ROTU’s second VR adventure game, Eolia, hits Meta Quest 2 (formerly Oculus Quest 2) next month.
The musical title, which is a follow-up to 2021’s Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia, hits the headset on June 9. A new trailer for the game also just arrived, which you can see below.
Eolia Release Date Revealed
The release date pits Eolia’s arrival at less than a year since the launch of Ionia, but ROTU says it’s focused on some key improvements over the first game in the series. It’s aiming to make this a longer, deeper experience with more variety in its puzzles, for example. While it’s a follow-up to the first game, Eolia takes place on another planet, hitting similar themes of climate impact and exploring possibilities with musical gameplay in VR.
Interestingly, Eolia has also been designed as a ‘hands first’ game. While you can play with controllers, every interaction has been created with Quest’s hand-tracking in mind, and you can play the game from start to finish in this way. As one of the first story-driven campaigns to utilize the technology, we’ll be very keen to see how this shapes up.
Are you going to be checking out Eolia next month? Let us know in the comments below!
After what seemed like endless months of anticipation, it’s fair to say that Rhythm Of The Universe: Ionia fell a little flat.
The VR debut from ROTU Entertainment offered a gorgeous world and intriguing musical gameplay, but fell far short at about 40 minutes in length. But ROTU CEO Jason Parks and the team are taking the lessons of the first game on board for their next entry in the universe, Eolia, which is due to arrive on Quest 2 this summer. Watch the full announcement trailer below.
Eolia isn’t a direct continuation of Ionia’s story, instead set on a different world with a different musical emphasis. This time around you’ll be immersed in desert ruins, where the effects of climate change are bringing about droughts.
But there are several key updates for this sequel that fans of ROTU will want to be aware of. For starters, Parks notes that this will be a longer game with more gameplay variety. In a demo, I see his character ride a mount across the desert whilst also revisiting familiar musical challenges delivered in different ways to the first game.
Perhaps more interesting, though, is that Eolia features full support for hand-tracking input, including smooth locomotion navigation. The game does support controllers, too, but I was really interested to see the movement, which lets you pinch and then essentially use your hand as a joystick to move back and forth, whereas elements from the past game like climbing return too.
Hand-tracking also allows for more precise music mechanics; I see Parks pluck strings in sequence, for example, and the trailer also shows a flute with your fingers covering holes just like in real life.
I was doubtful that we’d see much from ROTU following Ionia’s debut, then, but Eolia has certainly piqued my interest once more. If ROTU can deliver a more varied, deeper adventure that makes great use of VR hand-tracking then this could be a much more significant entry into a very intriguing universe. We’ll see more from the game when it releases this summer on Quest 2.
Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia is a VR adventure that promises to take you to a fantastical world filled with musical flora and fauna. Despite some earnest attempts at worldbuilding, the end result is a thin and superficial theme park ride that bears a fleeting resemblance to its flashy promo trailer.
Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia Details:
Available On:Oculus Quest, SteamVR, PSVR
Price: $15
Developer: ROTU Release Date: September 23rd, 2021 Reviewed On: Oculus Quest 2 via Link
Gameplay
I typically don’t frontload reviews with gameplay length because that’s not always a reliable metric to determine whether something is worth playing or not. For example, the Vader Immortal series are only about an hour-long per episode, but are a shining example of what happens when you put quality over quantity. Each of them also have discrete light saber dojos where you can level up your skills against waves of enemies, which does a good job of rounding out a short but sweet encounter with the storied Star Wars universe. I’m not directly comparing Ionia and Vader Immortal here, I’m just using it as an example of why gameplay length isn’t the most important factor.
Still, I think it bears mentioning ahead of my breakdown that Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia is a 45-minute experience. And if it were a truly enjoyable 45 minutes, this is where I might soften the blow. But really, Ionia feels more like a vertical slice of gameplay from 2016 than a honest to goodness fleshed-out game from 2021. Its cinematic pretense and claim to “push the limits of PC VR” simply aren’t backed up by a cogent story, fun or clever puzzles, real exploration, consistently good graphics—basically the whole gamut of what we expect from VR games nowadays.
Image courtesy ROTU
Ionia puts heavy focus on its music-based puzzles, although there are really only around five instances when you actually play an instrument, and those moments act more as one-off hurdles on your way to the next block of exposition, served up by your sister Allegra.
Allegra spends so much time talking and guiding you through the whole game that I never once felt like the main character. I’m called on to save the world in a flashy 2D cutscene before the game begins and only after having played the whole game do I have the remotest idea why.
It’s a shame that music-based puzzles are only one-off events, and don’t offer more structured engagement. The different puzzles are direct analogues to real-world instruments, like the xylophone and the handpan, a new-age instrument that sounds similar to a steel drum, but none of them take the opportunity to teach you anything besides hitting a few random notes. Most of the time Allegra queues you to hit the right notes and then you’re off to the next easily resolved calamity or theme park-style room transition.
Worldbuilding is probably Ionia’s most redeeming feature, and that’s really not saying a lot. There are supposedly a few more areas of the island that (if ROTU continues as a series) will take us in later episodes, but outside of exposition the game offers very little in terms of storytelling in its guided one-way journey through the game’s five chapters. Why am I here? Where am I going? What’s the Harva? Who are the Tritones? All of that is doled out essentially near the end, and to be honest it felt like I had just finished a demo by the time the credits rolled.
So in the end, Ionia doesn’t really live up to the on-paper manifesto it sets out for itself. It wants to offer up a smorgasbord of VR interaction with things like climbing, playing instruments, being sucked into cinematic sequences—and none of it feels like it pays off, or offers more than a momentary distraction.
Immersion
For all its promises of exploration and wonder, Ionia doesn’t seem content with letting its players explore or experience the world naturally. Although the default teleportation movement can be turned off in the settings in favor of a more immersive smooth forward locomotion, the game is riddled with moments when you aren’t allowed to move. You might call these ‘immersive cutscenes’, where you’re forcibly locked in place to marvel at a broad and open area teeming with life you never get to explore underlined with another thick slice of exposition. Trying to move during the many immersive cutscene elicits an annoying red ‘X’ in the corner of your field of view.
As for exploration, a good portion of the game features climbing. Climbable areas are highlighted yellow and lack a sense of tactility, as there’s no haptic feedback to let you know you’ve locked on or not.
I fee like all climbable areas must necessarily be marked in florescent yellow because the game’s dark green/brown color palette simply doesn’t provide for enough visual contrast.
Although visuals are sometimes muddy, at times Ionia’s level design can feel expertly produced. An inconsistent level of polish is endemic throughout the game though, with moments of curiosity destroyed by falling out of the world whilst climbing a staircase, or seeing an animal, called an Ocarina, completely invert its head within its body. I wasn’t hunting for bugs either, just tossing a bit of fruit to a hungry animal.
This was already the third bug I encountered in the PC version of the game. To fix it, I had to teleport inside his body and blindly grab at the berry and teleport out, something that destroys any sense of immersion you might have built up. Bugs happen, but I shouldn’t be tasked with logging them, especially when they’re so blatant, and neither should you.
As you would guess, object interaction is pretty lame since nothing in the world appears to be physics-based. You can easily put your hand through anything, including interactive objects. The only hard limit is the ability to look through walls, which is obscured by a black shader. There’s no inventory to speak of since there aren’t any key items or collectibles.
You can exit and restart chapters at will, although you’ll have to start from the beginning and replay the entire thing. You can’t change settings without exiting the chapter, so you should have absolutely everything set before playing.
Comfort
Ionia features an acceptable number of comfort features, including variable snap-turn and teleportation. It doesn’t have a dedicated seated mode though, so you’ll need to stand or somehow adjust your view in-platform.
There are a few theme park-style ride sequences, however these are mostly tame, and usually go in straight lines at consistent speeds.
ROTU: Ionia Comfort Settings – September 23rd, 2021
Rhythm Of The Universe’s first episode has moments of wonder, but it’s far too short and simple to make much impact. Read on for our Rhythm Of The Universe: Ionia review.
For both better and worse, Rhythm Of The Universe: Ionia feels like a launch-window VR game. On the one hand, it’s so clearly in love with its medium, scratching at its potential, dotted with moments of awe-inspiring splendor and fascinated with the gorgeous world it’s built. It’s also incredibly earnest, sporting a pro-environment message and, admirably, developer ROTU is even donating a portion of the game’s proceeds to wildlife conservation.
On the other hand, it’s entirely simple and over far, far too quickly.
Note: This review is based on the PC version of the game for now. We’ll update when we have impressions of other versions of the game.
Framing this release as the first in an episodic series does little to cushion the fact that Ionia can be seen through in just 45 minutes, and roughly a third of that is spent watching the game rather than playing it. If you pitch it as a game, the primitive adventure mechanics and easy puzzles don’t even scratch the surface of their true potential and, taken as something more experiential, there are precious few moments that will stay with you once the credits roll.
Rhythm Of The Universe: IoniaReview – The Facts
What is it?: A single-player adventure game with a pro-environment theme. Platforms: Quest, PC VR, PSVR Release Date: September 23 Price: $14.99
To its credit, Ionia is at least a wholly original and an incredibly lavish production that whisks you away to a lush alien landscape. You play as a strange little leafy monkey boy thing (which really is the best way I can describe you) and follow your similarly leafy sister, Allegra, beyond the bounds of your city and into a dense rainforest to save a mythical creature from destruction. As you can probably guess, the story is a vehicle to showcase the harmful impact of mankind on the planet’s most vulnerable spaces. Think FernGully just without a bat voiced by Robin Williams.
And Ionia does communicate that message well thanks to its imaginative design, solid performances and general aura. As the name implies, the game has a musical edge to it, with vegetation sounding off like drums when touched and some puzzles solved by hitting notes on a xylophone. That’s combined with some really fantastic creature and environment design, which not only lets you believe you’ve lost yourself in the vastness of nature but that you’ve met some truly unique animals too. There’s rich texture to Ionia’s sprawling trees and crumbling ruins, and I found myself wanting to breathe in its world of wonders as I explored.
But, as impressive a production it may be, ROTU fails to close the deal when it comes to interacting with this world. The game’s split into four chapters, two of which are essentially movies that don’t really have you doing anything other than watching other characters talk, and the other two run the gamut of simple VR platforming and puzzling. Those xylophone challenges include ‘hints’ that essentially tell you the solution before you’ve had to think about it, and one egg hunt for missing stone tablets feels like it’s there simply to pad the experience out. Even within these limited environments I managed to clip through the floor at one point, too.
There just isn’t even close to enough substance to Ionia in this regard. You could entirely miss that musical undercurrent if you don’t explore its environments and there’s nothing here that feels either unique or engaging to play. You hardly ever get to dirty your hands in its mud; the last chapter in particular only has you mimicking some simple gestures to complete your quest, rather than bringing you into close contact with the wildlife it wants to evangelize.
At one point Allegra tells you a creature will give you safe passage if you maintain eye contact, bow and wait for its approval. It at least sounds like a different mechanic that’s in-step with the world, and you can suddenly envision an arresting experience in which you have intimate connections with majestic animals up close. But then the story shuffles you along before you’re given the chance to actually do it.
Making compelling VR is incredibly tough and I can sympathize with how much effort ROTU has clearly poured into even the small amount of content on offer here, especially given its good intentions, but when you wrap all of that up and send it out as a package to content-hungry VR owners, Ionia doesn’t do nearly enough to turn heads. I did think that perhaps knowing when the next installment might arrive and if there might be some sort of season pass option could at least give some incentive to follow along now, but the developer isn’t ready to talk about those aspects yet.
Rhythm Of The Universe: Ionia Review – Final Impressions
As gorgeous and well-intentioned as it may be, it’s tough to recommend Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia in its current form. There are moments of splendor in this opening act, but they’re far too fleeting and around a third of the incredibly short 45-minute runtime is spent watching its world instead of interacting with it. ROTU will have its work cut out for it in future episodes if this series is to bounce back from this underwhelming first installment but, for what it’s worth, we’re rooting for it.
For more on how we arrived at this rating, read our review guidelines. What did you make of our Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia review? Let us know in the comments below!
We talk to Rotu’s Jason Parks about the developer’s big VR launch, Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia.
The forest vibrates with song around you, as animals of all kinds follow their ancient rituals seemingly unimpeded. But the woods are also hurting, grappling with a pain only you can help ease. If you’re unsure whether I’m talking about a real-life ecosystem or Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia, that’s exactly what Rotu Entertainment CEO and executive producer Jason Parks wants.
Rhythm of the Universe’s roots go deep, down through a decade’s worth of music education, advocacy, and undercover environmental activism. Rotu Entertainment’s founders attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Parks started a film scoring group during his time at the college, and ROTU’s future CCO, Emir Cerman,approached him with a proposal to bring dozens of musicians and countries together for the project that eventually became Anthem for the World, the seed from which Rhythm of the Universe grew.
“We had a music video that the support team created that brought 90 different countries together, and they wrote a song of peace,” Parks told Upload during Gamescom 2021. “We literally had citizens of countries that were at war with each other at the same table, afraid to even share their real name because of the retribution they would face and that song went viral all over the world on YouTube, and ultimately led us to selling out Symphony Hall in Boston.”
ROTU continued working on documentaries and other advocacy music videos, and in 2015, the Amazon Aid Foundation approached them with a request. The foundation wanted ROTU to travel to the Amazon rainforest and film both the illegal mining and deforestation and how they affected the environment.
“That trip really inspired [Ionia] because it was all about going to this beautiful lush jungle, then coming across just absolutely devastated land and understanding this was human impact but ultimately, there was something we could do about it,” Parks said.
ROTU wanted to create something big out of this experience, their own Star Wars franchise or Avatar, Parks said. A friend introduced the ROTU team to VR around the same time. He’d purchased an HTC Vive headset and invited them over to see what it was like. Parks said the sense of immersion, particularly in a nature scene as they watched a whale swim by in the ocean, is what sold them on VR for ROTU’s dream project.
Immersion is key for Ionia. Parks wants it to feel like a lucid dream, something that pushes the boundaries of entertainment forward through interactive storytelling and imparts a message about humanity’s relationship with the environment like no other.
“Our message and our vision is all about creating empathy through our lore, through our stories and through our universe,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to do that in virtual reality because I can put you in front of a creature that you have to take care of. You have to progress through making decisions that help you understand the world around you.”
To that end, ROTU also partnered with Wildlife Warriors, the conservation organization the late Steve Irwin founded that’s branching into Europe and Africa, as well as its native Australia. 5% of proceeds from Ionia will go to the foundation to help further its efforts.
Parks said they recognized even creating Ionia was a risk, though, let alone pinning such hopes on it. Ionia’s conception took place before VR carved its niche in entertainment, but the ROTU team believed the medium was here to stay and would only grow bigger. Working on video projects with nonprofits and other clients led ROTU to Epic’s Unreal as their ideal production vehicle. The next step was recruiting a team with “decades” of experience working with game engines and no shortage of ideas for bringing Ionia to life.
Ionia’s gaming inspirations are too many to count, but Parks noted Uncharted, Ocarina of Time, Breath of the Wild, Moss, Lone Echo — anything with a unique approach to narrative and storytelling. Music was always at Ionia’s core, though. They vary as much as the games that inspired Ionia, from John Williams’ sweeping scores, to Ennio Morricone’s score for The Mission (1986) and its idea of music creating harmony among disparate cultures.
Ionia’s musical identity is its foundation, so much so that ROTU composed the soundtrack before even designing the first area. They build every stage, encounter, animal, and puzzle around some aspect of music theory. One puzzle Parks demonstrated has you using a basic understanding of intervals on a scale to align a set of stones and unlock the way forward. Another involves using the environment and music to care for a turtle and earn its respect to help heal the forest.
Even more spectacular, set piece events, such as traveling through a valley on zipline, weave a sense of wonder and curiosity into its soundscape. That area, in particular, comes from a brief, 30-second segment from John William’s “The Never-Feast” (Hook, 1991), the moment where Peter realizes that the imagination affects reality.
It affects ROTU’s reality as well. While Parks couldn’t divulge much about Rhythm of the Universe’s future, he said this transmedia franchise will only continue to grow. Ionia itself is just one region on the continent of Pangaea. Other regions — inspired by music modes, such as Locrian and Dorian, of course — exist with their own stories to tell. ROTU plans on telling them as standalone narratives anyone can access, regardless of how familiar they are with Ionia or any of Rhythm of the Universe’s other parts, with more information to come later this year after Ionia’s September 23 release date on Oculus Quest, PC VR and PSVR.
After many delays, Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia is set to release on September 23 for Oculus Quest, PSVR and PC VR.
The announcement came with a new trailer, specifically framed towards the PSVR version of the game, embedded below.
Originally scheduled for release in 2020 and then earlier this year, it finally looks like you’ll be able to play the first game in this new adventure series that puts a focus on environmental conversation and music theory.
As previously announced, five percent of proceeds from the game will go the environmental non-profit organisation Wildlife Warriors Worldwide, which was established by the late Steve Irwin and preserves his legacy today.
You will play as Allegra, a young girl who is trying to heal the forest of Ionia and save mythical beings called the Harpa. You’ll do this by solving music-based puzzles with her brother, Allegro. Here’s a new description from the developers, posted alongside the release date:
Save the Harpa, an endangered mythical being, by solving puzzles rooted in music theory. Hands-on interactions between VR controllers draw the sounds of sharp drum beats, soft bell tones, and other eclectic echoes from the flora and fauna of IONIA. Climb trees and zipline across ravines strewn throughout gorgeous environments. Saving the Ionian forest will require exploring this world and learning its rhythms.
Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia releases September 23 simultaneously on the Oculus Store for Quest and Rift, the PlayStation store for PSVR on PS4 and PS5, and Steam with support for Valve Index, HTC Vive and Vive Pro, Oculus Rift S and HP Reverb G2.
A new trailer in this year’s Upload VR Showcase revealed that ROTU Entertainment’s upcoming VR puzzler Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia will release in Q3 for Quest, PC VR and PSVR, with a portion of the proceeds supporting wildlife conservation.
The game is a puzzle VR game (the first of seven proposed games in the Rhythm of the Universe series) that focuses on environmental preservation and the power of music theory, which will factor into several of the puzzles. The latest trailer in today’s showcase explained how developers ROTU Entertainment are putting their money where their mouth is — a fraction of the game’s proceeds will go to the non-profit conservation organization Wildlife Warriors, established by the late Steve Irwin.
Here’s a prepared statement from ROTU explaining more:
“Five percent of proceeds from sales of IONIA will benefit environmental non-profit Wildlife Warriors. Established in 2002 by Steve and Terri Irwin, Wildlife Warriors continues Steve ‘The Crocodile Hunter’ Irwin’s legacy of protecting injured, threatened or endangered wildlife. Today’s new trailer features the Irwin family in support of ROTU Entertainment’s goal of raising awareness of environmental issues.”
Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia is set to launch later this year in Q3 simultaneously for Oculus Quest, PSVR and PC VR. You can wishlist the game on Steam here.
Anytime I’ve paid much attention to Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia I’ve never been sure what to make of it.
The trailers for Rotu Entertainment’s VR fantasy are undoubtedly flashy, sprinkling a touch of Dark Crystal magic only swapping out Jim Henson puppets for beautifully imaginative virtual life. But there’s also something faintly rusty about it, like a 90’s-era FMV, and this wouldn’t be the first VR game to tease breathtaking visuals and epic pathos in hopes of pulling a veil over shallow gameplay (I’m looking at you, Eden Tomorrow). I also had my doubts about the game’s performance given recent hiccups with ambitious indie titles like Hinge.
Truth be told, even after playing the Steam Games Festival demo I’m not entirely convinced; Ionia’s pacing seems glacial and there’s little in the way of interaction. But I can say with at least some certainty that the game has its own arresting aura that makes it quite different from anything else on the VR radar. Take a look at the demo gameplay in the video above.
What’s on offer in the demo is slight: roughly 10 minutes of tried-and-true VR climbing mechanics and a fairly simple music puzzle that sees you match notes on a xylophone. What’s more important is its backdrop. The world of Ionia is, simply put, an absolutely stunning leafy wonder, dense with alien vegetation that reacts to the touch and populated with strange and awe-inspiring wildlife. The opening 10 minutes slathers on the spectacle and left me wanted to see much more of this world.
I’d like to see the game trust players to go at their own pace – teleportation-based movement is painfully sluggish, there’s no smooth locomotion in the demo and it’s fond of locking you in place whilst someone’s talking to you. But it is trying to make players stop and breathe in its world just a little more and, in that, it’s successful.
Ultimately I suspect that the light interaction and plodding control scheme might hold Rhythm of the Universe back from the full glory of the world ROTU is building. But the strength of that creative vision alone might well be enough to pull it through. Plus the team’s already proved me wrong once, and I’d love them to do it again.
Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia is due for release on PC VR, PSVR and Oculus Quest in Q2 of 2021.
Anytime I’ve paid much attention to Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia I’ve never been sure what to make of it.
The trailers for Rotu Entertainment’s VR fantasy are undoubtedly flashy, sprinkling a touch of Dark Crystal magic only swapping out Jim Henson puppets for beautifully imaginative virtual life. But there’s also something faintly rusty about it, like a 90’s-era FMV, and this wouldn’t be the first VR game to tease breathtaking visuals and epic pathos in hopes of pulling a veil over shallow gameplay (I’m looking at you, Eden Tomorrow). I also had my doubts about the game’s performance given recent hiccups with ambitious indie titles like Hinge.
Truth be told, even after playing the Steam Games Festival demo I’m not entirely convinced; Ionia’s pacing seems glacial and there’s little in the way of interaction. But I can say with at least some certainty that the game has its own arresting aura that makes it quite different from anything else on the VR radar. Take a look at the demo gameplay in the video above.
What’s on offer in the demo is slight: roughly 10 minutes of tried-and-true VR climbing mechanics and a fairly simple music puzzle that sees you match notes on a xylophone. What’s more important is its backdrop. The world of Ionia is, simply put, an absolutely stunning leafy wonder, dense with alien vegetation that reacts to the touch and populated with strange and awe-inspiring wildlife. The opening 10 minutes slathers on the spectacle and left me wanted to see much more of this world.
I’d like to see the game trust players to go at their own pace – teleportation-based movement is painfully sluggish, there’s no smooth locomotion in the demo and it’s fond of locking you in place whilst someone’s talking to you. But it is trying to make players stop and breathe in its world just a little more and, in that, it’s successful.
Ultimately I suspect that the light interaction and plodding control scheme might hold Rhythm of the Universe back from the full glory of the world ROTU is building. But the strength of that creative vision alone might well be enough to pull it through. Plus the team’s already proved me wrong once, and I’d love them to do it again.
Rhythm of the Universe: Ionia is due for release on PC VR, PSVR and Oculus Quest in Q2 of 2021.
Rhythm of the Universe: IONIA has been delayed until Q2 2021, but will now release simultaneously across PC VR, Oculus Quest and PSVR.
The developers announced that the game would be pushed back yet again – originally, the game was announced in January 2019 with an aim to release sometime that same year. When that didn’t come to pass, we heard nothing until August this year, when a revised Q4 2020 release date was announced for PC VR.
However, with Q4 2020 almost done and dusted, that was looking less and less likely by the day, and now we have confirmation. The game will be delayed once again, this time to Q2 2020. However, on the flip side, the game will now release on more than just one platform – a simultaneous release across Oculus Quest, PSVR and PC VR is the new plan.
Here’s what ROTU CEO Jason Parks had to say:
“We’ve made the decision to delay our musical theory puzzle adventure so we can bring it to Quest and PSVR players at the same time. We want everyone with a VR headset to be able to explore the gorgeous world we’ve created from our experiences working extensively with international musicians and documenting the deforestation of the Amazon.”
The two trailers we’ve seen so far have look absolutely stunning, so it’s unfortunate that the game keeps getting pushed back. IONIA is the first of seven planned games in the series, and it will explore the issue of wildlife presentation while also incorporating music theory elements into the gameplay.
Rhythm of the Universe: IONIA is scheduled for release Q2 2020 on PC VR, Oculus Quest and PSVR.
