Ramen VR – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

June 10, 2022June 16, 2022

‘Zenith’s First Major Update Releases Today, Featuring “dozen of hours” of New Content

Zenith is getting its first major update next week with the launch of ‘The Celestial Throne’, a v1.1 patch that’s slated to bring a massive slice of content to the MMO.

Update (June 16th, 2022): In addition to the new instanced dungeons rolling out today, Zenith studio Ramen VR additionally says players can expect headgear such as masks, helmets, and crowns. This comes in addition to a new item infusion mechanic to level up gear, amid more daily and weekly quests, 50 pieces of armor and godstones, 10 brand-new full-size quests, and what the studio says are “lots of new interactive puzzles and objects across the game world.”

The update will be live today on all supported headsets. The original article follows below:

Original Article (June 10th, 2022): On June 16th, the Celestial Throne Update is set to introduce what developers Ramen VR say will be “dozens of hours” of new content, including three new four-person dungeons and three eight-person raids.

The studio says we should expect:

Explore an awe inspiring giant castle and giant obstacle course you must scale to reach
Delve 6 meticulously crafted instanced dungeons including a ton of new interactive puzzles
8 new armor sets + helmets
20 new quests
Matchmaking, Daily Quests, New Armor Sets, New Enemy Types, and much more

Of course, there’s also a brand new story element too—The Celestial Throne itself. Here’s how Ramen VR describes it:

Emerging from the violent storm essence that kept it hidden for the last 60 years, a flying castle hovers down near the surface once more. Within the suspended castle and scattered around the world, adventurers will find six new instanced dungeons filled with interactive puzzles, traps, adversaries, and an abundance of treasure. Assemble parties of 4-8 players through instance matchmaking, then get ready to test every skill you have, both as individuals and as a team.

The studio shows off a few of the challenges that await in the new release trailer, including the previously revealed ‘Furnace’ dungeon, which is at the heart of the castle.

“The Furnace keeps the enormous fortress afloat with the power of superheated flames and lava. You and your party must feed fire-starters to the forges to generate updrafts from the heat vents. Well-timed updrafts will then carry you across scorching lava pits, and deeper within the Furnace to where a beast awaits,” Ramen VR says.

There looks to be some really interesting environmental hazards along the way too (skipping a laser rope?!).

For owners of the base game, you can actually request beta access today before it goes live on June 16th. You’ll find Zenith on Meta Quest 2, SteamVR headsets, and PSVR.

The post ‘Zenith’s First Major Update Releases Today, Featuring “dozen of hours” of New Content appeared first on Road to VR.

March 23, 2022

Zenith’s First Major Content Update Promises ‘Dozens To Hundreds’ Of Endgame Hours

VR MMO Zenith’s first major content update could provide “dozens to hundreds” of hours of additional content.

That is according to Ramen VR CEO Andy Tsen, who caught up with the Beyond Realities team reporting on the ground at GDC 2022 for UploadVR. “We’ve talked about some of the technologies we’re excited about,” Tsen said of what’s next for the MMO. “We have instance dungeons, instance raids, group content. The stuff that people really have come to look for in a virtual reality game we’re now looking to incorporate. And what we’re trying to do is make the environment a big part of the dungeon itself.”

Ramen has already spoken about expanding on the game’s dungeons in the future, but Tsen explained that this would mean more of the open exploration that players have come to expect from Zenith’s core areas.

So you can expect “more environmental puzzles, more parkour-like things,” Tsen said. “And we want it to feel different from what you might get in a traditional MMO, so we’re really excited to have that out soon. But it should provide dozens to hundreds of additional hours of endgame content depending on whether you’re a casual or hardcore player.”

There’s no word yet on when exactly Zenith’s first major content update will launch, though the developer hopes to release one big update every quarter. We also know that Ramen VR is working on a third major class for the game in the Cyber Ninja, and that the studio recently raised another $35 million to help grow the game.

We thought Zenith had a rock-solid launch earlier this year but definitely wanted to see more content and a lot more polish added into the game. Fingers crossed all of that isn’t too far out.

March 22, 2022

‘Zenith: The Last City’ Studio Closes $35M Series B, Aims to Create Metaverse Platform

Ramen VR, the creators behind crowd-funded VR MMORPG Zenith: The Last City, announced it’s closed a Series B round of $35 million, something the studio says will allow it to significantly expand in size as it aims to develop Zenith into a metaverse platform that goes far beyond its current scope.

The studio’s latest financing round was led by Anthos Capital and Dune Ventures. Additional investments come from Makers Fund and personal investments from Andreessen Horowitz partners Andrew Chen and James Gwertzman.

The studio’s Series B brings its outside investment to over $45 million; Ramen VR’s penultimate round of $10 million was led by Makers Fund in September 2021.

Ramen VR says the funding will be used to “double the size of the studio as it transforms Zenith into a gaming super-app containing multiple worlds and gameplay experiences across VR, desktop, and mobile.”

“The reception for Zenith has been amazing. We’re already profitable but now we want to take the game to the next level, building massive interconnected gaming worlds for all to explore,” said Andy Tsen, co-founder and CEO of Ramen VR. “Closing this important round of funding will help us grow our team so we can continue to build out our vision. We are fortunate to collaborate with these exceptional investment partners who believe in us as we continue to support Zenith throughout the game’s lifecycle.”

Ramen VR gained quick success on Kickstarter in a 2019 campaign that raised $280,000 to create the VR-native MMORPG for PC VR headsets, Meta Quest and PSVR. Since its January 2022 launch, Zenith: The Last City has been a resounding success: the game currently sits at the top-5 most popular games on the Quest platform.

The post ‘Zenith: The Last City’ Studio Closes $35M Series B, Aims to Create Metaverse Platform appeared first on Road to VR.

March 19, 2022

Zenith Dev Raises $35 Million, Studio To Double

Ramen VR, developers of the popular VR MMO Zenith: The Last City, raised $35 million as part of a recently-closed Series B funding round.

This follows on from a successful launch for Zenith in late January across Quest, PC VR and PSVR platforms. Despite Beat Saber’s continued dominance hampering it’s peak position on the PlayStation store, Zenith rocketed to the number one top selling game on all other platforms, including Steam (for all games, not just VR titles), Rift and Quest.

This resulting funding round was led by Anthos and Dune, along with others. Ramen VR says the funding “will be used to double the size of the studio as it transforms Zenith into a gaming super-app containing multiple worlds and gameplay experiences across VR, desktop, and mobile.” The studio is currently hiring for eleven positions, which you can view here.

Ramen VR says that “players explore Zenith’s massive JRPG-inspired world for almost 2 hours a day on Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and standalone VR devices.” While not particularly specific — it’s unclear whether this is the average playtime of all players, or a statistic taken from a more specific portion of data– it’s nonetheless impressive and the launch numbers corroborate the game’s immense popularity. Ramen also claims to have “the world’s largest company-run VR Discord” with 125,000 users.

Andy Tsen, co-founder and CEO of Ramen VR, said the studio was pleased with Zenith’s reception post-launch. “We’re already profitable but now we want to take the game to the next level, building massive interconnected gaming worlds for all to explore,” he said, in a prepared statement. He says the funding will help “grow the team” and allow them to “build out [their] vision” for the game.

This vision includes new classes (such as the already-announced Cyber Ninja stealth class), plus new quests and dungeons. Content has already arrived post-launch as well, featuring improved and new quests and new armor sets.

You can read our full review of Zenith here.

January 13, 2022

MMO Zenith: The Last City on Track to Launch in Two Weeks

Virtual reality (VR) platforms have some big titles you can spend hours and hours in, experiences like A Township Tale and OrbusVR two of the most well known. The next to join this group will be Zenith: The Last City, a VR MMORPG by Ramen VR scheduled to launch towards the end of January.

Zenith: The Last City is the brainchild of Lauren Frazier and Andy Tsen, the co-founders of Ramen VR. Work on the project began back in 2019, garnering massive interest from VR players thanks to the scale of the project and its gorgeous aesthetic. Since the initial Kickstarter campaign, the studio has grown to ramp up production, helped by a $10 million Series A investment round.

The title promises to be an action-packed experience set in the sprawling world of Zenith. In this fantasy realm, you’ll be able to go on quests with countless other players, fighting monsters with physical and magical attacks. As a community-driven videogame, Zenith: The Last City will encourage players to forge alliances and join guilds before taking on raids and epic world events.

With such a big expanse to explore there will of course be a variety of unique locations to discover. From the titular city of Zenith to the Fractured Plains, home to rural towns or the Emerald Desert filled with ruins, in total Ramen VR has created five biomes.

This wouldn’t be a VR videogame without some physicality to the proceedings and Zenith: The Last City shouldn’t disappoint on that front. Whether you’re blocking and parrying opponents attacks with a couple of swords or getting a better look at the environment by climbing up a rock face, you’ve got the freedom to do so. The developers have ensured that every surface can be scaled and once you’re up to the top you can then glide to your next destination.

Currently, Ramen VR has stencilled in 27th January as the launch date for Zenith: The Last City across Meta Quest, PlayStation VR and PC VR platforms for $29.99 USD but with a caveat that it could change depending on final approval from the relative VR stores. Check out the new trailer below and for further updates keep reading VRFocus.

January 13, 2022

MMO Zenith: The Last City on Track to Launch in Two Weeks

January 13, 2022

VR MMO ‘Zenith: The Last City’ to Release January 27th on All Major VR Platforms, Trailer Here

Ramen VR, the team behind Zenith: The Last City, revealed that launch of the long-awaited VR MMO is set for January 27th, arriving on Quest, SteamVR and PSVR.

It’s been an eventful few years waiting for Zenith: The Last City. From its a successful Kickstarter in 2019 to a $10 million Series A funding round just a few months ago, the ambitious anime-inspired MMO is well positioned to make a splash with its large open world, feeling a bit like a tuned-down version of Genshin Impact for VR.

Here’s a quick rundown of the game’s features:

Exploration: large open world with flying, climbing, ziplining, and swimming
Combat: Skill-based combat system: shoot, swing, and cast spells
Crafting: Create powerful items using spoils obtained during battle
Cooking: Learn recipes, gather ingredients, and share them with your friends
Cross-play: fight with alongside friends in boss battles, public events and dungeons with hundreds of players on a single server

When it comes to MMOs though—VR or otherwise—a game can live or die according to player retention. Ramen VR says its pitching Zenith at a one-time cost of $30 with no subscriptions, which will include what the studio says is an initial 100 hours of gameplay at launch. The studio also couches it as an “ever-expanding, live service MMO,” which it said in the past would revolve around cosmetic microtransactions (re: not pay to win).

Ramen VR says its previous betas have inspired confidence by reaching a fairly large audience early on, maintaining that previous betas have attracted “thousands of players spending an average of 2 hours a day immersed in [Zenith].” Its official Discord channel also hosts upwards of 60,000 users, which for VR represents a fairly massive potential player base.

Zenith: The Last City launches on all major VR platforms January 27th. You can signup for updates on the game’s website to learn about upcoming events and updates.

The post VR MMO ‘Zenith: The Last City’ to Release January 27th on All Major VR Platforms, Trailer Here appeared first on Road to VR.

January 2, 2022

Hands-On: Zenith Might Just Be The Quest, PSVR And VR MMO You’re Looking For

Last month’s Zenith beta suggested the VR MMO could go the distance. Read our hands-on below.

Watching from afar these past few years, I’ll admit I thought it was a given Zenith would fail. Heck, I didn’t even think it would get to the point it would be considered a fail – I’d assumed it was destined to fade from memory without so much as an apologetic tweet or under-the-radar Steam store update.

Two and a half years on from those presumptions and, well, I look a bit silly. I’ve played Zenith. In fact, I’ve played it on Quest 2, which basically means I’ve played it on the most challenging of platforms that developer Ramen VR will be toiling away on. And it’s good. I think it’s very good, even. But that’s of course based on just a few hours of what promises to be a much, much bigger experience, and there’s still much to learn about what the developer is cooking up.

Zenith has just enough of VR’s newness sprinkled into the classic MMO formula to make me think people that love the latter element are going to devour it and people that want the former and going to respect it.

There are two core classes to start with that basically split the MMO crowd right down the middle: swords or spells. Warriors will dual-wield electric katanas, slicing in deliberate patterns to maximize damage, whereas mages (or at least spell shooty people, as I’ve come to think of them) use two wrist-mounted, laser-guided gauntlets for projectile attacks.

There are smaller sub-roles to consider like being a tank, too, but combat is the main decider in what kind of experience you have. Mercifully, at least as far as I can tell, the game seems to have ditched the Beat Saber-style approach it first promoted as taking onboard in 2019.

Sword combat deftly avoids the pitfall of VR waggle – you can just hammer enemies repeatedly, but you won’t be doing much damage. Instead you need to allow time for your swords to charge between each attack to maximize your attack power. It’s a smart way of ensuring Zenith isn’t just about mindlessly waving your hands around and watching numbers fly with little to necessitate it being in VR. You can always swipe horizontally and vertically to initiate special attacks for extra damage and buffs, though I’m yet to dive in to find out deep the upgrades and progression to these systems really go.

Magic — something I’ll admit I usually shy away from in this genre — seems simplified, but that works in its favor at least in this early stage. Point, shoot and occasionally press a different button to activate your other powers. I haven’t seen much in the way of complex systems to maximize the effect of your attacks, but this makes the class really approachable early on.

Other VR-specific touches are sprinkled throughout. There’s the freeing physical climbing you can find pretty much anywhere these days and then Population: One stops by to lend what’s probably its key contribution to the industry – instant gliding by making players assume the t-pose. It puts a welcome spring in the step of a genre that historically moves at a snail’s pace.

What’s more familiar, though, is Zenith’s structure. Past the surprisingly brief tutorial, you’ll be let into the game’s first environment with a swathe of other players. Here you’ll take on your usual assortment of fetch quests. There’s lots of killing a certain type of monster once… and then doing it all again 5 minutes later. And, hey, that’s all great if a little routine in these early days. Zenith does just enough with its VR interactivity to make up for the early obviousness of its objective types, but I definitely hope to see more elements that speak specifically to the platform later on in the game.

And, of course, there’s the social aspect. I really took to the ease and openness with which I could play After The Fall with pretty much any VR owner when it launched last month and that simplicity seems to be fast approaching a common trait in the industry. Just choose the right server, meet in the same place and you’re in. Not only that but you’re in with friends that have great full body representations, with the ability to party up just a few clicks away.

The fundamentals seem well in place for Zenith’s launch later this year, then. But, as I said before, all of this is a very surface reading of what the MMO has to offer thus far. I’m looking forward to diving back in for a deeper look during this month’s second beta and then, obviously, really pushing how far it can go during launch, which is promised for early 2022. As it stands, though, Ramen VR has already gone beyond my reserved expectations. Now it just needs to stay above that bar for another 50+ hours.

November 14, 2021

Oculus Quest, PSVR & PC VR MMO Zenith Reveals Cooking Mechanics In New Video

We’ve got a quick new look at upcoming VR MMO, Zenith, this time showing the game’s cooking mechanics.

Developer Ramen VR posted a look at cooking in action on Reddit this week. The short clip reveals a pretty active system, with players chopping ingredients, putting them in frying pans and then making sure not to burn them before stashing them in their inventory. Check it out below.

In one post, developer elliotttate explained that “cooking is just one tiny aspect of [the game], like cooking is in Zelda BOTW. Cooking food from ingredients that you gather in the world while playing gives you buffs that can temporarily increase your health, abilities, etc.”

We’ve seen other elements of Zenith too, like melee combat and gliding, which gives us a lot of hope for the VR MMO’s chances. We’re still waiting on a truly great VR-exclusive MMO for play in headsets.

We’re also still waiting for an update on Zenith’s roadmap as we head into 2022. Ramen had originally suggested the game would come to Oculus Quest, PSVR and PC VR in 2021 but, with the year drawing to a close, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. In September we reported that Ramen VR had raised a further $10 million in a series A round of funding to work on the project.

Are you looking forward to Zenith? Let us know in the comments below!

October 3, 2021

The VR Job Hub: The Void, Ramen VR & FitXR

Every weekend VRFocus gathers together vacancies from across the virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) industry, in locations around the globe to help make finding that ideal job easier. Below is a selection of roles that are currently accepting applications across a number of disciplines, all within departments and companies that focus on immersive entertainment.

Location	Company	Role	Link
Remote	Ramen VR	3D Animator	Click Here to Apply
Remote	Ramen VR	3D Character Artist	Click Here to Apply
Remote	Ramen VR	Tech Artist	Click Here to Apply
Remote	Ramen VR	Gameplay Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Remote	Ramen VR	Graphics Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Remote	Ramen VR	Game Designer	Click Here to Apply
Lehi, UT/Remote	The Void (Hyper Reality Partners)	Sr DevOps Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Lehi, UT/Remote	The Void (Hyper Reality Partners)	Sr Software Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Lehi, UT/Remote	The Void (Hyper Reality Partners)	Sr Software Engineer – CDK	Click Here to Apply
Richmond, VA	Big Top Game Studio	Social Media Manager	Click Here to Apply
London, UK	FitXR	Automation Tester	Click Here to Apply
London, UK	FitXR	Engagement and Communication Manager	Click Here to Apply
London, UK/Remote	FitXR	Engineer – Fullstack (Product Growth)	Click Here to Apply
London, UK/Remote	FitXR	Engineering Manager – Security, Data and DevOps	Click Here to Apply
London, UK/Remote	FitXR	Engineering Manager – Services & Fullstack	Click Here to Apply
London, UK/Remote	FitXR	Senior Engineer – Fullstack (Product Growth)	Click Here to Apply
London, UK/Remote	FitXR	Performance Marketing Manager	Click Here to Apply
New York, NY	FitXR	Performance Marketing Manager	Click Here to Apply
London, UK/Remote	FitXR	Scrum Master	Click Here to Apply
London, UK/Remote	FitXR	UX Designer	Click Here to Apply

Don’t forget, if there wasn’t anything that took your fancy this week there’s always last week’s listings on The VR Job Hub to check as well.

If you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s feature. Details should be sent to Peter Graham (pgraham@vrfocus.com).

We’ll see you next week on VRFocus at the usual time of 3PM (UK) for another selection of jobs from around the world.