Snail Games – Page 2 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

September 25, 2017February 8, 2018

‘ARK Park’ to Launch March 22nd on PSVR, Vive & Rift

ARK Park, the VR multiplayer adventure game based on the world of ARK:Survival Evolved (2017), was originally slated for a December release on PlayStation VR, but then production studio Snail Games delayed the game as it was “still in development.” Now, the studio says ARK PARK is officially slated to arrive on PSVR, Rift and Vive on March 22nd.

Update (02/08/18): Snail Games tweeted recently that ‘ARK PARK’ is slated to launch on March 22nd simultaneously on PSVR, Rift and Vive.

Original Article (09/25/17): ARK Park bills itself as an experience promising to be a veritable Jurassic Park (1993), filled with all makes and model of dinosaurs from the ARK universe. We got a hands-on at this year’s GDC earlier this year with the demo built for HTC Vive, and while you can’t really call it educational—there are a number of fictional creatures mashed in alongside your bog standard Brontosaurus and Triceratops—it certainly delivers what you could call ‘sheer wow factor’ with its well-rendered dinos and interesting scenery.

ARK Park focuses on exploration-based ‘Excursions’ through a number of biomes where you collect fragments of dino-DNA. These fragments can be used to unlock new crafting blueprints and new maps. Production studio Snail Games says collecting them all “will require a combination of puzzle-solving logic, quick reflexes, a trained eye, and careful resource management to bag the genes from the rarest and most prized creatures.” You can also collect and incubate eggs to raise your own virtual dinosaur pets that you can ride once they reach adulthood.

ARK PARK Screenshots and Trailer Released

The virtual reality (VR) spin off for popular survival crafting title ARK: Survival Evolved titled ARK PARK has just seen a new trailer and screenshots revealed during the ChinaJoy event, one of Asia’s biggest videogaming events.

ARK: Survival Evolved was released into Early Access on 2^nd June, 2015, with an expected release date for the final version of 8^th August, 2017. The title puts the player in the role of a human stranded on an alien world populated by dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. The player must learn how to gather materials, craft weapons and hunt down the creatures in order to stay alive.

Snails Games, the developer of ARK PARK, sent its vice president, Tianqi Wu to take the stage at ChinaJoy alongside art director Guohan Tang to discuss the creative development of the VR title. The new trailer offers a look at some of the core gameplay, which involves a tower defence-style of combat. Players are able to customise their avatar, then enter the world to take on giant dinosaurs, gather materials and craft bigger and better weaponry.

Ark Park Screen 8

The developers describe ARK PARK as an ‘extension’ of ARK: Survival Evolved. Players will be able to interact with over 100 unique creatures patterned after animals from Earth’s pre-history. There is a multiplayer mode planned, so players can work together to take down might beasts.

ARK PARK is due for release on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR some time in Q4 of 2017. A price has yet to be confirmed. The trailer for the upcoming title is available to view below.

VRFocus will continue to bring you news on ARK PARK and other upcoming VR titles.

March 2, 2017

Hands-on: ‘ARK Park’ is Like Jurassic Park Before Things Went Wrong

ARK Park is a VR spin-off of ARK: Survival Evolved (2017) from Suzhou, China-based Snail Games. Letting you explore the habitats of the world’s wild mix of fictional and non-fictional pre-historic creatures, ARK Park is betting big on the pure wow-factor of coming face to face with dinos in what promises to be an experience brimming with possibilities for exploration.

Like a veritable pre-disaster Jurassic Park (1993), ARK Park lets you go out on what the game calls ‘Excursions’ into a number of habitats. The control scheme is primarily based on teleportation, but the game promises to serve up some scenes with rideable dinosaurs as well as vehicles. According to Snail Games, ARK Park isn’t going just be a walk (or ride) in the park though, as you’re tasked with collecting the disparate dino-genes scattered throughout the game’s various biomes. Snail says the world is populated with more than 100 unique species.

Stepping into the experience at the Valve booth at GDC 2017, I was first shown the world’s hub, a sort of museum where you can read about the dinosaurs, see holograms of them up close and learn about what they eat–knowledge that you’ll have to take with you on your way through the different areas. This is the first place where you confront the truly massive creatures of the world, with one side of the museum lobby showcasing a holographic Tyrannosaurus Rex and on the other a truly massive Brontosaurus reaching to the museum’s high ceiling.

ark park museum — holographic Brontosaurus eat holographic food from your hand

Teleporting over to a holographic map in the center of the giant domed museum, I pull up a menu selection of several orbs, physical object that you can pick up and enter which act similarly to how you change locations in Valve’s The Lab (2016). Putting the a ‘pre-hstoric swamp’ orb up to my face takes me to the biome.

The swamp is filled with chittering life. Moving closer to an old wooden signpost holding a map of the area, my obligatory robot companion points out a giant spider blocking my way. While not historically accurate, it’s daunting just the same.

ark park robot — your buzzing robot buddy

Heading the opposite direction I encounter a giant snake that I’m forced to fed in order to keep from attacking, and my new snake buddy doesn’t eat fruit, rather a helpless frog that saunters my way with nary a care in the world. I didn’t want the chubby little swamp frog to die, but this is the world of ARK Park, a relentless snake-eat-frog reality.

Next was a pair of giant beavers, which were about the height of a dining room table and the length of motorcycle. The two were busily chomping on fish they had caught from a nearby body of water. Walking into the water nearby, I grab a fish barehanded and toss it to one of the beavers to eat. I have become death, destroyer of pre-historic worlds.

ark park spider — fictional knee-high spiders

Like the much beloved Pokémon Snap (1999), ARK Park lets you snap pictures of the creatures, which might appeal more to people who’d prefer not to manhandle and chuck little frogs and fish to their demise.

My next adventure was much more dinosaur-heavy, as this time I was transported to a lush Urwald filled with ferns, buzzing insects the size of your palm and a range of terrible lizards (and reptiles) from Velociraptor to Tyrannosaurus Rex. While elements are scripted, the dinosaurs follow you with their gaze, making it feel less like a scripted vignette and more like a real world encounter.

I’m wary of the educational value of the game, as it liberally mixes fact with fiction, and although some parts seem right (what do I know), there’s no guarantee that the actually historically correct creatures are indeed historical contemporaries and not just a mix match of a bunch of dinosaurs from different eras. Taking that aspect of the “museum” with a grain of salt, the game was a fun dive into the surreal and ultimately tickled my dormant childhood curiosity with the long-dead beasts.

ARK Park is slated to arrive sometime this year on HTC Vive. In the meantime you can follow the game on Steam for updates and announcements from the developers.

The post Hands-on: ‘ARK Park’ is Like Jurassic Park Before Things Went Wrong appeared first on Road to VR.

February 23, 2017

Check Out The First Footage Of Ark Park In Mixed Reality

Studio Wildcard’s ARK Survival Evolved might not be the best fit for VR. That’s probably why Ark Park exists.

This spin-off of the popular survival game is on the way to the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlayStation VR (PSVR) later this year. This week, Wildcard and Ark Park developer Snail Games posted the first look at gameplay for the title, played on the Vive, shot in mixed reality (though released a little too soon to take advantage of Google’s new face-rendering software) and complete with comments from the developer.

As the name suggests, Ark Park is a mix of the original game, in which players would build bases and tame dinosaurs, and Jurassic Park, resulting in an experience that removes the survival action and lets you get up close and personal with the long lost beasts. At one point in the trailer we even see a player riding in a buggy to approach some creatures. It’s safe to say the game wears its inspirations on its sleeves, then.

Based on the footage, the game looks impressive from a visual perspective, perhaps even more so than the original game it’s based off of. It promises a mix of the scary and sensational; at one point we see a massive t-rex lumber past one of the developers, before the trailer cuts to another player feeding dodos. The game will let you lean about each of these creatures at a central hub where you can also view holograms of them.

It’s not just an educational experience, though. You’ll have to capture some dinosaurs using items and weapons, and there will be puzzles to solve too. Exactly how much content is on offer remains to be seen, but we’re hoping for a meaty experience out of this one.

A full release date for Ark Park hasn’t been set yet but we’ll let you know as soon as we have one.

Tagged with: ark park, Snail Games

February 22, 2017

Snail Games Release Reaction Video for ARK Park

Today Snail Games has unveiled the first footage of players trying out its unreleased virtual reality (VR) title ARK Park. Licensed from Studio Wildcard’s IP ARK: Survival Evolved, ARK Park takes an educational look at dinosaurs, with the players experimenting with some of the interactive features.

The video features the co-founders of Studio Wildcard, Jesse Rapczak and Jeremy Stieglitz, getting a first look at the new VR experience. They test some of the exhibits, such as a panel providing info on Tyrannosaurus Rex, with height, weight and length displayed, alongside a small model that can be picked up an inspected.

ARK Park

The experience then takes them outside into more natural surroundings, watching dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes wander around, eating and interacting with one another.

ARK Park will be available in 2017 across all three major VR platforms: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR. VRFocus will continue its coverage of ARK Park, reporting back with any further updates.

December 15, 2016

Dinosaurs Will Live Again As ARK Park Is Confirmed For The PlayStation VR

It was at the end of last month that we at VRFocus covered the story of how Snail Games has announced a partnership with Wildcard Studio to license its IP to create ARK Park. Today on the PlayStation.Blog it was revealed that the title would be coming to the PlayStation VR in 2017.

As with ARK: Survival Evolved dinosaurs are the order of the day, except in ARK Park things are a bit more peaceful. Allowing for users to explore a variety of environments from the heat of the tropics to the cold of distant mountain peaks. Each home to a variety of dinosaur species that, with the PlayStation VR, you can get up close to and even ride.

ARK Park

Collection challenges, excursions and other activities such as a photography mode (complete with a selfie stick, naturally) are all available to take on. Although to access everything you may find you have to solve a number of puzzles first.

The game is in development via Peacock Studio, which is a part of Snail Games and according to Snail Games Executive Producer Sky Wu, the team will overseen to some degree by Studio Wildcard. A teaser trailer has been released that you can see below. VRFocus will bring you more information about ARK Park as it is revealed.

November 30, 2016

‘Ark: Survival Evolved’ VR Spinoff ‘Ark Park’ Aims for Educational Dino Experience

In a rather curious move, Chinese game developer Snail Games has announced that they’ve licensed the IP for the popular PC game Ark: Survival Evolved and are using it to create Ark Park, a dinosaur theme park VR experience.

Ark: Survival Evolved is a multiplayer action-exploration game that’s all about taming dinosaurs and building increasingly advanced technology to thwart your opponents—which sounds almost nothing like Ark Park, a title which is aiming for a focus on education and “the opportunity to truly appreciate and understand dinosaurs in their natural habitat.”

It’s unclear exactly what IP Snail Games has licensed; as Ark: Survival Evolved certainly doesn’t have a claim on non-fiction dinosaurs, it may be the 3D assets and engine tools the company has built which will be repurposed for Ark Park.

Snail Games has not published any VR content before, though it is known for mobile and online games like Taichi Panda and Age of Wushu.

Ark: Survival Evolved is still in Early Access, and while it technically has Oculus Rift support via SteamVR, it is hardly designed around VR specifically. With this partnership, Studio Wildcard can continue developing Ark: Survival Evolved, while providing a different type of Ark experience from Snail Games, but this time made from the ground up for VR.

With Ark Park, Snail Games intends to provide a large theme park experience where “players will participate in a multiplayer tour, so they can share the visceral gameplay and the thrill of witnessing dinosaurs up-close and personal”, according to their announcement of the game. The vision sounds rather ambitious: “We wanted to achieve a level of visual authenticity and player interactivity that will set a benchmark in the VR industry”, said Shi Hai, CEO of Snail Games.

While they haven’t shown any videos or explained exactly how the game might play, they have confirmed that players “can watch, learn about, and interact with more than a hundred Jurassic-period creatures and dinosaurs while they explore the park”. Since Snail Games has historically specialized in RPG/MMO games, it seems likely they’ll want to make the world and multiplayer as seamless as possible, so that it feels like you’re just visiting a real life dinosaur zoo with your friends and other people. Fingers crossed that it ends up more like Jurassic Park than a cheesy mechanical dinosaur park.

Adding to the idea of a seamless multiplayer world, the company said via their Facebook page that Ark Park will have a “comprehensive weather system and a day/night cycle.” Their early art also hints towards being able to use maglevs and jeeps to traverse the park, in addition to walking on foot.

The post ‘Ark: Survival Evolved’ VR Spinoff ‘Ark Park’ Aims for Educational Dino Experience appeared first on Road to VR.

November 29, 2016

Snail Games Partners with Studio Wildcard to Create VR Experience ARK Park

If you love hunting and exploring in dinosaur infested worlds you may have come across virtual reality (VR) compatible title ARK: Survival Evolved by Studio Wildcard. Today Snail Games has announced a partnership with the studio to license its IP to create ARK Park.

In ARK: Survival Evolved players can hunt and tame dinosaurs whilst building communities, while ARK Park takes a different approach, creating a futuristic dinosaur theme park. Here players will be able to watch, interact and learn about over one hundred dinosaurs whilst they wander around the park.

ARK Park image 1

“ARK Park is designed with the concept of creating a simulated world that could never exist in reality,” said Shi Hai, CEO, Snail Games. “Instead of a linear plot structure, we created the world where players have the freedom to explore and approach every single detail in the virtual space at their own pace. We wanted to achieve a level of visual authenticity and player interactivity that will set a benchmark in the VR industry.”

As more of an educational experience, ARK Park will feature a multiplayer tour to bring people from around the world together to experience the awe of the dino attractions.

“We’re excited about the partnership with Snail Games,” said Jeremy Stieglitz, founder, Studio Wildcard. “By bringing the survival game into more of an educational theme park setting will broaden the reach of the ARK franchise, making it a stronger brand.”

Snail Games hasn’t confirmed which head-mounted displays (HMDs) it plans to support, but as ARK: Survival Evolved is compatible with Oculus Rift, expect that device at the bare minimum.

As further details on ARK Park are released, VRFocus will bring you the latest details.