Toast Interactive, the developer behind Richie’s Plank Experience (2017), revealed working on a new VR platformer that seems to be taking more than a few cues from Sony’s beloved Astro Bot Rescue Mission (2018) and Playful’s Lucky’s Tale (2016).
Called Max Mustard, the VR platformer has been under development for three years now, with the team calling it a “modern VR platformer with moments of nostalgia, meaningful upgrades, first person interactions and game play that keeps you wanting more.”
Here’s how Toast Interactive describes the game’s setup: “You and the famous inventor, Max Mustard embark on an adventure to reunite adorable mudpups with their parents. Along the way, you are faced with a surprise dilemma when a friend reveals a secret about who they are.”
Image courtesy Toast Interactive
Max Mustard is set to include 40+ levels, four bosses, eight upgrades, and 4+ hours of gameplay. Beyond that, judging by the trailer it looks like some mechanics were inspired by Astro Bot Rescue Mission. In the video, we see the player wield a suction cup dart gun, letting you solve minor puzzles to move Max forward.
We’d be surprised if the dart gun was the only tool, as those eight promised upgrades may include more elaborate puzzle-solving gear for the player to wield. Fans of pioneering VR platformer Lucky’s Tale will also probably note the resemblance thanks to its family friendly vibe and bright colors, which is admittedly a pretty standard look for games in the genre since probably before Spyro: Year of the Dragon (2000).
It’s still early days too. Max Mustard is “deep in the production phase,” the studio says, noting that it’s slated to release early next year. Toast Interactive hasn’t specified exactly which platforms it’s targeting beyond Quest, saying only that the reveal trailer represents the visual quality of Quest 2, noting further that the Quest 3 version will be “able to be pushed further” in terms of visual fidelity.
The developer behind staple VR game, Richie’s Plank Experience, says it’s working on a “much more ambitious and much bigger budget” title for 2023.
Toast VR tweeted as much in response to a conversation about the quality of VR games in the years to come.” Ourselves and others are working on much more ambitious and much bigger budget titles,” the studio wrote from the official Richie account. “Our next release will be late 2023.”
No other details about the project were shared and we couldn’t find any other information on the studio’s website at this time.
From the sounds of it, the success of Richie’s and the recent growth of the VR market have led Toast VR to be able to invest in its next title. Richie’s itself was much more of an experience than it was a game – it asked players to head to the top floor of a building and then walk out onto a plank dangling over the side of the street. You can even put a plank down in real life and mirror its measurements in-game to make the experience more immersive. Over the years it’s proved to be one of the definitive VR experiences to show people for the first time.
It’s interesting to think what Toast VR could be working on next, especially for a project as far out as late 2023. At that point we’ll likely have the new PS5 VR headset in our hands and we may even have seen future iterations of the Oculus Quest.
What do you think the team could be working on? Let us know in the comments below!
Richie’s Plank Experience is known for being a VR title that gets people equally immersed and terrified. But now, with beta support for Oculus Quest hand tracking, it just got a whole lot more immersive.
You’ve all seen a video of someone getting a bit too immersed in Richie’s Plank Experience, usually resulting in a minor injury or some damage to a TV or another piece of furniture. However, no matter how immersed the person is as they walk across that plank, up until now they’ve always had to hold Touch controllers (or a similar equivalent) in their hands through the entire experience. A new update coming soon changes this entirely, bringing hand tracking support to the standard plank mode of the game on Oculus Quest. Now, no controllers are required — simply use your fingers to press the elevator button and start walking the plank with full, immersive hand presence.
We got to try the update, now in beta, ahead of its full release and it’s a lot of fun. The beauty of implementing hand tracking in a game like this is that there are very few interactions required in the base plank mode. It adds a huge level of immersion, without having to find workarounds for the lack of button input. The game was already great for demoing to someone new to VR, but without the need for controllers, it just got even easier. The lack of controllers in your palms feels very freeing.
Not all the modes support hand tracking — in the beta I tried, only the plank option in the elevator had hand tracking support. All the other modes, including Hero Academy and Sky Brush, stated in-game that they didn’t support hand tracking. We reached out to developers Toast VR to see if support for those modes is planned down the line, or whether hand tracking will be limited to the plank mode. We’ll update the article if we hear back.
Moving forward, it really feels like walking the plank with hand tracking can and should become the definitive way to play Richie’s Plank Experience. It’s a game known for its immersion, but hand tracking adds a terrifying new level of depth to an already freaky experience.
There’s no specific timeline or release date for the update — Toast VR told us that they’re working with Oculus to get it out as soon as possible. In the meantime, you can check out Waltz of the Wizard, The Line or The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets for other examples of hand tracking-enabled apps on the Oculus Store.
Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today’s Community Download, we want to know what your worst VR injury is or what the worst VR injury is that you’ve seen?
Over the weekend a video of a man playing Richie’s Plank Experience on the Oculus Quest went viral when he decided to fully commit and leap into the air off the plank in VR. Unfortunately that meant he dove head first into a large TV in the living room, in real life. Presumably the man is okay, but the TV certainly is not.
I’ve never done anything quite so dramatic in a VR headset, even when feeling completely immersed. That being said, when playing Blade & Sorcery I did slash the wall once, cracking the ring of an old Oculus Rift controller. I’ve also slammed my knuckles into my office TV, into walls, and onto the edge of my desk which always hurts. That’s about it.
Have you experienced anything more dramatic? Have you seen anyone run head first into something or get so immersed you feel like you could actually jump off the side of a building? Share with us some of your craziest and most intense moments of VR immersion-laden injuries down in the comments below.
And if you want to read up on some people that may have experience something similar, you can always visit the VRtoER subreddit.
Now we’ve heard from the makers of Richie’s Plank Experience, The Exorcist: Legion VR, Acron, and I Expect You To Die and they are echoing the sentiment shared by the other Quest developers. To understand the responses, here are the two questions we’ve put to all these developers:
1.) Can you give us a sense of your sales performance on Quest after 1 week and 1 month versus those same launch periods on other platforms you’ve released? You can be as general or specific as you like.
2.) Also, more broadly, how is Facebook’s Quest curation strategy working for you?
These questions, of course, allow developers to self-select what information they want to release. Very few developers are willing to release actual numbers showing their specific units sold, or revenue, and we wouldn’t be surprised if we heard Facebook’s developer relations people got inundated by developers asking what they can say in response to these questions. Overall, that means these reports aren’t representative of every app on Oculus Quest nor is it representative of the average developer experience in trying to get through the strict curation process instituted by Facebook for release on the headset. This process forced at least one approved developer to move an unapproved feature to the SideQuest system.
We’re still interested in trying to understand what the process means to all devs. Whether you were approved for release on Quest or not, you can DM me on Twitter or write to ian@uploadvr.com if you want to go on the record explaining your experience.
Richie’s Plank Experience
Toast VR, the developers behind Richie’s Plank Experience, reached out after our first story and said “I can’t share our specific data, but I can say that we sold more copies of RPE on Quest in it’s first week than our total sales on the Rift in our first two years.”
I followed up with Toast to send the creators our direct questions. They sent back this chart:
“This is after 1 month…Without giving away the actual numbers I think this gives a good indication of what we mean when we say Quest blew all our other launches out of the water; keeping in mind that it was our most recent, so it benefited from all the other positive media and brand awareness that was generated by the previous launches.”
“While we were upset that we were initially rejected from releasing on the Quest store, we understood the reasoning,” according to a statement from Richard Eastes, co-founder and CTO. “It pushed us harder to create a better product than we thought we could and it has certainly paid off in the long run. Although it’s harder to get on the Quest and it requires more work, the rewards are there and it creates a process that customers trust.”
The Exorcist: Legion VR
The Exorcist: Legion VR is published on Quest by Fun Train, Inc, and they said, “Our Oculus Quest launch of The Exorcist: Legion VR exceeded our expectations and has continued to surprise us even months into release. It is performing nearly as well as other established platforms such as PlayStation thanks to a very faithful port by Wolf & Wood.”
“I feel that any strategy which emphasizes quality over quantity is a good thing,” an email from Fun Train reads. “The Oculus team has been very direct with us regarding what type of content they feel best suits the Quest platform. For example, our episodic release of Tarzan is an ongoing conversation. Whatever the result, that dialogue is greatly appreciated. Not every platform has such open lines of communication or a clear vision of the type of content they would like to see.”
Acron
Resolution Games is the studio behind several VR games including Bait!, Angry Birds and their latest cross-platform multiplayer joy, Acron (Review 8/10).
We “can confirm that Quest is a very healthy platform for us in terms of downloads and sales and that we are very optimistic about the market potential the device is creating,” an email from Resolution Games co-founder Paul Brady states. “Quest is where we are seeing the most downloads for both Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs and Acron: Attack of the Squirrels! Exceptionally so for the latter…”
“As for the second question we don’t have a solid opinion there other than to say we’ve always felt that quality of content is more important on VR than any prior platform (especially for new users),” Brady explains. “And, with VR being young we have a chance to start fresh when it comes to ensuring discoverability doesn’t encounter similar pitfalls as we have seen in the past with other platforms. We of course can’t speak to how, or if, the curation process for Quest will impact that one way or the other.”
I Expect You To Die
Lastly (for now at least) we also received a brief statement from Schell Games. The studio behind spy game I Expect You To Die (Review 8/10) and swordfighter Until You Fall has a founder, Jesse Schell, who predicted in January that Facebook would sell at least 1 million Oculus Quests in 2019.
“We are happy to report that since Quest launched, it is our top-selling platform week to week,” reads a statement from the studio.
Get ready to walk the plank without wires for the first time ever. Yes, Richie’s Plank Experience is coming to Oculus Quest.
Unfamiliar with this one? It’s developed by Toast and has long been a popular choice to showcase VR’s sense of height and vertigo. You journey up a skyscraper and dare yourself to edge out along a plank. One wrong move and you’ll come tumbling down. You can even use a VR controller to measure out the length of a real plank and shimmy along it.
We’ve got a little bit of gameplay of the Quest version right here.
This edition is launching on June 27. Yes, you’ll be able to walk along a plank without a wire. Quest is a standalone headset that doesn’t require a PC or smartphone to run.
Toast tells us this version of the game has a 20m limit for the plank. It will also be the first version of the game to include the Missile Defence mode from the recent Hero Academy update. That update also includes a rocket racing mode that allows you to fly with rocket hands. You can even use the Sky Brush to write in the sky as you fly. The Hero Academy update originally came to PSVR. PSVR users will be getting the Missile Defence mode in an incoming update.
And, yes, this version of the game will support cross-buy. Buy it on Quest and you’ll also get it on Oculus Home via the Oculus Store. That means it’ll cost $14.99, same as the Rift version.
HTC’s concerted effort to court developers to use the HTC Vive in new ways has not gone unnoticed. The short vertigo-inducing experience, Richie’s Plank Experience, has often been noted as one of the ‘scariest’ virtual reality (VR) creations currently available despite not involving any kind of horror or videogame mechanics. HTC has noted this, and will soon be rolling the experience out to Viveland venues in China.
Ahead of that public debut however, HTC brought Richie’s Plank Experience to Mobile World Congress (MWC), Barcelona, showcasing the format in which attendees of Viveland will be able to experience the software. While Richie’s Plank Experienceis already available via Steam as an Early Access title, a small installation makes all the difference.
As can be seen in the images on this page, the MWC installation of Richie’s Plank Experience featured a platform representing the elevator in the experience and a long walkway for the titular plank. The user would stand on the platform as they ascend 160 metres through a skyscraper, only to have the doors open and reveal a wooden plank stretching out in front of them, high above the tarmac below. As might be expected, the experience from here on is simply to walk out onto the plank.
‘Simply’ might be a confusing word, as there is nothing simple about keeping your cool in Richie’s Plank Experience. The walkway used in the MWC installation had some noticeable give, meaning underfoot vibrations with each step offer genuine haptic feedback. The user was encouraged to take things slowly, but few would need such advice.
Being the daring VR aficionados that the VRFocus team are, we assessed the experience further by measuring the width of the walkway through running our feet along the edges and the flexibility by varying the pressure of footsteps. It may seem like such a simple way of presenting a familiar real-world experience – walking on a wooden plank, that is, not being 160 metres in the sky without a safety net – but the addition of tangible feedback underfoot genuinely took Richie’s Plank Experience to an entirely new level.
No confirmation of timing for the debut of Richie’s Plank Experience at Viveland venues has yet been announced, though it would be coming in this format to China’s official HTC Vive installations ‘soon’, VRFocus was informed. Richie’s Plank Experience is one of many software and hardware titles on show from HTC at MWC this week, and VRFocus will bring you hands-on assessments of the rest of the line-up very soon.
HTC Vive are, as expected, attending the 2017 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona and with a fully-stocked booth. Their line-up is as follows: Mindshow, MakeVR, You VR, Island 359, Vive EU, Cover Me!!, Richie’s Plank Experience and the TP Cast.
Mindshow is a videogame and also a tool for creating movies, allowing players to record the 3D environment similar to a real film set in a way comparable to how Machinima work.
MakeVR is essentially a 3D modelling applications implemented into virtual reality (VR). It allows the creation and manipulations of objects you create in the virtual space in a way similar to a Computer Aided Design (CAD) programme.
YouVR allows a player to experience the full ins and outs of the structure and function of a human body, such as stepping right inside a virtual heart to watch it beating.
Island 359 is a demo that allows for full-body tracking through the use of additional sensors and controllers to allow the movement of the rest of the players body instead of just their hands.
Cover Me!! Is also present in the booth, a multiplayer VR experience that links the Vive head mounted display (HMD) with a smartphone attached to a plastic gun peripheral and use the screen to aim.
Richie’s Plank Experience allows players to simulate the experience of walking out onto a plank suspended 180m in the air.
There are also demonstrations of wireless headset solution TPCast being displayed at the Vive Booth.
VRFocus will keep you updated with further information on HTC Vive and MWC.
Virtual Reality (VR) game Richie’s Plank Experience is coming to Viveland the VR theme park in Taipei, Taiwan. The venue will have a physical plank set up to more accurately simulate the experience that many players have characterised as terrifying.
Richie’s Plank Experience is a videogame demo currently on Early Access. Gameplay features the player taking an elevator up to a plank that site 160m above the ground and then trying to walk to the end without falling off. The game has been described by developers as an experience designed for first-time VR users. There are also settings within the game that allow for the use of the physical plank, as Viveland will be doing.
VRFocus‘ Nina takes on the virtual heights at MWC 2017.
Viveland is located on the 3rd floor of the Syntrend Creative Park and covers a space of 330 square meters. It was opened on October 29th 2016 and is designed for both single and multi-player VR experiences. Their specialised VR booths are equipped with HD projectors, AMD high-performance graphics cards, stereo equipment, SteelSeries wireless headsets and comfortable seating.
Richie’s Plank Experience is part of a large catalogue of VR games available at Viveland, including Fruit Ninja, Everest VR, Zombie Camp, Project CARS and Front Defence.
VRFocus will keep you updated on further news about the HTC Vive and Viveland.
If you haven't joined the virtual reality revolution just yet, the HTC Vive bundle has been expanded to include two more free games -- Everest VR and Richie's Plank Experience -- until the end of March.
