Hungary-based indie studio XREAL Games today announced its Early Access VR shooter, A-Tech Cybernetic VR, is headed to PSVR sometime next month.
XREAL developer Daniel Nyirfa took to the PSVR subreddit today, commenting that although translating the PC VR game to the PSVR has been challenging, the game now has a March launch window. There’s no specific launch date yet, although it’s likely one will materialize soon.
First launched on Steam in mid-2017 and then later on the Oculus Store for Rift a year later, A-Tech Cybernetic includes both a classic swarm mode against the game’s decidedly Doom-inspired mutant enemies and a story mode that takes you through a futuristic biomedical company.
The game most recently received its last two concluding chapters in a content update in October 2019 which also brought with it an overhaul of the gameplay and combat intensity throughout the whole game, making the game more difficult overall.
XREAL is also known for its Early Access VR shooterZero Caliber VR.
Archiact, the studio behind VR games Evasion (2018) and Waddle Home (2016), today launched its underwater adventure FREEDIVER: Triton Down (2019) on PSVR in a new ‘Extended Cut’ edition.
Freediver: Triton Down was decidedly pretty demure in scope when it first launched on on PC VR headsets back in May 2019, what with its one-hour playtime. Quick gameplay length notwithstanding, Freediver has striven to make up for its shortcomings with a number of good ideas such as an interesting ‘swimming’ locomotion system and the inherent tension of freediving in the deep without a mobile air supply.
Swimming, which is done via motion controller movement, not only allows you to seamlessly navigate the depths, but it also lends plenty of tension between movement and survival as the player is constantly looking for air whilst having to solve puzzles. The PSVR version only supports PS Move, so make sure to get on your floaties.
In a PlayStation blog post, Archiact’s Renee Klint explains that the ‘Extended Cut’ includes all-new levels on the ship, and a few new areas that have been plunged into darkness which adds what Klint calls “an extra layer of challenge to the many puzzles you’ll encounter.”
The new cut also includes a handy flashlight, although there are admittedly “some dangers in the depths that only a cool head and lightning reflexes will save you from,” Klint reveals. There’s also supposedly more items related to the ship’s fateful sinking such as lost audio logs of the crewmembers’ final days aboard.
While we don’t expect the ‘Extended Cut’ to push the gameplay length a ton, Freediver: Triton Down is now available on the PlayStation Store for $15, which sounds about right for a short but sweet adventure into the deep.
It’s uncertain when/if the ‘Extended Cut’ will arrive on other platforms in the form of a free update, or paid DLC. We’ve reached out to Archiact and will update this piece when we know more.
The Room: A Dark Matter is an upcoming VR puzzler from Fireproof Games, the same minds behind The Room (2014), its beloved predecessor for PC and mobile, and VR shooter-adventure Omega Agent (2016). With the fresh VR entry in franchise, Fireproof has shown a new level of mastery with the medium with this engaging, wondrous world of puzzles and arcane magic—something that truly sets a new bar for the VR puzzle genre.
Escape room games were one of the first to find a home in VR, and its for good reason: developers have a plethora of puzzle styles to borrow from both physical and digital escape rooms and mostly a blank check when it comes to the sort of story and visuals they want to drape on top of it. The object-oriented nature of the escape room genre is also basically a natural fit with VR thanks to motion controllers. That doesn’t put all VR escape rooms on equal footing though, as The Room: A Dark Matterstrikes a satisfying balance between puzzle complexity, storyline delivery, atmosphere, and visuals, making for such an enjoyable time that I really didn’t want it to end.
I’m gushing. I know. But there’s plenty to gush about with The Room: A Dark Matter—especially because of what I saw on Quest. Here’s why:
Note: the is a spoiler-free preview of a pre-release version of The Room: A Dark Matter.
As per the game’s description, A Dark Matter begins deep within The British Museum in London, where the disappearance of an esteemed Egyptologist prompts a police investigation into the unknown. As an intrepid detective, you encounter cryptic locations, examine fantastic gadgets and discover an otherworldly element which blurs the line between reality and illusion.
At first I felt a bit like Indian Jones as I traipsed through a 12th century church to break my way into a crypt where I messed around with all sorts of Egyptian relics. But that Spielbergian flair soon wears thin as a more sinister, patently Lovecraftian vibe takes over. Although there aren’t any blatantly frightening bits to worry about (i.e. no jump scares or anything to grab at you), the atmosphere really starts to feel like something ripped from any one of H. P. Lovecraft’s occultist short stories, replete with locales you might envision springing from the late horror fiction writer’s Cthulhu Mythos. I won’t go any further so I don’t spoil the narrative.
The game’s linear story is punctuated with hand-written notes that you find along the way in a each level. These are useful to the overall story, but not in the sense that they will give you clues to how to solve your next puzzle. Rather, turning on your ‘spirit vision’ goggles, letters and notes take on a secondary function by letting you summon a ghostly view from the past for a short scripted interlude from some forgotten adventurer before you. More often than not, these apparitions leave behind key objects that start you out on your journey of deconstructing the game’s multi-layered puzzles. The goggles also reveal clues and other puzzles too, so you’ll find yourself toggling them on and off a bunch.
One of my favorite recurring puzzle is when you shrink down to fit into a keyhole, where you then go through a wide variety of cryptic mechanics to jimmy the lock open. I’m not certain why I’m able to shrink given the lack of context (uh, magic?), but I’m not sure it matters because of simply how impressive and inventive each puzzle was.
In some of the puzzles you’re tasked with fetching one item to unlock another, and these can be obvious from the onset. A dagger-shaped receptacle lets you unlock a box. A locked dagger is across the room that needs a key (etc). However as the game progresses, it’s very rarely a simple task of putting object ‘A’ into slot ‘B’, as puzzles become more complex and multi-faceted. Personally, the end result was real satisfaction and a sense that I was somehow clever when I solved a room, although I know it’s really both the puzzles and their designers that should get that compliment.
Outside of the game’s cleverly built puzzles, one of the most striking features of The Room: Dark Matter is its fantastic level of visual detail, which at many times felt like it was running on a much more powerful device (I played on Quest).
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Image courtesy Fireproof Games
Image courtesy Fireproof Games
Image courtesy Fireproof Games
Image courtesy Fireproof Games
Image courtesy Fireproof Games
For example: the paper in my hand flops around as if it were actually effected by gravity. The green potion in my glass swirls around the container as I slosh it around plaintively. Lighting is excellent and the sheer volume of well-made textures really helps sell each room. Sometimes this high level of realism is infringed upon by the lack of full physics simulation; i.e. you can clip your hands through walls and doors, and only some objects are grabbable—it’s hard to tell what you can manipulate and what you’ll clip through, as the game only gives you a slight haptic buzz to tell you whether you’ve landed on something ‘solid’ or not. While this irks me a bit from an immersion standpoint, it never spoiled the game which was overall an awesome gameplay experience.
Puzzle hints enabled by default, but you can toggle them off in the main menu. If you leave them on you’ll still need to manually request a hint in the in-game inventory, so you never feel like it’s leading you by the hand unless you’re absolutely need it to. That’s where you’ll find your spirit goggles and all of the stuff you squirrel away in each level.
Image courtesy Fireproof Games
I’ve played my fair share of VR puzzle games that assume that I really simply must hear a hint every time I get something wrong, be it from an intrusive text bubble or a ‘helpful’ disembodied voice, and I can’t stress enough how much I hate being rushed through a puzzle when the entire point of a game is to let me solve it myself. A Dark Matter has really nailed that refreshing ‘hands-off’ approach, leaving you space to feel clever when you finally figure out some of the more complex puzzles by yourself. It took me a little over four hours to play, and I had a blast every step of the way.
One of the things I can see bothering some people (namely the anti-teleport crowd) is that The Room: A Dark Matter is teleport-only; you highlight nodes and ‘blink’ teleport over. I understand the need for this once you near the middle of the game and you have to traverse back and forth between puzzles often. Node teleportation also clues you into what’s important and what’s essentially just hollow scenery, which saves you from poking around needlessly. One thing I would have liked was the ability to turn off blink-style snap rotation, which is the only way to change your orientation outside of physically looking in the desired direction. Not a big deal if you’re playing standing, but it can feel a bit too jarring if you plan on playing seated.
In the end, I really hope Fireproof can garner the same level of success that prior entries in the franchise have, because I can’t wait to play more of their finely crafted escape rooms in VR.
The Room: A Dark Matter is slated to release sometime in Spring 2020 on Oculus Quest, PSVR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index & Windows Mixed Reality headsets. Check out the game’s Steam page for more info.
Until You Fall launched in Early Access on Steam and Oculus back in August 2019; the game impressed us with its excellent VR melee combat system. Despite consistently high reviews, the game hasn’t attracted a critical mass of players, pushing developer Schell Games to shift development focus toward support for new headsets. With most PC VR headsets already covered, the studio is likely considering Quest and PSVR.
Earlier this month, Schell Games offered up a look at its 2020 roadmap for Until You Fall. Though the game is one of the best rated VR titles on Oculus PC and Steam, it doesn’t seem to have achieved the traction the studio was hoping for. As such, the studio makes clear that its top priority is getting the game onto more headsets, while simultaneously readying the title for a ‘1.0’ launch out of Early Access.
While the response to Until You Fall has been amazing, the best way to ensure that we can still keep adding content to the game is by ensuring more Rune Knights can take the fight to Rokar.
Fittingly, one of the most frequent requests we’ve received is to bring the game to more headsets. So, we are currently investigating the time and resources needed to bring the game to additional platforms (specifics will be announced soon, we’re still pretty early on in our investigations).
The studio hasn’t said which new headsets its targeting, but with the game already available on both Oculus PC (Rift) and SteamVR (Index, Rift, Vive) it’s clear that Quest and PSVR are in the studio’s sights for Until You Fall.
We’d guess that Quest is a near certainty—given its input and tracking parity with major PC headsets—while PSVR is more of a wild card due to its restrictive, front-facing tracking volume and the fact that its host system, PS4, is reaching the end of its lifecycle.
From our reading, it sounds like Schell Games aims to reach a 1.0 version of Until You Fall that it’s happy with and then launch that version across existing headsets and whichever new headsets the studio settles on.
Image courtesy Schell Games
Since the game’s launch in Early Access, the studio has made a number of large updates including adding new enemies and weapons. In the near-term the studio says it’s still working on some smaller updates for the Early Access version of the game.
During the first part of 2020 the team will be working on some balance updates, tutorial tweaks, quality of life improvements, and updating the in-game music with our new mastered tracks.
Timeline and specifics for these updates are still in flux, but we’re shooting to get the first of them out by the end of March.
In the long run, Schell Games says, the studio wants to continue to expand the game, but it needs a critical mass of players to do so, and believes that prioritizing launching the game on more headsets is the best approach to reach that goal.
Like I Expect You To Die [another VR game from the studio], we want to try and continue supporting the game beyond launch with new content.
As such, getting us on as many platforms as possible and ensuring we have a solid 1.0 offering will give us a better chance at making additional content going into the future.
No Man’s Sky (2016) has been on a roll lately with its continuous updates ever since its big ‘Beyond’ refresh in Summer 2019, which brought along with it VR support for PS4 and PC versions of the game. Now, developers Hello Games have released its ‘Living Ship’ update, which brings the first new starship since ‘Atlas Rises’, it’s 1.3 update released in 2017.
Hello Games founder Sean Murray says in a Steam blog post that the update presents a new series of missions that takes players through the ancient Korvax experiments that led to the birth of the ship-like interstellar beings. Starting today, players will be able to incubate, grow, and fly their own living ship by visiting the Space Anomaly and following “the call of the Void Egg.”
Here’s Murray’s description of the new living ships:
These beautiful, organic, slightly psychedelic ships are uniquely grown (and, as with everything in the No Man’s Sky universe, procedurally-generated).They can’t be upgraded in the same way as a traditional ship: each one is individually hatched, with a unique set of internal organs that determines its abilities. If you want a fast hyperdrive, you’ll need to nurture the right sort of life within your ship…
As much attention has been given to the interior of the ships as the exterior. Void ships house you within strange, organic cockpits, requiring players to fly their ship by grasping vein-covered tendrils. It looks and feels suitably unsettling to fly in VR!
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Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
The Living Ship update also includes new discoverables such as “new space encounters to the off-planet experience,” the studio says, as well as “[s]trange new lifeforms and mysterious objects [awaiting] between the planets, bringing more variety and unique experiences to space travel.”
Furthermore, Murray reveals that this January has seen more players than any previous year. In-keeping with its more regular updates, Murray also calls this update “hopefully the first of many in 2020.”
The Living Ship update comes hot on the heels of the ‘Bytebeat’ update in December and the ‘Synthesis’ update in November, which brought with it VR creature riding, VR photo taking, and a number of quality of life updates.
Cortopia Studios, the Stockholm-based team behind spellcasting combat game Wands (2016), is set to release its upcoming puzzler Down the Rabbit Hole next month.
The game, which was originally slated to arrive in December 2019, is now set to arrive on all major VR headsets on March 26th, which includes versions for Oculus Quest, PSVR, and your standard mix of PC VR headsets.
Following a lost girl through a miniature world inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865), you’re pitted against a variety of puzzles in a sprawling 360-degree diorama; as you literally descend down a rabbit hole, you solve puzzles in both the first and third-person until you ostensibly get to the bottom of it all.
We got a chance to go hands-on at Gamescom last year, and while it’s difficult to judge a game on only a 15-minute demo, we experienced a good variety of puzzles that made use of multiple characters. This appeared to up the complexity, and also make it necessary to keep your head on a swivel to properly keep track of the entire map—if you can call the little doll house-sized cubbies a ‘map’.
Pre-order pages for the game are now live on the Oculus Store for both Quest and Rift versions, priced at $20. Links for both Steam and Viveport versions are coming soon, so keep an eye on the game’s website for more info.
The curiously crafted PSVR exclusive PaperBeast got a new trailer today revealing a sandbox mode which looks like a cross between Viva Piñata (2006) and From Dust (2011).
Paper Beast is an intriguing title set to launch in Q1 (though no specific release date has been revealed yet). In his hands-on with the game last year, Road to VR editor Scott Hayden said the game “seems to take its mission statement of exploration to heart, offering plenty of novel experiences along the one-way trip through the game’s narrative, which is partly driven by the world’s interesting assortment of dynamic and interactive paper-based lifeforms, and to a much larger degree to the constantly shifting environment around you that ushers you forward into new and interesting locales.”
Beyond the narrative “4-5 hour” adventure mode, the game’s dynamic world and creatures will be subject to the player’s will in a sandbox mode where you’ll be able to shape the environment, control the climate, and populate your little world with the game’s origami fauna.
From the trailer the sandbox mode reminds me quite a bit of Viva Piñata (2006) and From Dust (2011). Viva Piñata was all about making a garden that would attract the world’s unique piñata animals. By studying their behavior you could get them to court, breed, fight, and more. From Dust gave players god-like control over the landscape and tasked them with manipulating it to help or hinder a tiny civilization. Geologic manipulation and especially the use of dynamic water were key parts of the gameplay.
Writing on the PlayStation Blog, Paper Beast’s creative director, Eric Chahi, spoke of the dynamic interactions between the beasts, the world, and the player.
Players can interact with creatures and experiment with different actions to elicit new responses and reactions. Our dev team has been working on this mode for a long time and they still discover funny behaviors, so we’re looking forward to seeing what quirky and exciting new phenomenon players encounter.
[…]
Entity behavior. Combine elements to play with creatures’ behavior. Each animal has a distinct motivation it will pursue. If you disturb the creature, it will react and adapt to any changes introduced into the environment. What will happen if I fasten a predator to a cable? How will a Bridger react if I add water?
Weather. Control the weather in a variety of ways: set a global rainstorm into motion, create churning sandstorms or implement changes on a smaller scale through different types of mini storms. Paper Beast’s creatures will adapt and react to any change or disruption.
Imprints Terrain shapes and shifts as interactions between the animals and their environment leave imprints. The landscape in Paper Beast evolves with creature activities.
Chahi also offered up a curious tease when he asked readers to wonder about the strange blob-like object at the beginning of the trailer, and the sea of numbers swirling around it.
Image courtesy Pixel Reef
“What is that strange object at the beginning of the video? It’s a mathematical object that gives the impression there is an inside and an outside when there is only one surface. It’s symbolic of the two modes of the game and the transition from one to the other. The object will have a role to play in Paper Beast.”
With Paper Beast is due out this quarter (which should mean no later than the end of March), we should find out soon enough what this is all about; though despite the new trailer a specific released date has yet to be announced.
Space Channel 5 (1999) first launched on Dreamcast and PS2 over two decades ago, and now the long-dormant franchise is ready to reemerge on PSVR headsets this month with Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda Funky News Flash!
Originally slated to launch in December 2019 on PSVR, Space Channel 5 VR was later delayed to Spring 2020. Now, Japan-based developer Grounding Inc. says the rhythm game is headed to PSVR on February 25th in North America (prices at $40), and in Europe & Oceania one day later.
Versions for PC VR headsets will be available through Steam and Viveport, and for Oculus Quest, although their respective launch dates are still unknown at this time.
Set in the titular 25th-century space TV station ‘Space Channel 5’, the single-player VR game tasks you with fighting against alien invaders and rival dance crews with the power of choreographed moves—all in the patently ’60s retro-future surroundings. Although you don’t take over Ulala herself, you do get a chance to bust moves as her assistant.
Space Channel 5 VR is said to include a story mode, arcade mode, and an endurance exercise mode with calorie counter. Check out the latest trailer below:
Ven VR Adventure is an upcoming title from Poland-based indie studio Monologic Games. Built from the ground-up for VR, the plucky little platformer seems to be channeling some of its contemporaries such as Lucky’s Tale (2016), Moss (2018), and Astro Bot Rescue Mission (2018).
Much like Astro Bot, in Ven VR Adventure you’re tasked with guiding little Ven on his journey to save his fellow pals, all of whom have been scattered across the planet by space invaders. As an intergalactic police officer, you track the game’s chief villain, Bruce Nelson, and save them from machines and deadly enemies as you maneuver around traps and other various dangers.
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Image courtesy Monologic Games
Image courtesy Monologic Games
Image courtesy Monologic Games
Image courtesy Monologic Games
Monologic says that although you control Ven, some obstacles are “too hard to deal with without your help – like game bosses who can be even 20 times bigger than Ven,” which hopefully means some novel one on one combat outside of standard platforming fare.
Outside of simply playing the storymode, the studio says Ven VR will also include time trial challenges in each level, and “many other modes, comparing your performance against a global leaderboards.”
Ven VR Adventure is headed to SteamVR headsets, Oculus Rift, and PSVR sometime in Q2 2020. You can wishlist the game now on Steam.
Nicolas Doucet, the Creative Director and Producer behind PSVR exclusive ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission (2018), has been promoted to Director of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s JAPAN Studio.
As first reported by Gematsu, Doucet is said to continue his work as a creative director at SIE Japan Studio in addition to his new role. Doucet previously worked for Sony’s London Studio and Saffire Corporation.
Initially born as a spin-off of a mini-game called ‘Robots Rescue’ from The Playroom VR, Astro Bot Rescue Mission tasks you with guiding a patently adorable robot named ASTRO as you recover his robot pals who have been scattered among the stars.
The plucky little VR-native platformer has garnered some pretty impressive review scores since its launch in October 2018, boasting a Meta Criticcomposite score of [90/100], a [4.5/5] star user review rating, and a rare [10/10] score from our full review.
Astro Bot was also lauded with a few awards, including the best VR/AR game of 2018 Game Awards and the VR Game of Year at The Edge Awards in 2018, and notable nominations by BAFTA and SXSW.
Outside of The Playroom VR and Astro Bot, SIE Japan Studio is known for developing PS platform classics Ape Escape, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian. Other VR games produced by the studio include Déraciné and Everybody’s Golf VR.
At the time of this writing, it’s unclear whether Doucet’s promotion signals a greater focus on VR games for the studio. Having an experienced VR producer at the helm may prove beneficial however as Sony makes strides to release PlayStation 5, and later, the second iteration of PlayStation VR.
