Veteran developer Schell Games, behind well known VR titles like I Expect You to Die and Until You Fall, announced today it has signed with Meta to deliver three new Quest games in the next two years.
Schell Games is one of VR’s most experienced developers, with at least seven titles under its belt, including some very well known in the VR space like I Expect You to Die and Until You Fall.
And though Schell Games released its latest game, I Expect You to Die 2, less than a year ago and is currently in development of Among Us VR, the studio is committing to developing even more VR games.
Today during the Quest Gaming Showcase, Schell Games announced it has partnered with Meta to deliver three “brand new titles” to Quest over the next two years. Though specifics of the deal weren’t revealed, presumably Meta will act as the publisher behind all three titles (which likely means the company will provide funding and other assistance).
“In 2016, we released I Expect You To Die—our first original title to land on the Oculus Rift. Over the past eight years, we’ve released or recently announced several additional titles for Meta Platforms,” said Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games. “We are grateful for the partnership we have built with the team at Meta and the way their work has helped developers like us grow in the VR industry.”
Though there’s no info at this time on what the studio might be cooking up for those three unannounced Quest games, we’ve got some good guesses.
I Expect You to Die and its sequel have been pretty well received over the years, making a third entry a pretty safe bet for the studio. Less sure—but something we’d love to see—is a sequel to Until You Fall, a criminally underrated VR melee combat game that’s been begging for a broader scope since the very beginning. Though the game wasn’t a blockbuster when it first launched on PC VR, Schell Games eventually brought it to Quest where it has done pretty well since… well enough that the studio just recently gave the game its first major update (which added two-handed weapons) in quite some time.
As for the third unannounced title… what do you think (or hope) it might be? A sequel? A brand new IP? Let us know in the comments below!
Party game sensation Among Us is getting a full-blown VR version, and now the studios behind the game released a new gameplay video that shows off some of its day-one launch features.
Update (June 9th, 2022): Innersloth, Schell Games, and Robot Teddy released a new gameplay trailer (above and below this update) which shows off a bit more of the game’s madcap party chaos, including a few of the jobs you’ll need to do to keep yourself above suspicion. The studios also released a number of features coming to the game at launch:
The Skeld II Map
A selection of hats to customize Crewmates
Core Among Us gameplay systems translated to VR, such as tasks, sabotages, emergency meetings, and venting
Proximity voice chat and Quickchat
Single and two-handed locomotion modes with nausea-mitigating comfort options
Localization in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish (LATAM), Chinese (traditional and simplified), Japanese, and Korean
You can also now wishlist Among Us VR on Quest 2 and SteamVR headsets, and join the game’s Discord server (invite link). There’s still no word on when it’s coming to PSVR 2, but then again, we still have no idea when the headset will release.
Original Article (April 20th, 2022): Today during the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase veteran VR developer Schell Games revealed the first look at Among Us VR gameplay.
And although it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect if you played the original top-down version of the game, I’ve gotta say—the trailer really sells how much more intense the game could be in immersive VR.
If you’ve never played the original, Among Us is a party game where a group of 4–10 players are stuck on a spaceship while trying to figure out who among them is the ‘imposter’. The imposter’s goal is to kill all the other players without getting found out. The other players take votes on who is the imposter and have to work together to smoke them out before it’s too late.
The game’s basic 2D graphics are just a backdrop to the star of the show which is the fun social dynamics, teamwork, and betrayal that emerge from the simple premise. But in VR, the game is likely to feel much more personal… and maybe even a bit scary as you hear the pitter-patter of footsteps behind you and wonder whether you’re about to see a friendly face or meet your doom.
Though the trailer above makes it clear that Among Us VR will stick closely to the layout and essence of the original map, we still haven’t gotten a good look at how the ‘tasks’ will play in VR. It’s not clear yet if the developer will simply adopt the original tasks, create new ones specific to VR, or something in between. We also don’t know if all of the original game’s maps will make it to the VR version of just a subset of them. We’ve reached out to the studio for more info.
We’ll have to wait a little while yet if we want to find out first hand—Schell Games says Among Us VR is set for a holiday 2022 release date on Quest to and Oculus PC. The game is also set to launch on PSVR 2 whenever the headset ends up launching.
When Lost Recipes launched a few weeks ago, one of the questions that seemed at the forefront of everyone’s mind – my own, my colleagues and even the team at Schell Games – was whether this was actually a game, or something slightly different?
“I would consider it an experience more than a game, even though it definitely has some game elements,” said Lost Recipes Project Director and Schell Games Senior Game Design Manager Melanie Harke. “Of course you’re being scored and there’s lots of different mechanics in it. But in the end, the real goal was for it to be kind of like a vacation.”
What makes Lost Recipes so unique is that it blends VR gameplay into a much more relaxing, educational experience than we’ve ever seen before in VR. You travel back in time to three ancient cultures and learn recipes in a relaxed, stress-free and educational manner. You can even take what you learn with you back into your actual kitchen — the VR cooking process informs the same process in real life.
This was all part of a plan from Schell Games to appeal to a different kind of crowd – those who don’t necessarily think of themselves as ‘gamers’, especially when using a Quest headset. “I personally think everyone’s a gamer, but you know, they might not title themselves that – instead it’s people who want to use the Quest as maybe like a lifestyle tool,” said Harke.
“We got a bunch of people when they were play testing [Lost Recipes] that said, ‘You know, I haven’t played any games. All I play is Beat Saber, that’s it.’ And they don’t consider that a game either. They’re like, ‘That’s my exercise routine.'”
“We wanted to get those people [lifestyle users] in and have them play this. We had a lot of people after the play tests that were like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know they made games that are like this… For me.'”
Even if it doesn’t quite fit into the traditional ‘game’ label as we understand it now, there’s a lot to love about Lost Recipes’ approach. It’s one of the few games on the platform that doesn’t just copy mechanics or gameplay beats from traditional, flatscreen games. This is an experience that only works in VR, and delivers educational content not through lecturing or instruction, but more like a field trip or hands-on activity with game mechanics applied.
It is so brilliantly unique and specific to VR that it is arguably more, not less, of a proper VR ‘game’ than many other titles on the platform.
But before finding its way to Lost Recipes, Schell Games developed lots of varied experiences that would later inform this new venture. There was a mixture of both more straightforward education content, developed for flatscreen platforms, and more ‘traditional’ VR games that the studio has become recently known for — namely the I Expect You To Die series and roguelike action game Until You Fall.
Harke herself joined Schell right back at the company’s beginning, well before VR was part of the picture, working initially in QA and then in design for titles like Disney Pixie Hollow, the Disney fairies MMO, and then later other VR educational experiences as well as mobile educational games based around PBS’ Daniel Tiger show, a spin-off from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
After running the gamut on many types of games on many platforms, Schell Games worked with Oculus Education on ideas for a new experience exploring what made education in VR so powerful.
“It’s really about presence,” said Harke. “Being there in the location.” The studio took what it learned from its other educational experiences – Water Bears VR and HoloLAB Champions – but aimed to make something less formally educational in nature. “We knew we didn’t want to be like a classroom experience. We wanted to be something that just a normal, everyday person who’s curious about things – cause we all like to learn – might want to experience. And so that’s really where I think cooking came from.”
With development beginning during the pandemic, the idea of escaping to another location – a virtual vacation – also became quite appealing.
“I just don’t want to cook just in my normal house, because I’m in my house 24/7. I want to cook and experience these places that maybe – right now, especially – I can’t get to. That really helped push us into exploring what if you were cooking in locations that are not like your house? How did people cook in ancient times? How did they cook in like prehistoric times, even? That was one of the conversations. And that really got us excited.”
But how did the team decide what cultures would be featured, and how they could be represented in a way that was properly authentic and respectful, even if they were from time periods that have long since passed?
“It really came down to what could we get good data for. That was very important to us, because we did want this to be a very authentic, real experience,” explained Harke. “We wanted to make sure it was a place that we could find a human that was willing to work with us for the long-term. We wanted to have people at the very early [stages], to research, but also looking at the art later on and everything.”
The final game features voice actors playing the chefs, one for each culture, voiced by people representing the closest modern analog for each ancient culture. But it wasn’t just the voice acting that had to be authentic. The team wanted everything — the food, recipes, environments, art — in the game to be as authentic as possible.
They achieved this through connections with subject matter consultants at the Kenner room at Carnegie Mellon university, collaborating and talking to them during the development process. “We had oftentimes weekly meetings with them, because we had so much to talk about. It’s not just the food, it’s… what’s the language that you would use? How would the scene be arranged? What’s the decoration on the walls? What sort of material would they have?”
“They didn’t always have the answer – sometimes they would point us to resources, books to look at – but it was just good to have someone who was connected to the culture, working with us the entire way.”
For Harke, the authenticity that the subject matter consultants and voice actors lend the game is what makes it so potent as an experience. “Without them, we wouldn’t have a game,” she said. “And really, I just hope everyone gains some new appreciation of both how different and also how similar all of our cultures are. How familiar cooking is and how it connects us all together as people.”
Harke’s hope certainly isn’t unfounded either — cooking the recipes in the game does give you a new perspective, with transferable skills and methods. While playing the game for review, I was able to recreate the game’s steamed fish dish in real life, using methods and recipes learned from the game.
“We definitely wanted people to try these recipes in their own homes. We didn’t want people to get bogged down in like super details, and in fact, a lot of ancient recipes, they’re not going to have those super details anyway,” said Harke.
This was an approach discovered during play testing. Early versions of the game had more details for each recipe, providing more specific instructions than what ended up in the final build. “People got really bogged down in the detail of making sure that the color of the liquid that they’ve made exactly matched the picture that’s on there, and that they’ve measured it exactly… It started to feel really stressful to people. That’s not what we’re going for at all. We want you to feel accomplished, that you can do these things in cooking.”
This was when the team transitioned to using ratios and other looser measurements, focusing less on outcomes and more on process. It was at this point that adding in some tricks from traditional games also helped improved the feedback loop – the little sparkles that shine once an action is finished, for example, help players know when something has been done correctly and avoids unnecessary worry.
Early versions of the game experimented with implementing support for the Quest’s controller-free hand tracking, but it ended up being a less than ideal option. “Really it just became much harder to do things [when using hand tracking],” explained Harke. “People started to look at the technique of how they’re holding the hand and I think it took some of the enjoyment away.”
Hand tracking also made some of the actions, like stirring a pot, problematic — when using hands without any controllers, it often became harder to manage what Harke described as the ‘fakery’ behind some of the physics interactions.
So while the finished product opts for controllers-only, the overall community and critical reception of the game has been positive.
“We’ve got lots of feedback of people sort of saying that this is not like other cooking experiences.” Other VR cooking titles – like Cook-Out or Cooking Simulator – focus on being frenetic and chaotic, but Schell opted for the opposite direction. “I certainly love those games, but we did purposely try to make something different and unique. People have really picked up on [that]. This is a game where I can sort of relax. I can chill in it. And that’s, that’s definitely the vibe we were going for.”
Speaking hypothetically, Harke says the team still has plenty of avenues to investigate. “We have like full lists of other environments that we are excited about exploring, even with some reference people that we might reach out to. I think that that is certainly something that, as a team while making it, we’re definitely thinking about and very excited about. No promises or anything, but…”
When it comes to potential updates, new content or DLC expansions for Lost Recipes, Harke’s lips are sealed. “Stay tuned. I can’t really speak to that yet. But we really liked the product. We really enjoyed working on it, and we’d certainly love to do more.”
It’s always exciting when Schell Games announces a new virtual reality (VR) project as the studio really walks a unique path. Titles like I Expect You To Die, Until You Falland HistoryMaker VRhave cemented its place within the industry for making high quality, innovative games. With a penchant for delivering educational VR experiences such as the latter, Schell Games continues that trend with its latest project for Meta Quest, a historic cooking game called Lost Recipes.
Image credit: Schell Games
Cooking in VR has always been popular, whether as a side feature in Job Simulator or a fully blown cook-off in Clash of Chefs VR. Almost every time you cook in VR it’ll be a modern dish like burgers or pizza but in Lost Recipes, you get to learn how and what people used to prepare hundreds of years ago.
Lost Recipes offer the chance for you to experience three separate civilizations; Greek, Chinese and Maya, the tools they used and the regionally specific ingredients. In Greece you’ll be making flatbreads and grilled meat, heading to China you’ll steam fish and make classic green tea. Whilst the Maya segment introduces chilli and other flavours to complete the rich culinary teachings.
There’s a basic narrative that you’re a ghost chef in training, tasked by other ghosts to cook these various recipes under their tutelage. It gives a bare-bones structure to the proceedings whilst serving up a nice portion of cultural flavour as the three ghosts you talk to are all voiced by native-speaking actors.
Image credit: Schell Games
What stands out is the amount of historic detail Schell Games has put into Lost Recipes, from the exquisite design on the bowls and the accuracy of the cooking implements to the sound of pouring out the various liquids and the crackle of the fire. In fact, the recipes are so well laid out and explained that you could write them down and cook them for real with a bit of finicking.
This being a Schell Games title you’d expect quality gameplay, and you get it. Finely dice some garlic, no problem; how about cutting a slab of pork into even cubes, you can with a steady hand. Most importantly, you can take your time. There are no rowdy customers demanding their grub or food orders flying across the kitchen. Just chill and enjoy the art of cooking, without burning anything of course!
You still need to do a good job though, being awarded a maximum of five stars by your friendly ghost pal. You’ll get deductions if you put too much of one ingredient in or undercook the meal. As this is more of an educational experience you’ll be informed about where to improve to master the recipe on the next attempt.
Image credit: Schell Games
Lost Recipes is also very accessible even with the minimal options available. You can move around each room via teleport points or simply grab the counter to shimmy along. Grabbing the side also lets you adjust for seated or standing play. There’s no smooth locomotion which is a bit of a shame but not the end of the world, and there’s no need for a left-handed option because everything can be used in either hand.
However, Lost Recipes is isn’t quite the Michelin starred VR culinary experience. The fundamentals are on point but it feels very bland and lacking in content. There are a total of 10 recipes across the three civilisations (Greece has 4, China has 3, and Maya has 3) which can all be prepped and completed in 1-2 hours. Once they’re done that’s it unless you’ve missed a star or two. You can have a play about in the kitchens yet there’s no encouragement to do so.
Lost Recipes is a technically proficient VR cooking title and achieves what it sets out to do, teach you about ancient recipes. There was no sense of satisfaction at its completion though, like you have truly accomplished something or learnt a new skill. Great for a history class learning about food but as a gaming experience at home it didn’t rise to the occasion (sorry). What it does need are some more recipes to pad the gameplay out. For now, though, you might be best looking for cooking inspiration on YouTube rather than trying to remember the difference between Mukbil Pollo and Loukoumades.
Lost Recipes aims to strike a balance between engaging VR gameplay and educational cooking simulator – but does it find the right mix of ingredients, or does it all go up in flames? Read on for our Lost Recipes review.
Turning the Tables
Cooking can be a notoriously frantic activity, especially for those who are new to the kitchen or juggling many things at once. This frantic chaos is often what game developers choose to focus on in cooking games – getting things done under pressure, completing complex orders and going for quantity over quality.
Lost Recipes, developed by Schell Games, flips this trend on its head, offering something more intentionally slow-paced, almost meditative and quite educational. It’s a refreshing take that provides an experience that is entertaining, but also using virtual reality to present a new form of cooking education. What’s most impressive about Lost Recipes is that the skills and processes you learn aren’t just applicable to the game – you can bring them back into a real life kitchen as well.
Lost Recipes VR Review – The Facts
What is it?: A VR cooking game that focuses on taking your time and teaching you recipes from ancient cultures. Platforms: Meta Quest Release Date: January 27th Price: $14.99
Refreshing is the word I keep coming back to with this game – not only is it a refreshing style of game, but it’s also an intentionally short experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome. In the current games-as-a-service, ongoing content market, it’s nice that Lost Recipes knows its limits and executes a simple idea within them.
Schell Games says that Lost Recipes was developed in conjunction with subject matter experts for each historical culture represented in the game, and this brings a real authentic feel to the entire experience. You will work your way through nine recipes in total, each taking around 10-15 minutes max, split across three different cultures, each with a different kitchen and style of food.
Lost Recipes Review – Comfort
Lost Recipes is a super comfortable game — it works roomscale or seated, with teleport options to each section of the kitchen. To move and reposition yourself at each station, you can simply grab onto a ledge and drag yourself around, similar to Echo VR’s grab mechanic. Most users should feel pretty comfortable, as there’s no real artificial movement or locomotion at all.
Each culture also has a distinct ghost chef spirit, who reads you the recipes and guides you through the experience. These ghost chefs are also voiced by people with ties to each historical culture. You start off in Ancient Greece, then head over to Song Dynasty China and round off the experience in the Yucatan Peninsula.
A Relaxing Distillation
The key to Lost Recipes success is that the gameplay is not a 1:1 simulation of the cooking experience – it is the core fundamentals of each recipe, boiled down into a perfectly-simplified version that stays true and authentic to the process while also ‘gamifying’ it in a way that feels natural. Even so, this is a game with super low amounts of pressure or stress. There’s no timed element to the recipes and no strict requirement to get everything exactly right. The chefs encourage you to take your time and aim for accuracy as opposed to rushing against the clock.
This even extends to how you manage your ingredients and cooking utensils – if something falls on the floor, the chef tells you not to worry and it’s teleported back to the work space. The focus is distinctly pointed at learning the recipes and enjoying your time with them. Just cook, and you’ll probably learn something along the way.
That isn’t to say the game completely lacks objectives or progression – you unlock recipes one by one, and after completing each one you’re given a rating out of 5 stars. However, your rating is given based on how accurate you are to the instructions and the process. On one recipe, I got 4 stars out of 5 and the game simply suggested that my dough might have done better with a bit more olive oil. It’s a non-punishing environment that lets you relax.
In terms of mechanics, there’s balance between giving you freedom to perform some actions in your own way and then also simplifying other actions so that you don’t have to think too hard. For example, when chopping meat into ‘8 equal pieces’, you’re given some flexibility – it’s possible to cut the meat into chunks that are definitely not equal. But when chopping up ‘some ginger’ to put on top of a steamed fish, a chopping action will simply julienne the ginger perfectly no matter where you make the incision.
Another hugely successful element of Lost Recipes is how it doesn’t focus on precise amounts or measurements. You’re often told to put “equal amounts” or “a splash” or “a spoon” – the instructions are specific enough that you understand how much to use, but not so specific that you leave the experience worrying about whether it was 50ml or 100ml of wine in the marinade.
Virtual Becomes Reality
In fact, this method is what gives the game credence as an educational tool. The focus on the why, how and when of cooking — and not more specifics on what and how much — means that a lot of these recipes and processes can be easily transferred into your real kitchen at home.
I tried this out for myself — after completing the steamed Chinese fish recipe in game, I realised I had enough ingredients (with some small modifications) to try the recipe out for dinner that night. I ran through the recipe in game one more time, then replicated it as best I could in my own kitchen. I had doubts, but the end result was a spectacularly tasty piece of steamed fish. Before that, I had never steamed fish in an Asian style before in my life – I was amazed that the game had successfully taught me how.
This isn’t to say that the game doesn’t have any shortcomings. There were a few times where I got frustrated at little bugs or quirks of the interaction system. The liquid simulations seemingly ran at a lower framerate, sometimes making it hard to accurately pour or balance items I was carrying. Likewise, there were a few times where I went to pick up a bowl of prepared food, and would find myself picking up one morsel of food instead of the bowl itself. There were a few instances where things flew off in strange directions, clipped through a bench or fell through a surface to the floor. All fairly minimal and manageable frustrations, and certainly not deal breakers.
The experience is short, but it doesn’t feel too short – there’s just enough here to leave you wishing for more, but not left annoyed at the amount you got. You can play through recipes again for improved scores and there’s for 3 save slots as well. Realistically, the game is probably only designed to be played through once, after which you might pass it on to friends or family members. And that’s perfectly okay – not everything needs to provide endless content or a several hour-long campaign. If anything, Lost Recipes is absolutely ripe for a free or paid DLC expansion down the line, and I would be surprised if that’s not on Schell Games’ mind too.
Lost Recipes Review – Final Verdict
What Lost Recipes does best is provide an incredibly immersive way to engage with food culture and learn how to prepare dishes in a way that is relevant today yet also authentic to the process and style of these historical cultures.
Even if you don’t plan on transferring the skills you learn into your own cooking, it’s still an entertaining and educational experience in itself. However, it’s the budding cooks and the established home chefs, willing to learn and take this back into their own kitchens, who will get the most out of Lost Recipes. It’s a completely unique way to learn recipes, let alone those from cultures so far in the past.
Lost Recipes one of the best examples of how we can take something very familiar and use VR to present it in a completely unique and immersive way. What more could we want from this technology, if not a way to engage with cultures from the past and bring something back from that experience into our own lives, carrying traditions forward? That is a truly magical achievement, for which the team at Schell Games should be congratulated. The more nuanced and enriching experiences like Lost Recipes available in VR, the better.
For more on how we arrived at this score, read our review guidelines. What did you make of our Lost Recipes review? Let us know in the comments below!
Best known for its escape room series I Expect You to Die, Schell Games revealed in December a new project called Lost Recipes. A virtual reality (VR) cooking experience that adds some ancient cultural flavour, Lost Recipes is set to arrive for the Meta Quest platform later in January.
Rather than modern the cuisine you find in other cooking games like Clash of Chefs VR,Schell Games has opted to step back in time so you can explore recipes from Greek, Chinese, and Maya civilizations. You’re a “Ghost Chef” in training, cooking delicious meals for other ghosts from these respective cultures.
Ghosts aside, Lost Recipes is all about being authentic and culturally accurate, so you’ll travel through time and step into historically-accurate kitchens, with authentic ingredients, utensils, and techniques at your fingertips. Heading to Ancient Greece (400-500 BCE) you’ll be able to make pita bread, mulled wine, Souvlaki, whilst in Song Dynasty, China (960-1279 CE) you’ll learn how to steam fish and brew oolong tea.
Adding further historical accuracy to the experience, the narration will be provided by regionally accurate actors plus Schell Games notes that Lost Recipes: “will also grow their [players] understanding of how geography and history impacted the culinary tastes of past civilizations.”
“Cooking has the power to bring people together and we wanted to capture this experience for players in and outside of the Quest headset,” said Lost Recipes Project Director Melanie Harke in a statement. “Putting together a recipe book is something we knew we had to do while creating Lost Recipes, and we had fun preparing some of the dishes in real life as a team. We did have to modify the recipes because some of the actual ingredients and cooking methods aren’t available anymore.”
Lost Recipeswill launch as a Meta Quest (1&2) exclusive on 27th January 2022, retailing for $14.99 USD.
That’s not all Schell Games is cooking up this year. As part of The Game Awards last month the studio revealed its working with Innersloth on a VR version of popular multiplayer Among Us. For continued updates from Schell Games, keep reading VRFocus.
Schell Games’ intriguing new VR cooking game, Lost Recipes, is launching later this month.
The game arrives on Quest headsets on January 27 for $14.99. You can wishlist the game over on the Oculus Store. Lost Recipes was announced last month at our Upload VR Showcase, the trailer for which you can see below.
Lost Recipes Release Date Revealed
As the name suggests, Lost Recipes is all about learning to cook ancient dishes from across the globe. Players travel to different environments to study the food of Greek, Chinese and Mayan civilizations, using Touch controllers to follow authentic, step-by-step guides to all of the dishes.
On top of the game itself, Schell today launched a new website that contains all of the recipes in the game. So once you’ve learned how to make something in VR, you can take a stab at making it in real life too.
“Putting together a recipe book is something we knew we had to do while creating Lost Recipes, and we had fun preparing some of the dishes in real life as a team,” Project Director Melaine Harke explained in a prepared statement. “We did have to modify the recipes because some of the actual ingredients and cooking methods aren’t available anymore.”
Lost Recipes isn’t the only VR game Schell is working on right now. Also last month the developer revealed it’s working on a VR version of the multiplayer hit, Among Us, which is coming to all platforms. We’re hoping to see the game launch later on in the year, though there’s no firm launch window just yet.
Are you going to be picking up Lost Recipes on Quest? Let us know in the comments below!
Schell Games today announced that Lost Recipes, its upcoming historical cooking sim, is set to release January 27th on the Quest platform, bringing with it the chance to cook ancient recipes in period accurate kitchens from around the world.
Arriving from the VR veterans known for I Expect You to Die, Until You Fall, and the upcoming VR adaptation of Among Us, Lost Recipes throws you into a time portal to recreate dishes from centuries past.
Schell Games says Lost Recipes teleports you to “historically-accurate kitchens, using authentic ingredients, utensils, and techniques.” Check out the announcement trailer below:
The game’s periods include:
Ancient Greece (400-500 BCE): Step back in time to a kitchen in the heart of the city of Athens. Cook up pita bread, mulled wine, Souvlaki, and more.
Song Dynasty, China (960-1279 CE): The arrival of spring festival means completing dishes for the new year celebration. Brew oolong tea, learn how to steam fish, and make a sweet fruit treat.
Yucatan Peninsula (1500-1600 CE): Prepare traditional dishes for Hanal Pixán, a holiday similar to Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Spice up the kitchen while making Xec and wrap up Mukbil Pollo (buried chicken).
“Cooking has the power to bring people together and we wanted to capture this experience for players in and outside of the Quest headset,” said project director Melanie Harke. “Putting together a recipe book is something we knew we had to do while creating Lost Recipes, and we had fun preparing some of the dishes in real life as a team. We did have to modify the recipes because some of the actual ingredients and cooking methods aren’t available anymore.”
If you want to get a head start on cooking the dishes above, you’ll find them published on the game’s new website.
If you’re looking for less clean up (and reward) though, Lost Recipes is coming exclusively to the Quest Platform on January 27th, 2022, priced at $15.
Yesterday (or this morning depending on where you are in the world) The Game Awards held its annual event celebrating the videogame industry, and as part of the showcase a very exciting virtual reality (VR) announcement popped up. Innersloth, the creators of hugely popular multiplayer Among Us revealed that a VR version is in the works and that it’s being developed by I Expect You to Die 2 developer Schell Games.
If by some chance you’ve managed to miss all the hype around Among Us, the frantic party title originally appeared in 2018 for mobile devices followed by PC and then Nintendo Switch. Viewed top-down, 4-15 players have to work together to ensure all systems are working in the spaceship they’re on. The twist is that one or more of the crew are imposters and their sole goal is to kill everyone on board. The rest of the crew have to work out who the imposters are and throw them out of the airlock.
Among Us VR will maintain the same hectic gameplay the original is known for but this time it’ll be entirely in first-person. The VR version will support between 4-10 players and feature all the emergency meetings, crewmate tasks and ability to sabotage. It’s important to note that due to the first-person viewpoint, Among Us VR is a standalone experience and won’t support the original videogame.
“We are grateful to the community who continues to share our game with friends and family and support us,” said Victoria Tran, Community Director at Innersloth in a statement. “Schell Games has a legacy of creating award-winning virtual reality titles, and we couldn’t be more excited to create a brand new AmongUs experience for our existing fans and new players. We can’t wait for players to become Crewmates in a first-person environment.”
“We’re excited to take all the features players worldwide have enjoyed from Among Us and tailor them to a fully immersive experience in virtual reality,” Jesse Schell adds. “There’s a lot to love about Among Us and this partnership presents a perfect pairing of the runaway success of the original game and the upward trajectory of the virtual reality ecosystem.”
Schell Games has confirmed that Among Us VR will be coming to Meta Quest 2, PlayStation VR and SteamVR headsets although no timeframe has been revealed just yet. Additionally, Innersloth will finally bring the party title to Xbox and PlayStation on 14th December 2021. For further updates on Among Us VR keep reading VRFocus.
I Expect You To Die developer Schell Games’ next project is a VR cooking game called Lost Recipes.
Lost Recipes was revealed during the Upload VR Showcase today. It’s coming to the Quest platform next year, and you can check out the exclusive debut trailer below.
Lost Recipes Revealed
Whereas many VR cooking games try to imitate other successful flatscreen titles like Overcooked, Lost Recipes is instead focused on providing an educational and authentic experience that looks into the historical side of cooking in various cultures throughout the world.
The trailer shows users being guided to make a variety of dishes from different times and countries. You’ll be cooking tortillas from 16th Century Maya and making skewers from Medieval China, with the game focusing on historically accurate techniques. You also appear to be a ghost chef. So, y’know, there’s that.
This is the latest in a long line of VR games from Schell, a studio headed up by Jesse Schell who himself has a long history with VR technology. It’s also the studio’s fourth title for the Quest platform but, interestingly, the first of its more educational experiences it’s brought to the headset. Other experiences like Historymaker VR came to Steam, but not standalone, and Lost Recipes looks to be an interesting fusion of game-like mechanics and apps that also teach you something. We’ll keep a keen eye on how it turns out as we move into 2022.
Meanwhile, stay tuned to the Upload VR Showcase, as there’s plenty more to come.
