Shooty Fruity Arcade – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

Launched in 2015 to support developers working with Unreal Engine, Epic Games’ $5 million USD Unreal Dev Grants programme has now drawn to a close, awarding the final $500,000 to over a dozen projects, covering industries including gaming, film, VR/AR, education, and more.

Project M Evie

Recipients this time include Backlight, a French studio working on virtual reality (VR) title Eclipse. Created in collaboration with Virtual Adventure, a VR entertainment centre near Paris, Eclipse is a multiplayer experience with 4D interactive elements.

Also in the VR sphere is Shooty Fruity Arcade from nDreams, a VR arcade version of its popular fruit shooting title for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR. Then there’s Project M from EVR Studios, a narrative-driven adventure where you’re encouraged to interact and build friendships with the game’s hyper-realistic non-player characters. Or then there’s SnapClick: Fossil Diggers VR by The Orphanage, a puzzle title where you play as a palaeontologist on the hunt to find proof that dinosaurs once existed. Travel to remote locations, explore environments, find fossils and piece them together.

Other recipients also included:

Aeon Must Die! by Limestone Games
BioStories by Bio-Bridge Initiative
Complete Unreal C++ Dev by GameDev.TV
Cryptant by Orcari
Eximius: Seize the Frontline by Ammobox Studio
Glimpse from Mr. Kite
Kingshunt from Vaki Games
Meta Runner by Glitch Productions
Photorealism in UE4 by Rense de Boer
Polter Pals by Split Hare Games
The Forgotten City from Modern Storyteller
Virtual Helsinki by Zoan

“With today’s announcement, we’ve reached our $5 million goal for the Unreal Dev Grants program. As we look back at the list of those we’ve been able to support throughout the years, we can’t help but feel deeply honoured to have played a part in the stories of hundreds of projects,” said Chance Ivey, Partnership Manager at Epic Games in a statement. “We remain inspired by the talent and dedication that the Unreal Engine community continues to exhibit, and look forward to where everyone will take things next. Though Unreal Dev Grants is now behind us, it’s not the end of our ongoing support. Tune in to Epic’s State of Unreal opening session at GDC for more information.”

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Epic Games and Unreal Engine, reporting back with the latest updates.

Shooty Fruity And Perfect Are Coming To VR Arcades

UK-based VR developer nDreams is making its move into the VR arcade scene, bringing two of its most popular titles with it.

The studio this month announced both Shooty Fruity Arcade and Perfect Balloon Flight. The former is obviously based on the developer’s well-received 2017 wave shooter, Shooty Fruity, in which players try to fend off incoming hordes of evil fruit as they multitask scanning items at a supermarket till. As you can see in the trailer, the arcade version looks pretty much the same. It’s due to role out to VR arcades this winter in partnership with Ctrl V, VR Junkies, SynthesisVR and SpringboardVR.

Perfect Balloon Flight, meanwhile, is a little different. It takes the environments of nDreams’ relaxing VR game, Perfect, which simply offers three locations to explore at your own pace, and lets you soar over them in a hot air balloon. This one’s developed in partnership with Starbreeze (you know, that company that just announced its StarVR developer kit is $3,200) and will use a real balloon basked and 4D effects to make the experience more immersive.

In a prepared statement, company Patrick O’Luanaigh also confirmed that the developer was working on new titles for home-based headsets, including supporting the upcoming Oculus Quest device.

Elsewhere in nDreams news, the developer’s set to launch a VR bundle for PSVR in the EU this week, which will include Shooty Fruity and Perfect as well as its debut PSVR game, The Assembly, and one of its first published titles, Bloody Zombies. A price hasn’t yet been revealed.

Tagged with: ndreams, Shooty Fruity, Shooty Fruity Arcade