Charm Games, the studio known for the critically-acclaimed VR puzzle game FORM (2017), today announced their upcoming puzzle-adventure Twilight Path is slated to release arrive soon on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
Arriving October 2nd on Steam (Vive, Rift) and the Oculus Store (Rift), Twilight Path is a single-player adventure that throws you into a mystical purgatory where you have to escape by solving a variety of VR puzzles while restoring massive stone structures, opening sealed passageways, and rescuing magical creatures from danger along the way.
Twilight Path, at least from our hands-on with an early alpha, appears to have departed entirely from FORM’s inherently dark sci-fi aesthetic, although it has plenty puzzle-oriented gameplay and attention to detail that fans of FORM should recognize despite the new, Studio Ghibli-inspired environment, including anthropomorphic buddies to keep you company along the way.
Here’s a quick blurb of what Road to VR’s Ben Lang experienced while playing the first two chapters of the early alpha:
“My preview lasted about 25 minutes and the interactions throughout were clearly indicated and satisfying to execute. Several moments showed the studio’s FX skill, like when holding the gem from the bracelet and seeing glowing runes floating in the air around it, or when activating the fortune teller machine and seeing a pane of cracked glass appear creating convincing distortions of the image behind it.”
There’s still no word on what sort of gameplay length to expect from Twilight Path, although it’s being priced at $15—the same as FORM, an hour-long experience. The studio’s upcoming game however promises more narrative elements which hopefully will have us puzzling and exploring for a bit longer in what promises to be a richly-detailed world.
However you slice it, if Twilight Path can offer up the same quality of experience seen in FORM, it appears we’re in for a highly-polished game that’ll easily appeal to newcomers and experienced VR users alike.
The long-awaited Vox Machinae is almost here, as developing studio Space Bullet Dynamics Corporation recently announced that the multiplayer mech battle game is finally heading into Early Access soon, supporting traditional monitors, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows VR headsets starting in early fall.
First teased back in 2014 during the Rift DK1 and DK2 era, Vox Machinae has had plenty of time to gestate, not to mention learn from some of its less fortunate multiplayer forerunners which struggle to maintain a healthy pool of online players. According to a recent Steam post, to remedy this Vox Machinae will support crossplay between traditional monitors and its supported VR headsets.
Image courtesy Space Bullet Dynamics Corporation
Vox Machinae features offline single-player (bots only), and both local network and online multiplayer with up to 16 players. Modes include Salvage Mode, where you capture and protect your team’s ‘Decker machine’, and a mode called Stockpile that requires your team to control factories scattered across the battlefield so you can benefit from their increased production capabilities.
All modes can be played with 2-4 teams, meaning you could gather together a few buddies and take on other squads in a multi-team shootout. Bots are available in all modes to help fill out the ranks, so there won’t be any waiting around when you’re ready to strap in.
Image courtesy Space Bullet Dynamics Corporation
Designed from the ground-up for VR, the game’s mech cockpits are said to feature plenty of controls and displays to manipulate, as the game boasts full motion controller support; both gamepad and mouse and keyboard will be available for players on traditional monitors. Space Bullet says five customizable mechs will be available at launch, letting you outfit them with an array of weaponry.
There’s no official launch date yet, although as summer comes to a close on September 23rd, we’ll be sure to keep our eyes peeled for what promises to be the full-featured mech brawler that’s been sorely missing in VR to date.
Chiaro and the Elixir of Life (2018), a first-person VR adventure from Montreal-based Martov Co., launched today on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows VR headsets. The result of a successful Kickstarter campaign, which saw a complete funding total of $10,088 CAD (~$7,730 USD), Chiaro is the new indie studio’s first game.
Stepping into the shoes of a young engineer named Chiaro, you’re accompanied by your little steam-powered robot pal named Boka, who you bring along with you as you open portals to traverse a world marred by a conflict that’s left ‘Neverain’ nearly uninhabited. Together they seek out the ‘Fountain of Elixir’ in effort to revive the lost race of alive machines, using alchemical powers and solving puzzles along the way.
Some bits worth noting: the game’s primary locomotion scheme is based on standard teleportation, although a mysterious artifact gives you the power to open up portals, which you prompt by tossing an orb to your intended spot. This essentially lets you travel to far away platforms that you couldn’t reach using teleportation. The game also is heavy on object interaction and room-scale movement.
After having popped in for about an hour, the scenery and characters really remind me of steampunk-inspired anime like Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Studio Ghibli’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986). We’ll have our full review out upon completion of the game, so check back soon.
Chiaro and the Elixir of Life is now live on Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR) and the Oculus Store (Rift), priced at $30.
I Expect You to Die (2016), the spy-themed puzzle game from Schell Games, was a big earner last year, achieving $1 million in revenue since its late-2016 until August 2017. Now a little over a year later, the studio reports they’ve recently closed in on the $3 million mark.
Developed specifically for VR, I Expect You To Die puts you in the shoes of a Bond-style secret agent who must escape deadly situations by solving puzzles that put you in direct danger, such as poison gas, bombs, and lasers. It’s a fun object-oriented game that really puts your critical thinking skills to the test while mortal danger looms over your head at every turn.
The combined figure was measured across all sales channels including Steam, the Oculus Store, the Playstation Store, and the Microsoft Store—offering support for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, PSVR, and Windows VR headsets.
I Expect You to Die holds a high user rating across all stores, and while it’s a competent and extremely fun puzzler, some of the game’s financial success might also be attributed to a well-handled successive roll-out on its respective platforms. The escape room-style puzzle game originally launched on the Oculus Store in late 2016, later expanding to PSVR in December 2016, making it a launch title for Oculus Touch and a close-to-launch title for PSVR. While support for HTC Vive via Steam followed in April 2017, and Windows VR headsets via the Windows Store in February 2018—both several months after the respective headset platforms—the word was invariably out that I Expect You to Die was clearly worth the $25 price tag.
“The team put a lot of heart and hard work into I Expect You To Die and the success we’ve achieved definitely shows our passion for this project,” says Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games. “With support from fans, gamers, and techies who have played I Expect You to Die, we’ve proved that virtual reality can become a mainstream platform and its future is looking incredibly bright.”
The only other VR game to publicly disclose that level of success is Owlchemy Labs’ Job Simulator (2016), which was revealed last year to have reached the $3 million mark.
Windlands 2 (2018), Psytec Games’ sequel to their high-flying, first-person platformer adventure, is now available on Oculus Rift.
Armed with two grappling hooks and an energy bow, you battle titanic robots and swing your way through a fallen world—a bit like your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man would if the only thing your webs could stick to were tree branches. That’s the short of it at least.
Boasting online co-op with up to three other people, you can either attack the world’s gigantic bosses together, or all on your lonesome if you please. It’s a bit of a tonal change from its solitary zen-like predecessor, but if you liked the original Windlands (2016), this marks your next chance to jump back into a world with a whole new set of difficult parkour maps to explore.
You’ll be treated to a few new bits too, including a genuine story replete with NPCs, some difficult fetch quests, multiplayer races, and combat-focused gameplay that’s poised to set the stage for a series of Windlands titles.
The game is considered a timed exclusive on Rift. Both PSVR and HTC Vive versions should be headed to their respective platforms, which the Psytec Games says should happen sometime in 2019.
As one of the first full-length games for VR, Windlands (2016) pioneered a movement scheme that sends you soaring high into the air, using your grappling hooks to swing from bush to tree in the desolate world that was fractured and destroyed after a planet shaking conflict. The latest Windlands isn’t simply a continuation of the hunt for all-important power crystals and Easter eggs though, now boasting enemies, multiplayer co-op, races, and a classic gaming-inspired story that confronts players with the disastrous forces that wrecked the once prosperous world; it feels like the true beginning of the series.
Developer: Psytec Games Available On:Oculus Store (Rift) – Coming to HTC Vive & PSVR Reviewed On: Oculus Rift Release Date: September, 12th 2018 (Rift), TBD (Vive & PSVR)
Gameplay
Windlands 2 is a first-person VR combat platformer that builds on the lore explored in the first; you don’t need to play the original Windlands to know what’s going on, because all of that’s largely fleshed out in the second installment anyway. The game introduces us to the history of the world and the reasons behind your quest. Here’s the short of it: long ago a dimension-jumping demon destroyed the lizard-people’s world with giant automatons, reducing the alien planet to a barren wasteland. He was slain by your golden-eyed human ancestor though, and generations later, you find yourself as an apprentice of a new class of humans, called ‘guardians’, that are capable of wielding impressive jumping and swinging abilities. You’re on a journey to an island with your master, Tohir, who starts—forgive the pun—showing you the ropes through the puzzle-like configuration of the world. There you battle the dark forces that rise again.
If you thought the addition of combat and NPCs was going to change the amount of platform-jumping and swinging madness seen in the first Windlands, you shouldn’t worry. There’s still plenty of that to go around as you gain one new ability not seen in the game’s pacifist forerunner: bow-shooting.
A timed shooting puzzle, Image courtesy Psytec Games
The new world of Windlands 2 delivers giant bosses, annoying laser-shooting droids, and a few timed shooting challenges to sharpen your new bow-handling ability. And you’ll need those shooting skills too, as bosses fire lasers, energy bombs, homing missiles, and spit out other droids to harass you. By the time you pass the half-way point in the game though, you don’t really see any new attack types, just a higher quantity.
Bow-shooting, while overall good, was at first a fiddly thing, and there’s a few things to know before heading it. There’s a reticle, but your infinite laser arrows have a definite arc affected by gravity, making it more of an indicator of whether you’ve lined up the shot correctly on the x-axis. Activating the bow is handled via Oculus Touch’s grip buttons, and can be deployed while using the grappling hooks, which are mapped to the triggers. Swinging and shooting at the same time, which becomes a necessity in some levels, isn’t as dead simple as I would have hoped, although it’s entirely possible once you get the hang of it. Set as default, the first grip button you activate deploys the bow, while the other hand (using grip) can draw arrows. About half the time I would instinctively activate both grip buttons for a quick shot, and would accidentally switch the bow to my non-dominant hand, something I think could be easily solved by simply checking a box at the beginning of the game. About half-way through, I dug into the advanced settings and found a selector that would allow me to lock the bow to my left hand, relieving the issue entirely. From thereon out, shooting became less and less of a hassle as I got the hang of it.
Unlike the first Windlands, there’s no central hub to return to. The world is a few disparate open areas with distinctive pathways that can take you in different directions, all of which is connected together by a couple of world portals that activate as the result of completing key missions in the storyline, letting you progress through the increasingly perilous biomes; jungle, desert, and mountain. By default, waypoint markers send you to your next objective, and plenty of checkpoint gates are littered along the way to make sure you’re not pulling your hair out at every massive fall. I have very little love for waypoints, but it’s easy to understand why Windlands 2 relies on these as a default to help you navigate through the divergent mass of spaghetti of the game’s map. If there weren’t enough challenges to worry about along the way, I might see it as an overall negative, but in the end it’s a necessary evil so you don’t go clambering up the wrong path and get completely lost. These can also be turned off entirely in the advanced settings.
The story itself is simple, and harks back to a time in classic gaming when quest-givers didn’t ask questions, but rather sent you, the silent protagonist, on your merry way to fetch something important: A to B. I found it a bit too simplistic personally, acting really more as an ends to means: fetch the thing, or kill the thing—so basically the early Zelda games. After a while the fetch quests start to feel a little contrived, and while it didn’t really ruin any of the jumping, swinging and shooting fun of the game, it didn’t really add anything either. It’s a classic story of an evil guy who does evil things because he’s evil, and everyone on your team is a helpful good guy because they’re helpful and good. I’ll soften that some in the Immersion section, because in the end, it’s a tried and true method of giving some structure to the real stars of the show, traversing the moving puzzle that is Windlands 2, and smacking down a few titanic bosses in the process.
That said, there is no leveling mechanic, and no new weapons or grappling hooks, which isn’t really a bad thing in my opinion. You’re simply left with the task of getting better at the game, and aren’t fed any cheaty tools to do so.
Soaring to the next checkpoint, Image captured by Road to VR
Except for the addition of a bow, the basic controls are virtually unchanged from the first Windlands. This may be a bit of a sticking point for some, since the game has a characteristic ‘floatiness’ that can be difficult to master. Landing those far parkour jumps isn’t easy, as you slide across most surfaces, and getting that double-hook swing and transitioning to a single hook whip around is even harder. Judging the distance of those far grappling hook grabs has to become something you intuit after a while.
Then, you can imagine the grappling hooks take a while to master. Both grappling hooks have a reticle that lights up when you come close enough to a leafy object—the only thing your hooks can grab onto in an inhospitable world of sand, rock, and streaming lava pools. I found that more often than not, the max effective range was actually a bit farther than the reticles would have you believe, making for daring saves that can mean the difference between having to repeat an extremely difficult jump and quickly making your way to the objective or level boss. Multitasking a few frantic arrow shots while flying through the air to your next landing point can be really satisfying, although hard depending on how comfortable you get with the movement scheme.
World portal incoming, Image captured by Road to VR
That brings me to difficulty. While there is an easy, medium, and hard mode, these only change how powerful an enemy’s shots are and how accurate they’ll be. On hard mode, you’re given only one direct hit before you’re tossed back to your last checkpoint. This doesn’t change the difficulty of the game’s platforming aspect though, which crescendos in the game’s third and final level. There, every jump has to be near perfect, which is equal parts frustrating and rewarding.
Since you can respawn at your last checkpint ad infinitum without any consequence, boss battles can turn into you slowly chipping away at them without fear of ever really losing anything. Playing through the game mostly alone, I found it took several deaths before I could figure out each bosses attack style, and started exploiting the area’s natural hiding places and angles of attack. Bosses follow a familiar pattern: beat them three times and they’re done. To beat a boss, you simply shoot out the glowing red armor on their bodies, which vary in position and number depending on the boss’ difficulty level. In between these moments, the area is usually filled with droids, which you have to destroy to carry on with the boss battle.
The worm’s underbelly with red targets, Image captured by Road to VR
I would have liked to see more variability in this area, as after a while each enemy starts to feel more of less the same—still pretty exhilarating, but trending toward a standard interaction despite the physical differences of each boss. While the game’s ‘zero penalty’ death scheme mitigates some of the frustration of getting ganked—you pick up in real-time where you last died—this limits the ultimate reward felt after defeating them.
Here’s a quick one-minute clip of a boss battle in the desert world. Yes, I died around a dozen times to chip away at its armor.
Bosses are much more simple to take down with a few more friends on hand though, letting you team up with a max of three other people. Playing with Road to VR’s Ben Lang, who joined my game already in progress, we took down a massive flying ship in about half the time. Beyond making bosses easier to take down, the added ability of having a few friends or strangers in-game inevitably leads to sharing techniques, goading people to hurry up and make more impressive jumps, and talking crap to each other. Multiplayer isn’t required to beat the game, but it’s a really fun touch nonetheless.
Windlands 2 personally clocked in at six and a half hours total, playing only story mode in single-player. That said, you can spend a lot more time hunting hard-to-reach collectibles, or playing the other multiplayer ancillary games like racing on one of the five available tracks, or alternatively playing a ‘collect’ mode where you race to get all of the map’s collectibles and make it to the finish line before you three other competitors. These both were fun places to show off your skills once you’ve finished the game, but with so many multiplayer options available, it’s a danger that servers won’t be populated enough for quick pick-up games.
Immersion
The visual style, while patently low poly-ish, offers up a genuinely beautiful world. Taking a look back to the first Windlands, it’s clear the studio has refined the overall aesthetic to be more varied in both texture and architecture, but it still retains the charm of open vistas and precipitous areas to scramble up.
Character design is ostensibly inspired by Studio Ghibli films, although it features more of a Saturday morning cartoon-quality that you might see on Dragon Ball Z. There isn’t any interaction with NPCs outside of automatically handing over whatever you may have fetched, be it a robot part or a crystal to power a world portal. NPCs tend to gesticulate with their hands, but they never seem to open their mouths to talk. It’s not unnerving, but a bit strange just the same. They’re perfectly useful as quest-givers though, and are both extremely well voice-acted and realized from a design perspective.
Image captured by Road to VR
Positional audio is also extremely well done, with moments where a tinkling Easter egg collectible will drive you mad searching for it, or alternatively send you into a panic as a beeping homing missile closes in on your position.
As for object interaction, there’s no inventory to faff about with, or any objects to handle, so the meat of the game’s immersion plainly rests on the feelings of adrenaline and triumph of clattering up that difficult wall near a pool of insta-death lava, or swinging to that barely-reachable cactus.
Looking out over a steep drop doesn’t illicit the same pit in my stomach after a few minutes of playing as it once did, but I’ve also played through the first Windlands, so if it’s your first experience with the series, soaring through the air and hooking your way to the top is ultimately a really novel experience that just feels right.
Comfort
Windlands 2 has a buffet of comfort options, although since it’s a smooth-forward running and jumping game, it could be intense for newer VR users.
To mitigate this, the game features a few advanced options. There is a ‘comfort cage’, a literal cage around you, offered in both translucent and opaque varieties. Floor markers are also available, which give you a constant translucent floor area. There are vignettes (aka FOV-limiters), although I preferred not to use it to no obscure my peripheral vision for that next hook hold.
The game features seated and standing options, smooth turn or variable snap-turn, and hand-relative or head-relative forward motion. With all of these in place, most new users should be able to adapt to the game’s swinging locomotion scheme without too much issue.
Final Thoughts
In retrospect, I wasn’t sure whether I’d really like Psytec’s choice to flesh out the Windlands brand, changing it from the zen-like platformer to its now combat-focused co-op story. And while some of that story was less clever than I would have hoped for on first blush, it left me feeling like I had re-entered a classic game, where your goals are complicated, but your motivations to those goals aren’t. In a way, letting you tackle those barriers together as friends felt a bit like a group hiking trip.
In the end, I’m happy to see the original’s hard-won locomotion scheme, which was pretty experimental in the early DK2 days, make its way into something that most importantly hasn’t overextended itself too much into being the end-all, be-all. On an indie budget, biting off more than you can chew usually backfires, as promises go half-completed, and the player is left wondering what the hype is about. Blemishes and all though, I’m ready to play more.
DeNA, the Japan-based mobile game developer known for their work on several Nintendo properties including Super Mario Run (2016) and Fire Emblem Heroes (2017), announced a new VR adventure game targeting PSVR, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift. Dubbed VoxEl, the game is said to include puzzle-solving as well as combat.
The trailer (linked below) shows off a first-person experience where you help a woman named Ell solve puzzles using a magic wand and a number of glowing purple stones, one of which is chained to her leg.
According to a report by IGN Japan(Japanese), the objective of each level is to destroy an antenna blocking the world’s colors and sounds. Besides the ability to levitate the game’s mysteriously glowing purple rocks, the player’s wand also has other powers, including ‘wind’, ‘earth’, and ‘fire’, all of which play into specific puzzles such as a windmill puzzle that requires a puff of air to rotate. Protecting Ell and moving her through the game, even as you go against big level bosses, is the key.
VoxEl is being co-developed by DeNA (pronounced ‘DNA’), which recently partnered with Nintendo to brings is IP to the mobile platform, and Amata K.K., a multimedia firm behind Last Labyrinth, a VR escape room slated for release in Spring 2019.
VoxEl doesn’t have an official release date yet, although IGN Japan reports that English localization is currently in the works to go along with the title’s original Japanese version.
Odd Raven Studios, the Stockholm-based developers behind Carly and the Reaperman – Escape From the Underworld (2018), announced that the VR couch co-op platformer is getting a single-player experience starting today.
Carly and the Reaperman was originally designed as an asymmetrical cooperative game, where a non-VR player controls Carly in the third-person, while another steps into the first-person role of a giant ghostly figure named ‘the Reaperman’ to assist her along the way by moving platforms and holding enemies at bay.
Now you’ll be able to play the single-player experience in VR, solving the puzzles and avoiding the world’s dangers all on your lonesome. The single-player mode will go live today at 6PM CEST (local time here).
While puzzles are still pint-sized to a VR player’s perspective, the studio has created a way that will have you taking on all the same tasks as the two-player game.
We went hands-on with Carly and the Reaperman before its general release this summer, and while the single-player mode likely does away with a few of the quirks of the original couch co-op mode, including the ability to see invisible platforms in VR, prompting some fun communication between players, it’s good to see at very least that’s it’s an option for those who want to get some more Reapermaning when your friends and family aren’t available for the 50+ levels available in the game.
Carly and the Reaperman supports HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows VR headsets, purchasable on Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR) and the Oculus Store (Rift). A demo is also said to be available with a few early levels, although at the time of this writing it doesn’t appear to be live.
The studio also teased a PSVR version in the works too, although there’s no concrete info on when it’s due to arrive.
Gravity Sketch fills an interesting role in the world of VR modeling tools. More focused on design than art, the app functions much like a 3D sketchpad for exploring ideas of form and color as part of a broader modeling workflow. An update to the Early Access app brings new and improved tools to make 3D ideation faster and easier.
Update 1.5 for Gravity Sketch, which is now available on the Oculus Store and Steam, brings a handful of new tools and improved functionality, much of which the company says has come as a result of user feedback during the app’s Early Access period. A video from the company summarizes the changes:
The video doesn’t cover everything however; the full features list of new features from the company follows:
Taper mode – This setting allows artists to draw any length of stroke and always have tapered ends.
Draw with Normals – When artists draw with a non-round brush, the shape of the stroke will do a much better job matching the rotation of the controller.
Edit Normals – This feature allows artists to edit the twist of strokes along their path (think square brush).
Depth of Field + Square Snapshot – Artists can now add a depth-of-field effect to their snapshots, and take square pictures ready for the gram!
Orthographic Views – Accessed from a new menu on the advanced panel, artists can now view their model from top/front/side orthographic viewports, then grab the panels off and take screenshots of them directly!
Export Options – Gravity Sketch now has improved export layout and settings for .obj, .fbx and .iges, which give artists more control over the export process and improve compatibility with popular design tools.
Sketch Materials – The replacement to color history allows artists to re-use materials much more accurately in their current sketch.
Super Ellipsoid – This new primitive allows artists to adjust extra parameters to create interesting shapes.
Filled Solid – Artists can now create new filled shapes in non-planar mode.
Simple Grouping – Artists can now create groups of objects, which they can then move and manipulate.
Connect Curves – Artists can now automatically patch two curves/splines/surfaces together.
Earlier this year, Gravity Sketch announced they’d raised $1.7 million with participation from Wacom—a leading provider of digital design hardware, best known for its high-precision graphics tablets and similar touch & stylus input technology; it’s a big name in the design space, and a strong vote of confidence for Gravity Sketch.
Ready at Dawn today announced the beginning of the fourth open beta weekend for the zero-G, VR shooter expansion Echo Combat. Now on the list of improvements and updates includes a hotly awaited parties function, and a few other features and some fresh mechanic balances to boot.
The open beta will be taking place starting today, September 6th, at 10:30 AM PDT (local time here) and through Sunday, September 9th at 9:00 AM PDT (local time here).
The list of improvements include:
Parties – invite your friends and form the three-person posse you’ve been waiting for.
Arc Mine balance changes – The Arc Mine now continuously detects enemies while armed, and allows detected targets a short window of opportunity to either escape from its radius before it stuns them or destroy the mine.
Fission Map balance changes – the Cargo Bay has been altered to help the Attacking team push the Payload out of its initial room which include multiple new pieces of cover. more cover inserted on the Dense side to better break line of sight to the Cargo Bay, and a number of safer path options to exit the initial starting room and engage with Defenders has been added.
Energy barrier tweaks – to keep players from overly relying on the Energy Barrier Tac-Mod, it’s been nerfed slightly; the duration of the Energy Barrier, once generated, has been reduced to 15 seconds from its original 25 second duration. The Comet will also do slightly less damage to the Energy Barrier and will take a full clip to break it down.
There are also a host of general bug fixes listed on Ready at Dawn’s announcement page, which include known issues for both Echo Combat and Echo Arena.
Developers will be making game balance changes throughout the weekend based on community feedback, and provide these at incremental hotfixes.
In case you’re new to Echo Combat, here’s a quick primer: Echo Combat is an Oculus exclusive based around a familiar gametype that fans of Team Fortress 2 (2007) or Overwatch (2016) will instantly recognize: payload—push the cart on a track through the winding maze, or defend the advances of the cart by pushing it backwards and running down the clock. With a zero-G locomotion scheme, you can push yourself through the winding corridors and boost yourself to land those critical payload-stopping headshots.
OC5 (@oddravenstudios) 
