Lightbound Studios, a company founded by two former God of War series developers, are aiming to bring something truly colossal to VR with their upcoming first-person shooter Titan Arena.
The game essentially pits you against increasingly harder Titans in a crowded arena, of course unlocking new weapons along the way.
The developers are promising a pretty comprehensive range of locomotion schemes, including smooth movement, strafing, dashing, snap-turning, and climbing via grappling hook-style tether.
Currently, the studio is advertising three weapons that can be used defeat both the massive Titans and their pesky robot underlings, which include the tether for grabbing drones, a chain gun, and a plasma launcher that can lock onto targets.
Image courtesy Lightbound Studios
According to the Steam listing, the game is slated to arrive on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows VR headsets in April 2019. An Early Bird Steam key will cost you $17. As an ‘all-or-nothing’ campaign, the studio must hit their funding goal of $30,000 by September 27th, 2018.
If the work-in-progress trailer indicates anything, we’re likely in for plenty of foot stomping, fist crushing, and laser beams to dodge as you tango with threatening swarms of air and tank-sized land robots. Prefaced as “real game footage,” the studio is also targeting a fairly high level of polish to boot.
Lightbound Studios previously produced the mobile game Star Chasers, which was released in January 2016. This will be the studio’s first VR game. Check out the Kickstarter here.
Nostos, an upcoming open world RPG from China-based tech company NetEase, made its Western debut at Gamescom this year with something that appears to be heavily influenced by the popular anime series such as Sword Art Online.
I got a chance to pop into the NetEase booth at this year’s Gamescom in Cologne, and while there are some clear ‘wow’ moments thanks to the overall beauty of the world, it’s clear the studio has a ways to go before Nostos can be considered a true VR success.
Here’s the pitch: players live in the world of Nostos, a post-apocalyptic, but verdant place littered with the remnants of long-abandoned cities and artifacts that help you survive. Including deserts, grasslands, and mountains, players fight off enemies as a natural timer counts down, an ever-expanding destructive force called ‘Coralsea’. The game is supposed to be an online multiplayer, but it’s uncertain if the ‘M’ for ‘massive’ is applicable at this point.
According to a statement by NetEase, “[t]eamwork is key as players gather resources, build a clan they can trust, and fight to pull the world of Nostos back from the brink of utter desolation.” The game is slated to arrive some time in 2019 for PC via Steam, and for VR headsets via Steam, Viveport and the Oculus Store.
Strapping into a Vive, I got the chance to do a few basic tasks; drive a very Miyazaki-inspired pickup truck, shoot a giant bug-type baddie attacking the base (and loot him for treasure), and walk around to soak in a bit of the world that both NetEase and production studio ShuiGe have created.
In terms of its VR implementation, it’s clear at this point that the game is still in its earliest phases, possibly even too early to really be shown to the public without a healthy dose of disclaimers, something I unfortunately didn’t receive throughout my demo experience. While the game’s UI was serviceable, which is based on selecting options from your wrist-mounted watch, most everything was not stellar at this point.
Image courtesy NetEase
Besides some basic problems with low frame rate, there’s also the issue of a distractingly-close render distance, which resolves finer details like plants at only about a two meter circle around you. This takes away somewhat from the looming structures in the middle and far distances like mountains, large trees, and a cool looking center structure that reminds me of The World Tree from Sword Art Online.
Image courtesy NetEase
The demo’s overall object interaction still needs a lot of work too. Simply put, you clip through everything. Example: one aspect of resource gathering relies on you ability to fell trees with your trusty axe, which you then use to build houses, craft items, etc. Despite only working in half of the dozen-or-so times I tried, it never quite felt right because my axe would oftentimes clip through my target at not register on the tree at all—something PC players certainly won’t have an issue with. Even something as simple as getting into a truck didn’t seem to work in a VR-native way, as you would have to remember to press a hotkeyed controller button to enter and exit the vehicle, and not simply walk up to it and open the door.
At this point, Nostos‘ VR version feels like a shoehorned implementation, and I genuinely hope NetEase looks around at true VR natives such as Rec Room, Orbus VR, and Echo VR for inspiration moving forward. It’s still early days, and there’s definitely some good bones here that would be grand in VR if properly fleshed out.
Image courtesy NetEase
A few positive points: as a VR-capable game with standard PC support, the potential pool of players is likely to be higher, giving the possibility of a pretty good start in terms of raw player numbers.
The game is also supporting Improbable’s SpatialOS, a cloud-based server platform that allows for persistent online worlds that continue their physics simulations even if no one is there to interact. This wasn’t available during the demo, but I was told by a NetEase spokesperson that the implementation would be available at launch.
Beat Games, the Czech Republic-based indie developers behind smash hit rhythm game Beat Saber, are aiming to make a big splash in Asia with a newly revealed dedicated arcade machine.
The cabinet was created in partnership with SKonec Entertainment, a Seoul-based company that recently opened a VR multiplex called VR SQUARE.
The arcade cabinet itself features a monitor for spectating, an overhead cable management system, and appears to be powered by a HTC Vive headset, as evidenced by an image reported by Korean publication MK News. An alternative image obtained by VR Focus also features a Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headset in play.
The developers say in a recent tweet that the arcade machine’s public debut will begin this September at KVRF in Seoul, and the GTI Expo in Guangzhou, China.
A full list of participating arcades isn’t available at the time of this writing, but the company says more info regarding locations will be coming soon.
As for the West, Beat Games has already penned a deal with Springboard VR to bring Beat Saber to VR arcades across North America and Europe.
Stormland, the upcoming open-world VR title from Insomniac Games and Oculus, will be playable at PAX West this week to the general public, and not just badge-holders.
The Oculus Stormland pop-up will be available for one day only on August 31st in Seattle, WA.
Oculus says in a blogpost that PAX-goers and the general public alike will get a chance to “[b]ound up cliffs, glide across chasms, and fly through the slipstream with velocity. Detonate explosives, harness electricity, and wield makeshift weapons to overcome titanium sentries and monolithic guardians.”
In Stormland, you play as a peaceful robotic gardener until a mysterious storm called ‘The Tempest’ shatters your android body. After lying dormant for centuries, you must journey through an ever-changing cloudscape, augmenting yourself to become a heroic fighter, save your friends, and reclaim your world.
You have the ability to fly just above the cloud-like ‘slipstream’ using your hands, and shoot a laser in the cloud’s surface to create a sort of ramp to glide off of. You can also physically climb up a cliff side and glide back down. ‘The Tempest’ is said to rearrange everything each week, presenting the player with new playgrounds of movement, combat, and scavenging.
BigBox VR, the developers behind VR multiplayer shooter Smashbox Arena (2017), are making their way into new territory soon with their upcoming battle royale shooter Population: ONE. The studio showed off at this year’s Gamescom what promises to be a full-featured shooter with some of the Fornite and PUBG trimmings that you’d hope for in this distinctly VR native game.
Starting at a high vantage point, you board a one-man escape pod destined for the map below where you loot, shoot, and duke it out with other players until there’s a single person standing. Of course, it wouldn’t be a battle royale game if there weren’t an ever-closing wall of death too, which gradually limits the size of the map.
Image courtesy Big Box VR
In the case of the demo, we were only given a small fraction of the game’s one square kilometer map to play in, and were only allowed to participate in two vs two team deathmatch—a necessity to keeping things quick in the demo area. The studio is however targeting a total player number of 24 players, which will be chunked into either 12v12 team deathmatch or 24-player free for all.
Thankfully, before launching out to the abandoned town below, I got a chance to run through the basics of the games movement scheme, something that promises to make Pop: ONE unique (and not simply “Fortnite in VR!!1!”).
Image courtesy Big Box VR
Firstly, you can’t jump. I would actually consider this a good thing, as jumping can be pretty uncomfortable in VR. Instead, you have the ability to climb anything by simply depressing the grip button on your system’s controller and grabbing onto any given vertical surface. High buildings beckon you to climb them, where hopefully you’ll find that sniper rifle you’re pining for.
You can fly. Well, not really, but you can gracefully glide down and shoot while doing it too. To activate the flight mode, you simply have to put your hands into a ‘T’ pose, and you glide at a fairly flat decline. There’s a super high building that I couldn’t get to, but my first objective is to climb that sucker and fly all the way down.
You can build. Unlike Fortnite though, there’s only one type of brick resource which can’t be mined or otherwise obtained without finding it directly in a loot pile. Once you’ve looted enough bricks though, a single button press brings up a highlighted blueprint of your wall/floor/ceiling’s position and you can deploy it. Besides the ability to build one very specific structure type (a flat square, that’s where the comparisons to Fortnite stop. As a VR native, I expect this to become less about frenetic construction wars (which are absolutely insane in Fortnite), and more about climbing and flying—two things that feel absolutely cool in Pop: ONE.
Despite this, the ability to both climb and build in practice act as nice counterpoints to each other. You can build wherever you want, and as high as you want, but it won’t stop the hordes from scaling your walls and ganking you in your improvised sniper’s nest.
The game also appears to have some pretty tight gun mechanics too. A manual reload function means you can’t just spray and pray, as you have to physically insert mags and charge the bolt. It isn’t fiddly either, as a mag floats just below the gun’s mag well, and is highlighted yellow until you ram it in. Your bolt is then highlighted yellow for visibility, and you charge the first round into the chamber. From what I’ve seen, there are no gun customizations though, only default weapons such as a 9mm UMP, P90, M4, sniper rifle with scope, and various pistols. Aiming and shooting is also a great experience, as it makes heavy use of iron sights, red dot reticles, and standard scopes.
Both the map and inventory are very basic at this point, both of which function as pop-up menus keyed to a button press. A quick tap on the inventory button lets you hot-swap between a your chosen gun and an empty hand, which is required for climbing.
Once you die, you’re then given a number of ways to spectate. Starting out as the size of Godzilla, you can either ‘grab’ the world to move around, move via stick, shrink or grow by doing a ‘pinch and zoom’ movement with both controllers, or go to human-size and clip through the world’s architecture as you watch the final bits play out.
You might think battle royale shooters are passé, but until we get a really good one in VR, it isn’t over yet. Enter Population: One, a newly announced VR battle royale from Bix Box VR, the developers behind Smashbox Arena (2016).
On paper, Population: One certainly sounds ambitious, as it promises to deliver many of the elements seen in popular battle royale games such as Fortnite and PUBG along with a few other things too. On the game’s feature list: one square kilometer map, the ability to climb anything, jet packs, the ability to build defensive structures, and even the addition of single player missions.
Some of this traversal tech, namely the flying and climbing, is being couched as the studio’s own ‘FreeMotion’ scheme, although the team hasn’t specified exactly how any of it differs from standard VR locomotion methods yet.
Image courtesy Big Box VR
With its emphasis on realism, it also marks a stark departure from the company’s previous shooter, Smashbox Arena, which used cartoony characters and fictitious plasma ball guns.
Smashbox Arena however fared very well in comparison to many other VR multiplayer games, which sometimes languish with low hourly active user numbers, creating a downward spiral into empty severs and essentially a dead game. Hopefully some of this valuable multiplayer know-how will make its was into Population: One as well.
info is still thin on the ground, so there’s plenty more to learn about Population: One before we can tell where the game’s headed exactly.
Big Box is currently taking sign-ups for a closed beta, which they say will come sometime in 2019. The game is said to include cross-play for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows VR headsets.
A Fisherman’s Tale is an upcoming puzzle-adventure from Innerspace VR and ARTE, the Franco-German TV network, that aims to get you thinking outside the box—or rather outside the tiny lighthouse as you try to escape a number of rooms on your way to the top.
Playing as an ex-fisherman named Bob, you find out one day that a large storm is brewing, and it’s up to you make it to the top of the lighthouse and turn on the light. After finding a tool to pry the nails off the boarded windows, that’s when you notice that things aren’t as they appear in the cute, charming world of Bob.
Looking out the window, you see a giant version of yourself in an infinite recursive loop. With A Fisherman’s Tale, it really is turtles all the way down.
Image courtesy Innerspace, ARTE
This isn’t just a cool effect, but it immediately becomes an important game mechanic for object interaction.
Looking out the window, I toss a bottle, and quickly whip around to the dollhouse to catch a miniature version of it. In this case, it was a useless bottle, but soon I have to fetch a tiny hat for a talking crustacean buddy, but I only have a regular-sized hat at my disposal. Second example: there’s a giant anchor in the way to a door, and removing the barrier is as simple as picking it up out of the dollhouse, of course watching as a giant version of your hand comes down to scoop it up.
Some tracking related issues notwithstanding, the game’s object interaction is very promising. You can practically manipulate any object you can touch, which leads to some inevitable fun moments such as shrinking everything in the room, or trying to shrink an object until you can’t even pick it up anymore. If you drop an item, a handy extender arm, activated with a button press, lets you pick it back up without having to bend over. If you toss out an important key item (like a key), it will automatically respawn after a few ticks.
Image courtesy Innerspace, ARTE
I only had the opportunity to play the first chapter, which took around 15 minutes, but Innerspace VR CEO Hadrien Lanvin told me that it will typically take users between two and four hours to complete the entire multi-chapter game. Even then, I felt my 15 minutes in where a bit rushed, as the game is very object-centric and requires you to rummage around the room looking for the right puzzle piece so you can escape each successive room. Thankfully there’s a difficulty slider that lets you turn off all hints at its most difficult, or keep them in so even a child can play.
Completing a room also prompts a cutscene, which is said to explain more about Bob, and why he quit his life as a fisherman. If it has anything to do with the image below, well, we may have our answer.
Image courtesy Innerspace, ARTE
A Fisherman’s Tale is slated to arrive by the end of 2018, first releasing on PC VR headsets, then PSVR at a later point. Supported PC VR headsets include HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows VR headsets. While co-developed by Innerspace VR and ARTE, the game is being published by Vertigo Games, the minds behind Arizona Sunshine (2016) and Skyworld (2017).
Check out the announce trailer below to get an idea of what A Fisherman’s Tale will have in store.
We have feet on the ground at Gamescom 2018, so check back for all of the VR/AR news and hands-on articles of this year’s up and coming games.
Sólfar Studios, the Iceland-based studio behind roguelike VR archery game In Death, has announced that the game is set to launch out of Early Access on October 2nd, accompanying the ‘Paradise Lost’ update which will bring new enemies and a new weapon.
Update (September 17th, 2018): Having been in ongoing Early Access development since February 1st, In Death is due to hit its full ‘1.0’ launch come October 2nd, the same day that the forthcoming ‘Paradise Lost’ update is rolled out. The game will launch on the Oculus Store and Steam priced at $30, an increase over the current Early Access price of $20. The studio says they’re actively developing a PSVR version of the game but have yet to reveal a launch date.
In Death has enjoyed a very positive reception from players during its early access release, holding down a 4.5 out of 5 review on the Oculus Store, and a 93% positive rating on Steam. It’ll be interesting to see if the game will appeal to a potentially wider audience when it launches fully on October 2nd.
Original Article (August 20th, 2018): In ‘Paradise Lost’ you’ll find “new enemies in the form of cute cherubs harassing you from the air as well as banshees hitting your with their powerful magic. Finally, you will not get through Paradise Lost without dealing with the Archangel Gabriel that guards its exit,” the company says in a Steam update.
Along with the cherubs, a new weapon is coming to the game too, a crossbow which is said to deal “more short-range damage than the bow.” Up until now, the only weapon available was the bow and arrow, albeit with plethora of arrow types at your disposal.
Image courtesy Solfar Studio
“We are fast approaching the Full Release of In Death where you will as an Early Access player receive all of the new content for no additional charge,” the studio says. “Expect more details on our full launch in the coming days and weeks.”
Launched in 2017, FORM is a narrative puzzle game from Charm Games that’s become something of a hidden gem in the VR gaming space—lesser known, but well liked, with a strong critical reception and positive reviews from players on both Oculus and Steam. Our preview of the studio’s upcoming follow up, Twilight Path, shows that players can expect to see more of what they loved, this time with a new setting and a mystical flair.
After I played through the first two chapters of what was described as an “early alpha demo,” it’s clear that Twilight Path aims for much of the same puzzle-focused gameplay as its predecessor. Though this isn’t a direct sequel and things are going to look and feel different; whereas Form had a sci-fi aesthetic and was set inside the mind of a scientist, Twilight Path brings more ancient and mystical tones, with at least a little bit of Studio Ghibli inspiration.
In Twilight Path I found myself moving along a node-based level structure. While teleportation isn’t always the most immersive of locomotion schemes in VR, in this case it’s used well, as each stop along your path is typically home to a puzzle or narrative sequence which means you are spending time at each point interacting with the level rather than mindlessly moving about from moment to moment.
Though mystical, Twilight Path has a decidedly more Earthly tone to its setting (compared to the abstract geometric sensibilities of Form). This approach means more recognizable environments and objects, which show off the studio’s attention to visual fidelity.
In the game’s opening sequence I found myself in a curio shop with a large wooden crate before me. After removing the boards I was greeted with a latched cabinet which I was able to unlock by twisting two handles and then swinging open the door to reveal a series of drawers. After figuring out how to open the final drawer, I discovered a bracelet which came floating before me, and upon putting my hand inside of it, it shrunk down to stay affixed to my wrist. A gemstone on the bracelet encouraged me to grab it with my other hand, and upon doing so I was able to summon a purple translucent orb.
Looking through the orb allowed me to see secret markings on the cabinet which led me to find a potion which gave me a ‘force grab’-like power that allowed me to interact with distant objects. It became clear to me that between the seeing orb and the force grab I had acquired two powers that would serve as useful tools for my adventure going forward. Over the course of the game I’d expect more to follow.
For now though, I found my way over to a fortune-teller machine in the corner of the shop. I opened a cabinet and found some markings by looking through the seeing orb, which helped me figure out how to activate the machine, at which point I stared into its crystal ball and was teleported to a mystical realm, the Twilight Path, where I’d go on to be introduced to the game’s first characters, and of course solve a few more puzzles before the conclusion of the preview.
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.
These subtle but well executed details feel a little bit magical when you’re right up close to them in VR, and speak to an attention to detail that as present here as it was in Form.
While my preview left me encouraged that Charm Games will have no problem recreating the interactive puzzle-based fun of Form, I’m hoping to see Twilight Path take things to the next level in gameplay and narrative. My time in the game offered some glimpses of characters and lore, but didn’t delve much into a central conflict or what kind of challenges might face the player going forward. Puzzles are fun, but they can become something greater when woven into a story that you care about.
Image courtesy Charm Games
And when it comes to length, this kind of hand-authored game, focused largely on unique interactions and puzzles, can be especially difficult for an indie studio to flesh out into a substantial amount of gameplay. Form, for instance, only lasted about an hour. It seems that Twilight Path is aiming for a broader scope, but the studio hasn’t yet said how much gameplay they’re hoping to achieve.
So far the studio hasn’t confirmed a specific release date for Twilight Path, but previously said it was due out this Summer. After this promising preview, we’ll be looking forward to hearing more from Charm Games about where this mystical journey will take us.
Back a Oculus Connect last year, the company teased an upcoming Oculus exclusive game developed Respawn Entertainment, the studio behind Titanfall and Titanfall 2, which has since been acquired by EA. The title, which has yet to see a formal announcement, appears to be poised for FPS action when it launches in 2019.
While VR is certainly suited to doing more than just shooters, it seems that Respawn Entertainment’s upcoming VR game is going to stay true to the studio’s speciality, and aim for an FPS combat experience.
Job listings for Respawn Entertainment refer to the title only as “Unannounced VR game,” and characterize it a “AAA VR shooter game” and a “combat VR game.” Several of the listings seek candidates whose “prior experience on an FPS title is ideal,” with one listing looking for someone “experience[d] with first person weapons and full body animations.”
Listings for the title span Art, Game Design, Software Development, and Quality Verification; 14% of Respawn’s 35 current job listings are for the studio’s Unannounced VR game. All positions are for the studio’s LA location.
Little is known about the game to date, though we hope to get some details at Oculus Connect 2018 coming up in late September. Back during the initial tease from Oculus Connect 2017, Respawn Game Director Peter Hirschmann confirmed that the title is not related to Titanfall or Star Wars (both of which the studio is working on for separate projects).
Respawn Entertainment was acquired last year by EA, just a month after Oculus announced that it planned to publish an Oculus exclusive made by the studio, however both Respawn and Oculus have said that the acquisition won’t have any impact on the project coming to fruition.
Depending upon the success of Respawn’s VR project, the acquisition could potentially act as a trojan horse for getting EA more involved with VR. The massive publisher hasn’t delved deeply into the young tech—there’s not VR game to date that’s reeled in enough revenue to be more than a drop in the bucket for EA’s bottom line—but they aren’t ignoring it entirely.
EA’s Star Wars Battlefront (2015) launched with a special VR mission exclusively for PlayStation VR. Though it was a single level, it was well received and, tellingly, built on the company’s own Frostbite engine—meaning the publisher has invested time into adapting their core engine for VR rendering. Unfortunately Battlefront II (2017) didn’t end up launching with any VR content of its own.
EA will likely have a major say in what the studio does next, but with the Rift-exclusive VR project already signed between Oculus and Respawn, the outcome could be a major factor in whether the publisher decides to take on more VR projects or scrap such initiatives until VR has further matured.
