Welcome to another VR Drop, that time of the week where gmw3 looks ahead at what’s to come in the world of virtual reality (VR) videogames. It’s a nicely packed week ahead, whether that’s brand new releases, older titles getting some love on a new platform or indie creations seeing an official launch.
Paper Birds – 3DAR
An oldie but a goldie if you love interactive VR stories, Paper Birds originally hit Meta Quest back in 2020 and now it’s the turn of PC VR headsets. From 3DAR, the creators of Gloomy Eyes, Paper Birds is a 30-minute tale that tells the story of young musician Toto (played by Jojo Rabbit star Archie Yates) as he searches for his lost sister. You can then interact with the world to aid Toto’s journey.
Time for some dark, suspenseful VR horror in the form of Deadness from ALIEN Studio. Set in an old research facility that has seen better days, you have to explore this hell hole whilst sitting in a wheelchair; thus adding to the tense atmosphere. Carefully manoeuvre through the corpse-filled corridors and try to find clues as to who you are and why you’re there. Not for the faint of heart.
PlayStation VR may not be the hot ticket it once was but developers are still showing the headset some love. After a Meta Quest and PC VR launch in 2021, HappyGiant is bringing Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual! to Sony’s headset next week. Join the crime-fighting duo as a rookie and complete various training challenges whilst helping Sam and Max solve a selection of otherworldly crimes.
Supported platform(s): PlayStation VR
Launch date: 23rd February
Admiral Wars – DB Creations
Get that thinking cap on as you need to formulate the best naval strategies in Admiral Wars. Set for a Meta Quest App Lab release, Admiral Wars features both single-player (against AI) and PvP multiplayer gameplay modes. Order your fleet into position and look out the window whilst they take down your enemies or watch as your carefully planned attack backfires and your ships disappear into the depths. As this is an early access launch, in the future DB Creations expects to add additional features including a solo campaign.
Another VR experience on the high seas but without all the carnage and mayhem (sort of). MarineVerse Cup has been on Meta Quest’s App Lab since the distribution platform launched last year. Now MarineVerse Cup is making the official leap to the main store, a competitive sailing game offering three boat types with realistic mechanics so you can learn how to sail – without worrying about falling off.
Looking for the new VR games February 2022 list? We’ve got you covered with our full rundown.
After a whirlwind January with huge releases like Zenith, Wanderer and Hitman 3’s PC VR support, February looks to be just a little quieter. This month is front-heavy with some big releases in the first week, though PC VR fans will have plenty of interesting new oddities to check out over on Steam, too.
As always, you’ll find most of these titles on the Quest, Steam and PSVR stores. Also don’t forget that we often see Quest games launch without notice, so expect more titles to arrive as the month goes on. Oh, and if you want to find out what’s coming a little later in the year check out our 40-strong list of new VR games for 2022. Now, let’s get stuck in.
New VR Games February 2022
Ultrawings 2 (February 3rd) – Quest 2, PC VR to follow
Arguably the biggest release on track for February thus far, Ultrawings 2 is a full sequel to the arcade-style VR flight game. Master a handful of new aircraft and take to the skies to tackle a wide range of new missions across the game’s open environments. Dogfighting is being added as a series first, and the developer estimates it’ll take around 20 hours to complete all of the game’s missions. Expect a PC VR version to follow on from the Quest release.
Les Mills Bodycombat (February 3rd) – Quest 2
OhShape and Chess Club developer Odders is back with a new fitness-focused VR experience. Les Mills takes martial arts inspired workouts to VR. You’ll box targets to the beat and dodge obstacles. With 30 different plans designed for users of all fitness levels, instructors to help you on your way, a full soundtrack and five environments to visit, this could be your next VR workout app.
Paper Birds (February 18th) – PC VR
Paper Birds is a roughly 30 minute VR movie starring heavy hitters like Ed Norton, Joss Stone, and Archie Yates. You follow a young boy named Toto, who navigates a supernatural world using music. With some light interactive elements, this is definitely one for those interested in VR storytelling.
Grid Leaper – (February 28th) – PC VR
Grid Leaper is another experiment in VR platforming, this time hurtling players through environments as they grab bricks with their hands and avoid obstacles. Expect physics-defying leaps across 90 different levels.
And that’s the list of New VR Games February 2022! What are you looking forward to? Let us know in the comments below!
Last night The Academy of International Extended Reality (AIXR) held its fifth annual VR Awards, with the 2021 event taking place virtually inside AltspaceVR for the first time. The VR spectacle – which you could also watch via Youtube and Twitch – celebrated virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology across 12 categories, with the winners including tabletop multiplayer Demeo and interactive film Paper Birds.
Ahead of the prestigious event, the VR Awards 2021 saw over 128 international nominations, 98 finalists judged by XR experts and almost 10,000 public votes cast in the VR Social Influencer of the Year, and VR Game of the Year categories. Resolution Games took home the coveted VR Game of the Year for Demeo, which is no surprise considering VRFocus’ review found the title excelled as a co-op, turn-based strategy experience.
VR Film of the Year went to 3DAR’s enchanting Paper Birds and VR Experience of the Year was awarded to Madrid Noirby ATLAS V & NO GHOST, two excellent VR titles. One of the big surprises of the night came from the VR Hardware of the Year, with HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition enterprise headset taking home the honours.
“Last night, we were delighted to have been able to celebrate the year’s achievements within the Metaverse once more and through our completely bespoke 5th-anniversary world-hop experience – the amazing team here have created a one-of-a-kind virtual journey through the history of the VR Awards and the founders, an event like this is truly a world-first for an awards ceremony,” said Daniel Colaianni, AIXR CEO in a statement. “Our guests were transported into 5 distinctly designed worlds that represent the 5 years that the VR Awards have been recognising VR excellence all across the globe.”
VR Awards 2021 Winners
VR Film of the Year – 3DAR – Paper Birds
VR Social Influencer – ThrillSeeker
VR Hardware of the Year – HP – HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition
VR Game of the Year – Resolution Games – Demeo
VR Experience of the Year – ATLAS V & NO GHOST – Madrid Noir
VR Marketing of the Year – Geometry Ogilvy Japan – Shibuya Virtual Halloween
Rising VR Company of the Year: triple A code
Innovative VR Company of the Year – Virtualware
VR Education and Training of the Year – NORCAT – Vale VR
VR Healthcare of the Year – Osso VR – Osso VR – Cinematic VR Surgical Training Platform
Out-of-home VR Entertainment of the Year – Figment Productions Ltd.- Current, Rising
VR Social Impact Award – Accenture – AVEnueS – Race Equity in Child Welfare
VR Enterprise Solution of the Year – Masters of Pie – Hyperbat – World’s First VR Design Review over 5G
VR Lifetime Achievement Award by Accenture – Tom Furness
And that’s it for another year, did you watch and enjoy the show? For all the latest XR news, keep reading VRFocus.
Paper Birds is a VR experience from Gloomy Eyes (2020) developer 3DAR and producers Baobab Studios and Oculus. The long-awaited Part Two of Paper Birds is exclusively available on Quest starting today.
The VR experience was partially released back in December, and introduced the story of a young musician on a quest to bring back his kidnapped sister from dire circumstances.
The heartfelt story, which is described as having ‘light interactivity’, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival 2021 and La Biennale di Venezia in 2020. It features the voices of Archie Yates, Edward Norton, and Joss Stone.
Now the second installment is available starting today, and is bundled with the original experience on Quest for $7. Overall, Paper Birds is said to feature a 32-minute runtime.
Here’s how 3DAR and co. describe Paper Birds:
PAPER BIRDS tells the story of Toto (Archie Yates), a short-sighted child with an exceptional talent for music. With guidance from his grandparents Robert (Edward Norton), a highly respected musician devoted to his music above all else, and Elsa (Joss Stone), who set aside her dreams of being an artist to care for her family, Toto must find his way through the world of darkness to bring back his sister, taken away by mysterious shadows.
He’ll use the depth of music to open portals to the invisible world. And when he confronts the shadows, they’ll reveal their deeper purpose.
Paper Birds developer 3DAR is the animation studio behind cinematic VR series Gloomy Eyes, which was critically received at Sundance Film Festival in 2019, and was awarded ‘Best VR experience’ at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and winner of the ‘Jury Award for Storytelling’ SXSW that year.
Baobab Studios, which executive produced Paper Birds, is well known for having developed a slew of successful VR shorts and cinematic experiences, including Baba Yaga, Crow: The Legend, and Invasion!.
The second part to 3DAR and Baobab Studio’s VR animation, Paper Birds, releases on Oculus Quest today, and it’s enlisted some A-list talent.
The first part of the piece launched on Quest last December and featured the voice of Jojo Rabbit’s Archie Yates. Yates returns in the second installment, but the film also adds the voices of Edward Norton and Joss Stone. The pair play the grandparents to Toto, the young boy we met in the first part of the movie. Check out the new trailer below.
In the piece, we follow Toto on a mission to save his missing sister. The piece plays out in diorama-like scenes and features some limited interactivity using hand-tracking on Quest. We thought the first part of the experience showed a lot of promise, with similarities to other VR works like Gloomy Eyes. We’ll be looking forward to seeing how the second part holds up.
Paper Birds: Part II arrives as an update to the original episode, so you shouldn’t need to buy anything if you already purchased the piece.
While the conventional release of the experience is exclusive to Oculus Quest, you can actually view the movie on PC too, as it’s showing inside the Museum of Other Realities as part of the second part of Cannes XR, NewImages Festival, and Tribeca Festival’s XR3 showcase until July 17. Let us know in the comments below if you happen to check it out.
It’s highly likely that the last piece of virtual reality (VR) content you dived into was a videogame, whether that’s thrashing around in some rhythm-action title or fighting through hordes of enemies saving the day. Look a little deeper and there’s plenty of alternative content to enjoy, and VRFocus recommends exploring some of the excellent animated titles that are available.
Animated VR not to miss
When it comes to animation in VR most will fall into one of two categories; short films or interactive pieces. Narrative is art the heart of either of these two but the former takes a more traditional viewing approach, wrapping you in a virtual world where the story plays out. The latter, on the other hand, actively encourages your involvement.
This interactivity can range massively from simple elements to move the story like turning a page to fully-blown control where decisions will offer alternative endings. These tend to blur the lines between what’s considered a animation and an actual videogame.
So what should you be spending your hard-earnedmoney and valuable time on? Well, VRFocus has a few suggestions…
Battlescar
Released only a few short days ago for Oculus Quest and Rift – a Steam version is coming – Battlescar is a 30-minute film based in New York City’s emerging punk subculture during the late 1970’s.
A glorious mix of visuals and audio, the VR short is split across three chapters following Lupe, a young Puerto Rican American teenager who leaves home and meets Debbie in a juvenile detention centre. Together they decide to form their own punk band whilst trying to navigate and survive the mean city streets.
Narrated by actress Rosario Dawson in English and rock singer/actress Jehnny Beth in French, it doesn’t pull any punches, switching between first and third-person viewpoints whilst throwing in tunes from the era by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Death and Lydia Lunch. Exploring a range of topics such as identity and mental health, Battlescar is pure punk animation, short, sharp and in your face.
Baba Yaga
From prolific animation house Baobab Studios, Baba Yaga is an interactive experience exclusive to Oculus Quest, inspired by the Eastern European legend.
Another 30-min experience, rather than simply viewing Baba Yaga you’re cast as Sacha, who alongside her younger sister Magda are the daughters of the village chief. When your mother becomes gravely ill you and your sister enter Baba Yaga’s enchanted forest to seek the cure.
Voiced by an all-star cast including Kate Winslet, Daisy Ridley, Glenn Closeand Jennifer Hudson, Baba Yaga provides plenty of interactive elements along the way. Thus encouraging you back to take another peek at this wonderfully engaging experience.
A beautiful synergy of music and visual design, Paper Birds tells the story of young musician Toto (played by Jojo Rabbit star Archie Yates) as he searches for his lost sister.
As an Oculus Quest title Paper Birds is one of a select few on the platform which utilises the headset’s hand tracking functionality, so you don’t need the controllers to interact with this magical world. Paper Birds might only have very light interactivity in comparison to others on this list yet it still provides an enchanting experience. Plus, the second (concluding) part will arrive later in 2021.
The Line
There’s a reason ARVORE’s The Line has won numerous awards and that’s thanks to its heartwarming narrative, visual layout and interactive elements; almost like you’re playing with a train set.
Compatible with multiple headsets including Oculus Quest, Rift and HTC Vive, The Line is a love story of two miniature dolls, Pedro and Rosa, set within a scale model of 1940s São Paulo. The characters follow tracks which wind through the environment and at certain points you have to push a button or spin a lever to help the tale proceed. If you’re using an Oculus Quest you can swap to hand tracking.
Clocking in at under 20 minutes The Line is a very sweet VR title that pulls on the heart strings. It showcases how these two mediums can work so perfectly together, great for introducing newcomers to the technology.
Gloomy Eyes
Now back to some pure animation with Gloomy Eyes, written and directed by Fernando Maldonado and Jorge Tereso and co-written by Santiago Amigorena, published by ARTE.
Inspired by Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, Gloomy Eyes is a three-part poetic love story between a zombie boy and a human girl in a town devoid of sunlight. There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of prime voice actors willing to work on VR projects, with Gloomy Eyes’ English version narrated by Hollywood actor Colin Farrell.
The entire short just looks stunning, being a joy to watch from start to finish. Much like The Line, thanks to the miniature worlds and characters it’s all too easy to get drawn in, peering deep into this imaginative fantasy world.
Spice and Wolf VR (1 & 2)
Time for two titles from further afield, Japanese creator Spicy Tails’ Spice and Wolf VR series. Based-on Isuna Hasekura’s original novel and brought to life thanks to crowd-funding campaigns, both of these provide a nice intro into VR anime.
Spice and Wolf VR is the story of travelling merchant Kraft Lawrence who meets a 600-year old wolf-deity named Holo on his travels. The sequel then sees them both settling down, welcoming their daughter Myuri into the world.
The main draw here is the finely detailed animation which looks stunning in VR, just be aware that it is all in Japanese with English subtitles and they’re quite expensive in comparison to other on this list. If you do love Japanese anime they’re well worth a look, plus they both have light interactive elements which add further depth.
ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos
The one title on the list which really skirts the line between animation and videogame, ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos is Japanese anime with a massive amount of replayability.
ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos is by far the grandest title on this list, a visual novel with hours and hours of content depending on how far you wish to delve. It’s kind of like watching a comic book rather than a film, so all the characters jump between frames and you can set the dialogue to autoplay or select through when you choose to. You also have the choice of English voice over if subtitles aren’t your thing.
Set 200 years from now, the Earth has been decimated by giant alien beings called Meteora with mankind now living underground. You’re part of an elite squad who pilot giant mechs called Makhia to defend what’s left of mankind. These encounters are where most of the interactivity takes place, where you can activate shields and fire railguns. These sequences tend to be where the storyline splits, revealing more of the narrative should you return. ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos is big, bold, and the most definitive VR visual novel from Japan yet.
Agence
Described by creators Transitional Forms and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) as a ‘dynamic film’, Agence is possibly the most unusual of all these here as it marries a basic story with AI to provide a piece of content with endless possibilities.
Each time you step into Agence it’ll be different, viewing a digital realm where five ‘Agents’ run around a small world. But Agence employs two thought processes for the Agents which can be switched on and off. A gameplay AI which follows certain patterns or Reinforcement Learning AI which Transitional Forms has built over years, where the Agents will interact in unknown ways.
You can also affect the world by picking the Agents up or planting a flower for them to investigate. Each run-through will only last about 5 minutes but captivating enough to keep returning and experimenting with their existence.
There are plenty of other excellent VR animated titles out there, all of which VRFocus encourages you to see.
The first part of 3DAR and Baobab Studios’ collaborative virtual reality production Paper Birds will release exclusively on Oculus Quest and Quest 2 on December 10th.
Paper Birds is an interactive animated VR film featuring the voice of Archie Yates (the breakout star of last year’s film Jojo Rabbit), who plays Toto, a young musician whose music “inspires the appearance of a flock of mysterious paper birds, which he’ll discover are the key to unlocking a portal between the physical world and a dark invisible world unseen to the naked eye.”
The first part of the story will be released on December 10th and runs for about 20 minutes, with hand tracking support. A second and final installment of Paper Birds will release sometime in 2021, also exclusive to Oculus platforms. You can watch the final trailer for Part 1 below.
Baobab Studios and 3DAR have produced some great VR experiences on their own, but Paper Birds is the first time they’ve teamed up to produce something together. Baobab were behind experiences like Bonfire and Baba Yaga, whereas 3DAR produced the more visually-intricate Gloomy Eyes featuring Colin Farrell.
We managed to try out Paper Birds earlier this year as part of the VR section of the Venice Film Festival, and Gloomy’s inspiration is very clear. Paper Birds’ art style shares many similarities with Gloomy Eyes and the end product is visually stunning. We found the story to be somewhat lackluster, but hopefully the second future installment manages to rectify that. For now, Paper Birds is worth checking out for the intimate, hand-crafted look of the animation — it’s quite an amazing visual production.
The 77th Venice International Film Festival is currently in full swing, with a big offering of virtual experiences this year as part of Venice VR Expanded.
There’s a wealth of VR content available across multiple platforms, but of particular interest are some of the 6DoF Oculus Quest experiences available to those with festival accreditation. Some of these are premiering at Venice while others were already available at festivals earlier in the year.
Sadly, none of these experiences are available to the public just yet. Some of them may receive a full release on VR platforms at a later date, but for now Jamie and I have tried them all and summed up our impressions.
Here’s what we thought of this year’s Oculus Quest content at Venice VR Expanded.
Ajax All Powerful
Ajax All Powerful is a short animated VR comedy that follows a crude genie (or djinn, as he prefers) named Ajax. He’s addicted to human souls, which he snorts like cocaine and acquires by fulfilling wishes to his various masters. The short sees him negotiate his contract with his newest master, a young girl called Izzie. There’s more to her than meets the eye though — she’s hired a detail-orientated lawyer to fix up the wish contract.
It’s a crude yet charming short that packs a lot of laughs in a small amount of time, playing with genie tropes in clever ways. The camera and animation work experiments with scale a little, but if there’s one thing that lets Ajax down, it’s that it never really takes full advantage of VR as a medium. That aside, it’s an entertaining ride and definitely worth checking out if it ever releases to the public.
Paper Birds
This VR animation brings together two of the best studios for VR immersive content — Baobab Studios and 3DAR — to work on a beautiful new experience. While Baobab’s latest solo project, Baba Yaga, is available at Venice VR this year as well, Paper Birds sees them team up with 3DAR, the studio behind the fantastic Gloomy Eyes. 3DAR’s influence here is immediately evident — Paper Birds shares a lot of its visual style with Gloomy, providing some amazingly detailed dioramas and animated characters.
The similarity is definitely not a bad thing — it doesn’t feel so close to Gloomy Eyes as to be repetitive, but it’s also a style of animation that won’t feel worn out for a while yet. Unlike Gloomy , the experience does feature a few interactive moments (perhaps an addition that Baobab brought to the table) which require you to use hand tracking to manipulate the environment. It’s an interesting experience overall, but the narrative does fall a bit flat. It ends in a manner that suggests it’s the first part in an episodic release (again, much like Gloomy) — future installments might flesh things out a bit more.
We Live Here
We Live Here is a thought-provoking experience that aims to provide some insight into the life of the homeless, and de-stigmatize preconceptions you might hold towards those who find themselves living on the streets. The experience follows Rockey, a 59-year old woman who has been homeless for 3 years, living in a tent in a Los Angeles park. Through a mixture of 360 footage, interactive environments and 6DoF immersive animations, you’ll learn more about Rockey and the experience of being homeless.
The narrative provides some interesting new perspectives on an important issue, but it’s integrated into a very basic VR experience that looks visually messy and features very low quality interactions with the environment. While the message and perspective are welcome (and somewhat enlightening), they comes in a VR package that feels messy and poorly integrated. The concept is solid, but the execution is not.
Baba Yaga
The latest from Baobab Studios, Baba Yaga is an interactive movie featuring the voices of Daisy Ridley, Kate Winslett, and Glenn Close. It’s a sweet little piece, casting viewers as one of two daughters of the leader of a tribe that falls ill. Together, you set out with your sister to find a cure in a cursed forest, risking a face-off with the dreaded Baba Yaga.
The film gives viewers a handful of moments to interact with the world and make your own decisions, but it doesn’t go quite as deep as you might hope after the experiments first seen in Baobab’s Bonfire. A charming adventure for sure, but familiar territory for this studio.
A wistful short that recalls Dear Angelica, Goodbye Mr. Octopus sees a teenage girl reckoning with her overprotective father whilst daydreaming of her adventurous mother, currently out on travels. She reads a letter from her mother, suddenly taken on a journey through her brief past with visions of her mother venturing through the wilderness.
Though short, Mr. Octopus makes a warm impact with its welcoming visuals and look at how two divergent personalities can still find peaceful cohabitation. Director Amaury Campion makes great use of VR as both a teleportation device and a time-traveling machine, melding strands of history and space and funneling them into a specific moment in time. Quite a pleasant time, all-in-all.
A Taste of Hunger
An experimental narrative that shifts away from linear storytelling, A Taste of Hunger is one of the more mature and confronting experiences on this list. As you walk around a black void marked with only a large circular shape on the floor, various scenes will fly in and out of existence around you. Your surroundings are constantly changing as you move, showing you fragments of a story depending on your location.
All of the presented scenes are visually-distorted, blending polygonal shapes with recorded footage that has been converted into messy, incomplete 3D renders. There’s no strict start or end to the experience — you’re told to simply exit when you’re ready to — and you’ll come away with your own interpretation of what these vignettes mean and how each of them might be linked. It’s a confronting and at times creepy experience that pushes the VR medium to create a unique and unsettling look into the story of a woman’s life.
Which of these experiences would you like to try? Let us know which experience you’re looking forward to most in the comments below.
