Massive open world videogames tend to be seen as the ideal virtual reality (VR) experience, placing players in fantastical universes to lead completely different lives. Next month Blueinca Studios will be offering its take on this premise, bringing to Steam Early Access a sci-fi title called Settlement Zero.
Designed to offer a massive open environment to explore, free from any loading areas which can hamper immersion, Settlement Zero isn’t some walking simulator with pretty environments to look at. You’ll need to learn to survive, as, like any futuristic settlement whose fortunes have turned sour, the world is overrun by robots and they’re not exactly friendly automatons who want to serve you tea.
The story goes that: “Settlement Zero was the first ever off-world colony, established in 2084 to help ease the overpopulation crisis back on earth. Considered phenomenally successful, it became a template for the numerous settlements that followed. It is now 2109 and the colony has been abruptly terminated, for reasons unknown to you.”
In a Steam posting, Blueinca Studios has detailed the current state of Settlement Zero, saying: “The player can interact using buttons to call lifts and to open doors and is free to wander around the environment, which is a virtual space approximately a square mile in size without the interruption of level loads. The play area is mostly outdoors with a couple of indoor spaces. There are currently 2 enemy robots types implemented with increasing difficulties. There is an in-game menu for adjusting audio and graphics settings. The player has a single fixed raygun for defence. This isn’t powerful enough to destroy spacecraft but can momentarily disable them, and force them to retreat. It can be recharged using charging stations at various locations around the settlement. There is currently no save game option. On death the player is returned to the start menu.
“There is a game finish point but due to the open nature of the game could take the player anything from under an hour to several hours to get to. The final release version will continue beyond this finish point.”
Whilst in Early Access Blueinca Studios plans on increasing the play area, more enemy types and weapons with which to dispose of them.
Settlement Zero will be available from Steam on 6th February 2019, supporting Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets. Check out the first trailer below, and for further updates on the experience, keep reading VRFocus.
