Sony hat im amerikanischen PlayStation Blog eine Liste mit 34 der anstehenden Veröffentlichungen von VR-Titeln für PlayStation VR (PSVR) im Frühjahr 2018 veröffentlicht. Zu den heiß erwarteten Toptiteln zählen unter anderem Ark Park, Crisis on the Planet of the Apes VR, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, Torn und Xing: The Land Beyond.
PlayStation VR (PSVR) – Neues Futter für die Konsole im Frühjahr 2018
Nach der Veröffentlichung des Erfolgstitels Moss für PlayStation VR (PSVR) ist man sich in der kalifornischen Hauptverwaltung von Sony sicher: VR kam, um zu bleiben, und ermöglicht auch in Zukunft großartige immersive Erfahrungen über unterschiedliche Genres hinweg. Durch die positiven Kritiken gestärkt, veröffentlicht Justin Massongill, der Social Media Manager des Unternehmens, eine Liste mit 34 VR-Titeln, die noch im Frühjahr 2018 in Amerika erscheinen sollen – etliche davon sollten auch den Sprung den hiesigen Store schaffen.
Anamorphine
Apocalypse Rider
Chromagun VR
CoolpaintrVR
Flatline Experience The Other Side
Floor Plan
Headbutt Factory
Hopalong: The Badlands
Island Time
Just in Time Inc.
Killing Floor: Incursion
MLB Home Run Derby VR
Nothin´ But Net
One Piece Grand Cruise
Rixel Ripped 1989
Prana
Preta: Vendetta Rising
Quar Infernal Machines
RadianVR
Rooms the Unsolvable Puzzle
Separation
Super Amazeballs
Super Kaiju
Syren
The Perfect Sniper
Time Carnage
VR Apocalypse
War Robots VR: The Skirmish
Ark Park
Ark Park von Entwicklerstudio Snail Games ist das Action-Spin-Off von ARK: Survival Evolved und ermöglicht es, euren eigenen Themenpark mit dazugehöriger Dinozucht aufzubauen. Der Titel ist bei uns für den 22. März angekündigt.
Crisis on the Planet of the Apes VR
Crisis on the Planet of the Apes VR von Twentieth Century Fox versetzt euch in die Rolle eines intelligenten Affen, um die Geschehnisse zwischen den beiden Kinofilmen Prevolution (2011) und Revolution (2014) aus der Sicht der Primaten mitzuerleben. Am 3. April soll das Spiel erhältlich sein.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality
In Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-alityvon Adult Swim Games dürft ihr wahrscheinlich ab dem 10. April in die spaßige Welt der bekannten Serie eintauchen und euch auf virtuelle Abenteuerreise mit den beiden Protagonisten begeben – Lachkrämpfe sind im Titel inbegriffen.
Torn
In Torn von Aspyr Media dürft ihr euch in ein interaktives Sci-Fi-Mystery-Abenteuer stürzen und den Geschehnissen einer verlassenen Villa nachgehen, um dort die dem Geheimnis des verschwundenen Physikers Dr. Talbot nachzugehen. Ein genauer Veröffentlichungstermin ist uns noch nicht bekannt.
Smash Hit Plunder
In Smash Hit Plunder von Triangular Pixels werdet ihr zum Erben eines gigantischen Anwesens. Blöderweise beheimatet das Schloss auch einige Geister, die darauf bestehen, eure Familienschulden bei euch einzutreiben. Deshalb gilt es, auf Plündertour zu gehen – die Frage ist allerdings noch offen, wann das sein wird.
Xing: The Land Beyond
In Xing: The Land Beyond von White Lotus Interactive dürft ihr eine mystische Welt erkunden und und diverse Rätsel lösen, während ihr das paradiesische Land erforscht. Auch hier kennen wir noch kein genaues Veröffentlichungsdatum.
Zu bedenken ist allerdings, dass sich einige der Veröffentlichungen auch in Amerika noch nach vorne oder hinten verschieben können, da diese in den Händen der jeweiligen Entwickler liegen. Bei welchem der VR-Titel bekommt ihr am meisten Lust, zur PSVR zu greifen?
Mit Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality steht ein spaßiges VR-Spiel zur abgedrehten Serie bereit, welches auch ohne Vorwissen extreme Lachkrämpfe verursachen kann. Bald dürfen auch Besitzer einer PSVR ran, im April soll der Titel für Sonys VR-System erscheinen. Verantwortlich für die Entwicklung sind die Owlchemy Labs, die auch den Job Simulator in die VR-Stores gebracht haben.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality für PSVR
Lange mussten sich PSVR-Besitzer auf eine Umsetzung für die PlayStation 4 gedulden, doch zumindest ist mit der Ankündigung des Release Dates Land in Sicht. Am 10. April soll das dynamische Duo auch die PlayStation-VR-Brillen unsicher machen. 30 US-Dollar werden für den Ausflug in die virtuelle Welt fällig, wobei das Spiel nicht nur als Download im PlayStation Store, sondern auch im stationären Handel auf Silberscheibe erscheinen soll. Zudem ist eine Limited Edition geplant, welche neben dem Spiel auch eine Funko Pop! Rick and Morty Vinyl-Figur und ein doppelseitiges Poster enthält.
Wenn ihr eine Oculus Rift, Windows Mixed Reality Brille oder HTC Vive besitzt und Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality noch nicht ausprobiert habt, dann solltet ihr das schleunigst nachholen – unseren Test des abgedrehten VR-Titels findet ihr hier. Das Spiel steht auf Steam bereit und derzeit gibt es 20 Prozent Rabatt auf den üblichen Preis von knapp 28 Euro.
It’s no secret that both Deadmau5 and Rick and Morty show creator Justin Roiland both love VR, but we certainly weren’t expecting to see the VRChat logo front and center at Deadmau5’s New Years Eve concert.
Just as the clock was nearing 12:00 am, the music stopped at Deadmau5’s New Year’s concert and VRChat avatars of Rick and Morty appeared on the giant screens flanking either side of the EDM artists giant cube-shaped stage.
Arguing over how to defuse what ostensibly was a bomb about to blow up the entire party, Roiland, voicing the foul-mouthed mad scientist Rick, called everyone in the crowd “shitheads who are worshiping a giant mouse.”
“No wait. Nevermind. It’s just some other shithead wearing a mouse helmet,” Rick added.
A video recorded by YouTube user ‘Sir Melvar’ shows the countdown in full.
In addition to creating aRick and Morty-themed game with Owlchemy Labs, the minds behind Job Simulator (2016), Roiland also heads his own VR development studio called Squanch Games that just released Accounting+ (2017) on PSVR. Both Roiland and Deadmau5 (aka Joel Zimmerman) are VRChat regulars.
Owlchemy Labs hat nicht nur den Job Simulator und demnächst die Urlaubs-Fortsetzung im Angebot, sondern mit Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality auch einen weiteren äußerst spaßigen Titel. Auch hier geht es darum, bestimmte Aufgaben zu erfüllen. Bisher war der Titel nur für PC-Brillen erhältlich, auf der PlayStation Experience wurde aber die Veröffentlichung für die PSVR im nächsten Jahr bestätigt.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality für PlayStation VR
Das Fun-Game Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality ist eine Koproduktion von OwlchemyLabs und Adult Swim Games. Es basiert auf einer seit 2013 ausgestrahlten Zeichentrickserie, die sich um den Wissenschaftler Rick Sanchez und seinen Enkel Morty dreht. Dieses Jahr lief die dritte Staffel im Fernsehen, einige Folgen lassen sich auf der Webseite von Adult Swim betrachten.
In dem VR-Titel schlüpfen wir in die Rolle eines Morty-Klons und müssen dem echten Morty beweisen, was wir drauf haben. Aufgaben löst der Spieler, indem er Gegenstände in der Garage findet und kombiniert. Falls man eins der vergleichsweise leichten Rätsel mal nicht lösen können sollte, kann man sich nützliche Tipps über eine Smartwatch geben lassen. Der Comic-Stil konnte uns seinerzeit im Test überzeugen, überhaupt machen das Spiel und die Dialoge viel Freude. Das fanden auch andere, denn der VR-Titel war in diesem Jahr mindestens für zwei Awards wie den VR Awards 2017 nominiert. Abzüge gibt es von uns allerdings, weil die Spielzeit von rund zwei Stunden ziemlich kurz ist und die Preisempfehlung von 28 Euro dafür sehr hoch ausfällt. Deshalb empfehlen wir das Spiel uneingeschränkt lediglich beinharten Fans der Serie.
Die können dann nächstes Jahr auf der PlayStation zuschlagen: Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality soll 2018 für PlayStation VR erscheinen, ein genaues Datum hat der inzwischen zu Google gehörende Entwickler Owlchemy Labs noch nicht genannt – allzu lange dürfte es aber nicht dauern. Der VR-Titel steht derzeit für die Oculus Rift, HTC Vive und Windows Mixed Reality Headsets bei Steam zum Kauf bereit.
Tomorrow’s Game Awards is shaping up to be a big one for the VR community. Not only does it feature some of the best games of the year in its “Best VR Game” category (such as Resident Evil 7, Lone Echo, and more) but it’s also building up to some big reveals. Earlier today we noticed that Justin Roiland’s Squanch Games could be getting ready to announce their next VR game at the show and now we know for sure that Owlchemy Labs, the Google-owned development studio behind Job Simulator and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, plans to unveil their next VR game as well.
In a tweet from The Game Awards’ producer and master mind, Geoff Keighley, he revealed the news earlier this afternoon:
Tune into The Game Awards pre-show to see the first unveiling of @OwlchemyLabs Labs’ next VR game! #TheGameAwards
Naturally, this is all we know and we’ve reached out to Owlchemy Labs for more information, but we don’t expect to learn anything until things are announced live at the show tomorrow afternoon.
What do you think it is? Do you think they’ll continue along their line of “first-person games where you mess with stuff” or will they step outside that comfort zone? Will Google’s new ownership influence which platforms the game launches on first?
The Game Awards is tomorrow at 5:30PM PT. Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
Rick and Morty is comedic gold. It’s one of the funniest shows currently running and is featured on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim nighttime segment. Co-created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, the show follows it’s titular characters (Rick and Morty) on intergalactic sci-fi adventures through time and space. The humor is smart, sometimes subtle, and always on-point.
Last week at VRDC in San Francisco, CA the folks at Google-owned Owlchemy Labs (developers of Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality and Job Simulator) hosted a postmortem discussion panel about the game’s development. During the discussion they talked about not only how they went about adapting a 2D cartoon IP for 3D VR worlds, but also general VR design principles to take note of for future designers and developers.
We previously spoke with Schwartz and several other members of Owlchemy, as well as Justin Roiland himself, about the game’s creation and what went into the process (video embedded above). For the most part it sounds like it was a typical cross-studio collaboration, with a few caveats.
For starters, Rick and Morty isn’t your everyday normal cartoon. “This IP is almost anti-canon and was so fun to work on,” Schwartz said during the VRDC panel. “We got a massive IP bible from Adult Swim to reference during the process, though.”
Schwartz described how loose the company was with regards to following things from the show as closely as possible. For example, the show is a flat 2D cartoon that never shows its characters or environments in three dimensions which means the team at Owlchemy had to take some creative license with adding that extra dimension.
On top of that are the everyday challenges that all VR designers face when making games like player comfort, locomotion, exploration, and even death. “Death in a VR game is very strange,” said Schwartz. “We didn’t want anything to feel punishing or take control away from the player.”
Their solution was to have the screen immediately cut to black and to present a single phone in the middle of a black and red room labeled as “Purgatory” for players to navigate. This way they have to physically pick up the phone and choose to return to the game world.
One of my favorite excerpts that was shared during the panel is the story of how Roiland recorded his voice work for both Rick and Morty in the game. The team at Owlchemy would write out dialog and record mock-up examples of the voice lines that Roiland would then listen to and re-record adding his own flavor and “off book” stylings.
Whether it be Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, Job Simulator, or whatever the team at Owlchemy is working on next, the team clearly has a firm grasp on what works and what doesn’t in VR. Now that they have an infusion of capital from their new owners, Google, we’re excited to see what the company releases next.
Let us know what you think of Owlchemy Labs and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality down in the comments below!
Rick and Morty have opened up a transdimensional portal to Rocket League, with new customization items inspired by the series dropping for free alongside the game's second anniversary update.
In an interesting move, Google has acquired Owlchemy Labs, makers of the multi-platform hits Job Simulator (2016) and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017).
As far as VR game studios go, Owlchemy Labs is not only one of the most senior, but one of the most successful out of the gate. While in no small part due to the fact that the studio’s breakout success Job Simulator was available at launch for HTC Vive, PlayStation VR and then later Oculus Touch, the company has become well-known for tackling some of the early problems in VR like creating believable, 1:1 object interaction. Of course, it’s not only a primo spot at launch and some refined mechanics that helped generate over $3M in sales for Job Simulator—the game is also worth plenty of laughs.
And the same goes for their latest game, Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, which utilizes the same type of object-based interactions set to the ridiculous and off-beat stylings provided by show maker Justin Roiland.
image courtesy Owlchemy Labs and Adult Swim Games
But what does Google have in store? Are they going to be bankrolling VR games, acquiring more studios to produce a fleet of Google-made content, or do they have something else up their sleeves? Healthy speculation time: The reason for acquiring Owlchemy Labs may have had more to do with their unique understanding of VR interaction design.
The studio hasn’t shied away from experimenting with entirely new types of UI, in-engine mixed reality solutions, and creating a robust object interaction format upon which more VR content of all types, be it games or otherwise, can be produced. Having that, including the talent that created it, could be a serious asset in creating grander, wider-reaching VR applications in the march forward towards mass adoption.
Owlchemy says via the blogpost announcement that the acquisition means the studio will continue building VR content for platforms like the HTC Vive, Oculus Touch, and PlayStation VR. This most importantly includes a focus on hand interactions and high quality user experiences.
Job Simulator, image courtesy Owlchemy Labs
Google says that together, they’ll be “working to create engaging, immersive games and developing new interaction models across many different platforms to continue bringing the best VR experiences to life.”
Owlchemy sums it up: “We both believe that VR is the most accessible computing platform and that there’s a ton of work to be done, especially with regards to natural and intuitive interactions. Together with Google, with which we share an incredible overlap in vision, we’re free to pursue raw creation and sprint toward interesting problems in these early days of VR.”
We’ll no doubt see more from Owlchemy Labs in the years to come, and while we can’t say just yet what Google has in mind regarding the acquisition, one thing is for sure: whatever comes out of it is going to be exciting, ridiculous and absurdly polished.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is a hilarious game. When you’re inside of a VR headset, playing a game by yourself, it’s sometimes hard to laugh. It can feel a bit awkward, like laughing at jokes alone in your room, but you won’t be able to help it while playing this game — especially if you’re a fan of the popular Adult Swim cartoon that it’s based on.
We recently had the chance to speak with Justin Roiland, co-creator of the show and the voice of the two main characters, about the game’s origin and he revealed a lot of really interesting tidbits that were previously unknown during the development process.
For starters, the entire thing had a very relaxed iterative development cycle. The team at Owlchemy Labs were given a tremendous amount of creative freedom to create the game and instead of having to submit ideas for approval every step of the way, they’d just send Roiland entire sections of the game for him to play on his own and give feedback afterwards.
“The first build was just like the first third of the game and a script,” Roiland explained during a phone interview. “When I played the build, Andrew Eiche did his Rick and Morty impression voices and I have a lot of love for that stuff. The first act of the game I’d played so many times hearing his version of the voices that when I went into the garage to record the dialog for real I started imitating him. But I realized it sounded like I was imitating him and not being the characters themselves, so what I ultimately did was I went back in the garage and tossed out the script and went off book.”
Going “off book” means that virtually all of the game’s dialog was improvised and wasn’t specifically planned, but hey, it worked. Owlchemy created the framework for each scene, as well as a roadmap of what happened and the things the characters should say, then Roiland would go into his actual garage and kick things up a notch by just riffing off of the thoughts in his own head, like a mad scientist such as Rick might do.
“I had played it so many times I knew the plot and just went into the booth and did improv for everything,” Roiland said. “It really brings a special quality to the characters and we try to do it a lot on the show too. If I’m in the right zone I can riff as the characters and it feels good. So we just went off book and I’d make it my own. With each new build I’d play it a few times then I’d go in my garage and record a bunch of stuff, send it back, they’d add it in, they’d send more, and we just repeated that process.”
Just like Rick and Morty VR itself, which is full of Easter eggs that people will likely continue to find for weeks, months, or even years to come, the game’s development process is full of interesting stories. It’s an expected result when creative powerhouses like Justin Roiland and Owlchemy Labs get into a room together.
“It was an incredible collaboration,” Roiland said. “I’m such a massive Job Simulator fan so to see our characters and Rick’s garage be interactable is just an absolute blast…It was so surreal that we were making this a reality.”
As noted in the review for Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, the game’s developer Owlchemy Labs turned Job Simulator into the unofficial poster child of VR gaming. We gave Job Simulator an 8 out of 10 and, with Rick and Morty receiving an 8.5, Owlchemy finds themselves in a fortunate position once again with a well- developed and received game being attached with an extremely popular (and hilarious) Adult Swim franchise.
With such a pedigree being established at this early stage of virtual reality, one might think every single step is meticulously planned. The opposite is true. Not to say Owlchemy hasn’t done the work to earn this opportunity, but there’s a degree of chaos that played not only into the creation of Rick and Morty VR’s many features, but the creation of the game itself as well.
It All Started With A Tweet
On a calm Sunday in Austin, Texas, the UploadVR team met with a few people from the Owlchemy Labs team: Owlmancer and Studio Director Cy Wise, CEO and Janitor Alex Schwartz, Producer/Developer and alleged certified adult, Andrew Eiche, and CTO (Chief Technical Owl) Devin Reimer. The crew spoke excitedly about the development of the game, from scrapped ideas that eventually returned to making sure the humor landed. The Rick and Morty cartoon’s humor combined with the gameplay of Job Simulator is a perfect fit, but the marriage came together through a Twitter connection.
“Justin Roiland [the co-creator of and title character voice actor for Rick and Morty] had access to early VR hardware back in the early days and was tweeting wildly about Job Simulator being his favorite thing he’d ever played and was going nuts on Twitter,” Schwartz recalls. “[We] love the cartoon, Rick and Morty. It was all this perfect confluence so [I] had to tweet back at him.”
I can’t not wait for more levels!! Haha. Job sim is so much fun!
A few weeks later, Schwartz and a couple others on the team ended up at Roiland’s place in Hollywood eating Indian food and playing Job Simulator, which organically led to “What if Rick and Morty were in Job Simulator?” or “What if Job Simulator were in the Rick and Morty universe?” Only a week and a half later they were at Adult Swim’s headquarters with the one-line pitch. Within a couple weeks they were signing contracts and building the game.
We reached out to Roiland over the phone after our meeting with Owlchemy and he was able to fill in the gaps on how this all went down.
“To get the ball rolling, first I reached out to Jeff Olsen at Adult Swim Games and ran it by him,” Roiland says. “The plan for the pitch was to fly to Atlanta, get Mike Lazzo from Adult Swim in a Vive. We did and he absolutely flipped out. I also brought Dan Harmon, the co-creator of Rick and Morty, to that pitch, we wanted full firepower. We just pitched it and he just had a blast with the concept. When he came out, we gave him a rough idea for the game. Alex came prepared with the concept (you’re gonna be a Morty clone) I pushed back a bit at first, asking what if maybe you were a Meseeks for example instead? But we didn’t want to have to try and explain what it’s like inside of a Meseeks box, it just made it too complicated. His pitch was the better idea. You could die a bunch and come back, which was funny.”
We could have ended up with a Mr. Meeseeks focused VR game. Somehow we feel it’d be pretty brief.
While the Mr. Meeseeks idea was scrapped they did end up creating the Youseeks assistant that mirrors your movement, one of the coolest parts of the final game. It’s pretty nice seeing such an element of the cartoon brought to life, but that transition from cartoon to 3D in a virtual space took some work.
“We got away with floating robots in Job Simulator and now we had to have fully rigged, fully animated and lipsynced bipedal characters who are moving naturally but are a cartoon,” Schwartz explains. “You don’t want that uncanny valley and so we spent so many months on a character pipeline on figuring out how they can deliver lines, how they can get in your space, how you can kind of go back and forth with a character having it seem realistic without getting into kind of weird territory.”
That “weird territory” is definitely something they had to keep in mind when working on the non-playable character’s eyes. In VR users are ducking and moving around pretty erratically so you have to have the NPCs respond to it naturally.
Terrifying *brrp* Creative Freedom
Considering they’re working with a well-known license from a huge company in Adult Swim, you’d think they’d have to adhere to strict guidelines. They didn’t.
“It was actually surprising, for a big IP like this, how much creative control they gave us,” Schwartz says.”It was really an honor to be working on a thing that we loved.”
The team essentially had open communication with Adult Swim. They’d work on dialogue and character design and, if it was funny and worked, it was approved. It served as a better workflow as opposed to taking tiny steps, awaiting approval, and constantly going back and forth in that way. Being handed such creative control had to be a relaxing process right?
“That was terrifying,” Andrew Eiche immediately says, sparking laughter and agreement from the rest of the team. That freedom wasn’t taken lightly either and Eiche later adds that “almost every single item in the game has something it accomplishes, has some joke, or was in the show and we had to include it.”
“We’re about 50/50 on being able to predict whether something will even be good, like sometimes we’re like this is going to be terrible but we’ll try and it turns out great,” Eiche remarks. One particular creation that’s a big hit with Roiland is the Roy: A Life Well Lived knockoff called Troy.
“They knew they wanted to do Troy from the very start and it’s all voiced by one guy,” says Roiland. “It’s a brilliant branching tree. I’ve played it so many times and I keep finding new stuff. They crammed in so much stuff it’s crazy.”
Troy is an example of an idea that was a hit from inception but there definitely were ideas shot into the wastebasket. One particular idea was cut and brought back later on as the team realized it completely solved their pacing problems for the game: The watch.
“That’s our ticket system,” Schwartz says referring to the feature in Job Simulator that signaled your move to the next task. In Rick and Morty, you look at the watch on your hand to answer a call from Rick or call him to let him know you’re ready to move on.
“The other thing that happens is we’ll hear someone try to do something in play testing and they’ll be disappointed,” says Eiche. “Then we hit this kind of wall where like OK, how do we solve this problem? And it either ends up being we have to account for it or we have to make a joke.”
“Yeah, that’s the Job Simulator conundrum. That’s how we came up with half of the weirdness,” Schwartz adds.
What is the stupidest thing in the game?
The interview was shoved off the rails when this question was asked. When things settled down, though, the general consensus was poop. The game includes a combinator tool that lets you combine various items in the game to make new creations. You also retrieve a piece of poop in the game. So naturally these two elements play together and this poop can be modified into poop hybrids.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is available for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. You can purchase it on Steam or Oculus Home and declare the “stupidest thing” for yourself. Keep in mind, there are things that Justin Roiland, the co-creator of Rick and Morty, hasn’t found.
“They’ll put stuff into the game and not tell anybody, not even me, so there is stuff in there that no one has found yet,” Roiland said. “It keeps the game alive for a longer period of time when people are trying to find everything.”
