Category: Outlier

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Roguelite FPS Outlier Coming to Oculus Quest in 2022

Outlier

Joy Way, the virtual reality (VR) developer behind Stride revealed its latest project Outlier during the summer. A roguelite shooter, Outlier was originally confirmed for PC VR headsets but recently the team also mentioned that an Oculus Quest version will be arriving next year.

Outlier

In a statement, JoyWay said: “We are pleased to announce that Oculus has accepted putting OUTLIER to the official Oculus Quest Store…Approval on this early stage of development will help us to optimize the development process, which will lead to a faster release of the quest version. The game will benefit from the wireless nature of Oculus Quest, as one of its main features is fast-paced gameplay.”

As previously reported, Outlier is being developed for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Valve Index headsets first, with a Steam Early Access release expected before the end of this year. “During the early access period, we hope to receive feedback from the community on the core mechanics and future content of the game,” notes the team.

While Stride offered intense, physical parkour gameplay, Outlier maintains that energy but in a very different way. Set in a sci-fi world where mankind is reaching into the stars looking for a new home, you find yourself imbued with mysterious powers after being dragged into a black hole. With these new skills, you set out to free a potential new home from a hostile alien race, and if you don’t succeed you can always try and try again.

Outlier

Roguelite VR titles are becoming ever more popular, providing a solid gameplay loop where you fight dangerous forces across procedurally generated levels. Die, and you return to a whole new world to explore, being able to upgrade as you go to make each runthough a bit easier. Outlier will have several mechanics in that regard. You’ll be able to pick up new abilities like throwing fireballs or using telekinesis. These spells can then be combined to make even better abilities.

Currently, Joy Way hasn’t confirmed when the Outlier early access will begin for PC VR headsets. When that happens VRFocus will let you know.

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Roguelite VR Shooter Outlier Headed To Oculus Quest

JoyWay’s latest project, a roguelite VR shooter named Outlier, is on its way to the Oculus Quest.

The developer recently confirmed as much in an email to UploadVR. This will be a full release on the main Oculus Quest store, which you can expect to launch in 2022. Check out the trailer for the PC VR version below.

Outlier Oculus Quest Version Confirmed

Outlier offers first-person shooter action with a supernatural twist. Players fight through an alien planet filled with hostile creatures using a firearm in one hand and superpowers like the ability to throw fire with the other. A few weeks back JoyWay launched an official demo for Steam that also featured as part of this week’s Steam Next Fest. The PC version will be launching in Early Access later this year.

This isn’t the only project the developer is working on. The studio continues to build on its popular free-running VR game, Stride. It launched an Oculus Quest version earlier this year and is currently working on a multiplayer mode that’s in testing on PC, as well as a single-player campaign mode. It’s also got a gory Beat Saber/Pistol Whip clone called Against on the way.

Will you be picking up Outlier on Oculus Quest? Let us know in the comments below!

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Stride Dev Launches Free Demo For Superpowered PC VR FPS, Outlier

Stride developer Joy Way has yet another demo for another VR game. This time it’s superpowered first-person shooter, Outlier.

A free demo for the game launched on Steam last week, and you can see the new trailer for the game below. Outlier is described as an adventure roguelite in which players pair an arsenal of weapons with powers like throwable fireballs. Cast as one of humanity’s last survivors, players arrive in a new solar system in search of a new home, only to find a deadly alien race looking to destroy everything.

Outlier Trailer

Your task, if you haven’t guessed, will be to stop them. Outlier will feature randomly generated levels that refresh on each run, with the chance to earn new modifiers and power-ups each attempt.

The demo for the game includes three different powers and four weapons to try as well as four enemy types and an end-of-level boss. An Early Access release is planned for later this year. No word on possible PSVR and Oculus Quest releases just yet, but we’ll keep you up-to-date on that front.

This is far from the only project Joy Way has in the works. Earlier this year the studio also debuted its hyper-violet VR rhythm game, Against, which doesn’t yet have a release date. Work also continues on Stride, the team’s popular VR free-running game, which recently launched on Oculus Quest.

Will you be picking up Outlier? Or are you hoping to see more added to Stride soon? Let us know in the comments below!

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Stride Developer Unveils Roguelite FPS Outlier for PC VR

Outlier

Virtual reality (VR) developer Joy Way is becoming one of those “one to watch” studios thanks to some exciting projects currently in the works. Parkour title Stride is already in Early Access and due for release later this year is the eye-catching rhythm action videogame Against. This week Joy Way has added a third experience to that list, a roguelite called Outlier.

Outlier

Outlier is going to be a first-person shooter (FPS) with lots of mechanics tailored to making the VR gameplay as immersive as possible. The plot revolves around you being a captain on an ark, sent into space to find a new home for humanity. This journey sees your vessel sucked into a black hole, whisked to an unknown region of space where you just happen to find a habitable solar system that is under attack. Due to the physics bending properties of the black hole, you gain special abilities which can be used to secure the new home.

From the details released so far, Joy Way is covering all bases when it comes to offering you as much gameplay flexibility as possible. The trailer showcases a couple of guns, the ability to throw fireballs after finding a magical rock as well as telekinesis to hurl pieces of the environment at enemies. All very physical and interactive which bodes very well. The guns also look rather cool with a pistol which eventually overheats needing to be shaken to cool down. Another requires the projectiles to be ripped back out an enemy to reload.

Joy Way reveals that abilities can even be amalgamated: “Combine your spells together to get new ones: mix a fireball and a telekinetic push to acquire both an explosive fireball and a fire push.” Handy, because even in this early look, there were at least five enemy types including small flying drones and towering heavies which look to do some serious damage.

Outlier

This being a roguelite Outlier is all about achieving that perfect run, continually pushing as far a possible before dying, upgrading and then trying again. You’ll be able to tailor your loadout and build before trying again, whilst also knowing it’s all procedurally generated making each run different.

Outlier won’t purely be about killing enemies every second. As you progress random events and new storyline pieces will appear and you’ll need to be on the lookout for secret rooms, hidden passages, and artefacts.

Joy Way plans on releasing Outlier via Steam Early Access later this year for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Valve Index. As further details are released, VRFocus will let you know.

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Try the Creative VR-centric Weapons of FPS Roguelite ‘OUTLIER’—Demo Available Now

Joy Way, the indie VR studio that’s juggling the development of three unique VR games, this week announced a demo for OUTLIER, a VR roguelite that’s piqued our interested with creative weaponry clearly designed around VR.

Update (September 24th, 2021): Developer Joy Way has released a demo of Outlier, purportedly offering 1.5 hours of content for players to get a feel for the game’s interesting FPS gameplay. The demo is available now on Steam.

The studio is actively looking for feedback; if you played the demo and want to share your thoughts, check out the feedback form here.

While the demo is said to include three abilities, four weapons, four enemies, a boss, and 13 powerups, there’s no word yet on how the demo compares to the scope of the full game which is due to launch later this year.

The original article, which covers the announcement of Outlier, continues below.

Original Article (July 22nd, 2021): You may be familiar with Joy Way’s other two titles, STRIDE (available in early access) and AGAINST (coming later this year), both of which have their own unique character. Now the studio is, impressively, working on yet a third VR game which looks unique still—OUTLIER.

As the studio explains, after Stride, it built out two prototypes to explore a future project. One of those prototypes lead to the rhythm game Against, and the other, as we’ve now learned, has become Outlier. Joy Way describes the game as a procedurally generated VR FPS roguelite:

You are a captain of one of the last human arks. In search of a new home for humanity, your vessel was sucked into a black hole. From your position beyond space and time, you witness an unknown race devastating what looks like a habitable solar system. The unknown physics of the black hole endow you with mysterious powers and allow you to exist in parallel worlds. Live, die, and repeat in your quest to conquer at least one of these worlds in the name of mankind.

Beyond solid looking visuals, what’s immediately impressive about Outlier is the creative, VR-centric weapons shown off in the announcement trailer above.

First we see a rapid fire pistol which eventually overheats, as seen by a crystal in a small cage in the back of the gun. As it overheats, the rate of fire slows down drastically. To cool the weapon down more quickly, you can pop open the cage and shake the gun to cool the crystal.

Another interesting weapon we see is pistol-like gun that, instead of shooting bullets, shoots pieces of itself. Reloading appears to be done with a ‘pulling’ gesture, which recalls the pieces of the gun from the environment and reattaches them to be fired again.

OUTLIER Screenshots
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Image courtesy Joy Way
Image courtesy Joy Way
Image courtesy Joy Way
Image courtesy Joy Way
Image courtesy Joy Way
Image courtesy Joy Way
Image courtesy Joy Way
Image courtesy Joy Way
Image courtesy Joy Way

Beyond handheld weapons, the Outlier trailer also shows some magic-like powers which can be swapped on the fly by plugging modules in the back of your gloves. In the trailer we see both a throwable fireball and a sort of force-push. The studio teases that you can combine such abilities to do even more:

The combination of power-ups and ability modifiers makes for different experiences. Combine your spells together to get new ones: mix a fireball and a telekinetic push to acquire both an explosive fireball and a fire push. Shape your character and armory between the runs to construct diverse builds for any playstyle.

Between the interesting weapons, spells, and solid visuals, there’s a lot to be intrigued by already, though the high-speed stick-based locomotion (with lots of strafing and backpedaling) doesn’t look particularly appealing to me for both comfort or immersion. Granted, Joy Way has shown a great capacity to prototype and find what works, so there’s a chance the game will change a good bit between now and launch, and even further through its early access period, which is expected to launch in late 2021.

The post Try the Creative VR-centric Weapons of FPS Roguelite ‘OUTLIER’—Demo Available Now appeared first on Road to VR.

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Bonobo Releases VR Music Experience for ‘Migration’ Album Track “Outlier” on Daydream

Musician Bonobo has today unveiled an interactive virtual reality (VR) experience for Google Daydream based on his track Outlier, from the album Migration.

Created by London,UK-based creative studio Horizons, users will find themselves flying through surreal landscapes and terrains, over mountains and deep into oceans, as they manipulate the music by directing flocks of birds with the Daydream controller. All the visuals are fully generated in real-time and malleable, allowing users to carve their own path through mountain ranges, controlling the terrain’s height by simply changing the altitude, or slow down time below the surface of the sea. The experience can be found on Horizons Studio, Horizon VR app.

Horizons-Outlier-5

“Unlike most other music VR experiences out at the moment, every scene in Horizons has been imagined with musical interaction as a core principle”, says Horizons Studio co-founder Yuli Levtov in a statement. “Much like a music video director creates a visual story that fits the music, we create layers of interactivity that allow people to make their own path through the music. The track becomes more like an explorable playground that you actively engage with, rather than something with a set length that you’re just watching.”

This year Bonobo released his fifth studio album, Migration, entering the Official UK Album Charts at #5, and was #1 on the iTunes Electronic Album charts in over 50 territories.

The Horizons VR app is available as a free download for Google Daydream through the Play Store.

For all the latest musical VR experiences, keep reading VRFocus.