Early Access.

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The game aims to make good on a number of features, including:

  • 20+ hours of Main Story and side quests as you embark on an adventure to advance your character from Level 1 to 20.
  • 4 major five-person dungeons, each with unique enemies and bosses with interesting mechanics
  • 9 overworld zones spanning more than 10 square kilometers, including the high-level Wilds zones where danger lurks around every corner and open world PvP can happen
  • 4 different and unique classes to play including the Ranger, Musketeer, Warrior, and Runemage
  • 2 crafting classes: Alchemy and Artificing, plus Fishing
    In-game voice chat, dungeon finder, fellowships, private messaging, and other socialization features to keep you connected to the world
  • Dedicated, collaborative development process with an indie dev team that cares about your feedback
  • Dragon pets, cosmetic capes, achievements, and much more!

We haven’t had a chance to go hands-on with OrbusVR yet, so we can’t speak to the game’s depth. One thing is certain though: creating healthy playerbases is notoriously hard in VR due to the relatively smaller number of users. While some of the most populated spaces in VR are generally free, launching a paid social game that necessarily relies on the first ‘M’ (massive) could be a dicey proposition. That remains to be seen though, so we’ll be following its development and wishing OrbusVR the best of luck as it heads into Early Access in the coming weeks.

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‘Dispatch’ Expertly Weaves a Tale of Grizzly Murders in VR Through the Sound of 9-1-1 Calls

Dispatch (2017), a new episodic story from VR pros Here Be Dragons, launched on Oculus Rift and Gear VR yesterday. Following a small-town emergency dispatcher named Ted (voiced by Martin Starr), you experience the story through a sort of half-imagined, half-real version of the grizzly events he’s privy to.

One of the unique features in Dispatch is its minimalist art style, which leaves a lot of room for the viewer to fill in the gaps with their own imagination. After all, as a 9-1-1 dispatcher, Ted only has the sound from the phone to drawn upon, so every slam or creak of a door is potentially a clue to what’s happening on the other end of the line.

Writer and Director Edward Robles said in an Oculus blog post announcing the experience’s release that from the very beginning he was intent on creating something minimalist, “reducing the details of everyday life to the most evocative.” Highly reliant on positional audio, you’re essentially following along with Ted as he recreates the grizzly scenes of violence in his mind. Despite its visual sparseness, the effect Dispatch has on you is pretty visceral.

Martin Starr, also known for his role as Gilfoyle in Silicon Valley, delivers the action with his patently monotone voice, acting as a sobering backdrop to the violence at hand.

Dispatch is told across 4 episodes, offering the first episode for free, which lasts about 5 minutes. The full four episodes however costs an additional $3, adding about 10 more minutes of overall time to the entire story.

Here’s how Here Be Dragons describes Dispatch:

What begins as a domestic violence call quickly cascades into a host of attacks across town, and the local police are struggling to keep up. Every new call sheds light on Ted’s inner torments and pushes him closer toward danger. Police dispatchers are trained to see with sound. Every door slam, tire screech, and piercing scream paints a picture in their minds. The visual world of Dispatch unfolds inside Ted’s imagination as he wades through the soundscape, advising terrified callers and listening for clues. Ted yearns to be at the scene of the crime, to be given the chance to really help someone. He’s about to get what he wished for.

You can read the full interview with Robles here, where he describes a little more about the creative process, and working with Starr to fill in the role as Ted.

‘Dispatch’ on Gear VR

‘Dispatch’ on Rift

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Fan-Created ‘xkcd’ VR Tool Lets You Make Your Own xkcd-style Webcomics in VR

Created by Winnipeg-based indie studio The Campfire Union, xkcd VR lets you become a character from Randall Munroe’s popular webcomic and create your very own stick figure-based stab at the comic’s famously acerbic humor.

Built as an entry at the Winnipeg Winter Game Jam and xkcd Game Jam this past weekend, the comic-creation tool lets you set up a cell, use props and act out the part of one of 8 xkcd characters. Essentially using the VR headset and controllers for motion capture (both Rift and Vive are supported), you can create a moving comic, or take screenshots of the action for your own xkcd-inspired work.

While the xkcd VR experience is a tribute to Munroe’s comic, and isn’t an official app by the artist himself, it completely nails the font, props, and characters of the comic.

You can download the experience for Rift and Vive here.

Features

  • Be one of 8 xkcd characters (VR as mocap)
  • Choose from 12 props
  • Make speech bubbles with a virtual keyboard
  • Compose wide, regular or narrow comic cells
  • Switch between light and dark themes
  • Take screenshots to make your own comics
  • Switch between comic and mirrored view on 2nd screen output

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