Tomorrow is the launch of Survios’ combat title on the high seas, Battlewake, coming to Oculus Rift/Rift S, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR. It’s a big worldwide, multi headset, multi sales platform release, marking the studio’s first videogame launch of 2019. Trouble has arisen when it comes to the European PlayStation VR version, however, with the date now delayed.
VRFocus has been informed by Survios that due to ‘technical issues’, Battlewake for PlayStation VR in EU territories is now listed as coming soon. No further details have been given regarding what has occurred and how long this may take to fix.
Battlewake will feature both single-player and multiplayer modes with a big emphasis on the latter. You play as one of four Pirate Lords, each with their own particular boats and abilities. These abilities are magical powers to give you an edge in battle, for instance, Pirate Lord Diego can unleash a boost to avoid attacks or outflank an opponent, while his primary ability is a destructive maelstrom which can suck in enemies.
There’s a 20 chapter campaign with each lord having five levels to complete, either solo or in co-op. On the multiplayer side, up to four players can tackle Warfare Mode featuring changing objectives. Or there’s always the classic free-for-all PvP deathmatch mode where up to 10 players can fight for pirate glory.
VRFocus previewed Battlewake’s single-player mode several months ago, finding that: “At the moment the demo did everything right, providing a thrilling experience for roughly 15 minutes. Battlewake featured all the gloss you’d expect from a Survios title, with easy to use controls and exciting gameplay.”
When Battlewake does arrive tomorrow for those unaffected by the issue it’ll come with a limited-time launch discount, dropping the price from $39.99 USD down to $29.99. Additionally, from 19th – 22nd September the Virtual Athletics League (VAL) will host a Battlewake competition where players can win cash, and physical prizes worth over $10,000 in value -an HTC Vive Pro is up for grabs). The competition is international and there’s still time to sign up. The official website also lists the participating VR arcades. For further updates from Survios, keep reading VRFocus.
The Walking Dead Onslaught is fast approaching its launch window this Fall 2019 and we’ve got some details about the game’s campaign, co-op features, and gameplay in this recorded interview.
Back at E3 2019 we talked to Survios Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder James Iliff about the upcoming game. Prior to the interview we also went hands-on with the game for the first time, which you can read more about here, and got to see the gore and dismember first hand from inside the headset. My demo was on an original Rift but it’s also coming to other PC VR platforms as well as PSVR later this year.
In the interview, which you can watch above, we talked about the game’s seven-part long campaign, the inclusion of full co-op for the campaign, and the secondary challenge mode that’s designed to be essentially infinitely replayable — including co-op support there as well.
Notably The Walking Dead Onslaught features an arm-swinging locomotion movement system, as well as stick movement, and you can see all of that in action in the video as well. Melee combat felt visceral and satisfying, as did the pistol, shotgun, and assault rifle that I got to try. Four of the most iconic characters from the show will be playable (meaning Rick, Michonne, Daryl, and Carol) and it will also include iconic weapons from throughout the series. Narratively it takes place in the Season 8 or Season 9 portion of the show’s lineage.
Let us know what you think after watching and leave any comments or questions down below!
Initially arriving last August as VR’s premiere live-remixing rhythm game, Survios’ Electronauts lets players fiddle with the individual tracks and pieces of popular songs, mixing loose effects and loops together with vocal and instrumental stems at their own leisure [our review]. The free ‘Heatwave’ update nearly doubles the total track count to more than 80 songs.
Aptly titled, this update broadly features summer-flavored tunes by artists such as Tipper, Feed Me, and Kill the Noise. But if you’re not a fan of bass-heavy EDM, you’re still in luck. Also making an appearance is a broad set of styles and tastes ranging from the likes of Kygo, Giraffage, Childish Gambino, and similar contemporary artists. Here’s the full lineup of artists with songs in the update.
Image courtesy Survios
“It’s been really gratifying to see this tool unleash creative expression, both in people who are already super creative and in people who don’t normally tap into their creative side,” said Hunter Kitagawa, Survios’ Director of Marketing, in a statement on Oculus’ blog. “The main thing they’ve been asking for since launch is more songs. With this update, we hope we’re delivering on that.”
That said, creative minds and curious explorers no longer need to wait for new music to play with. The Heatwave update is free for all owners of Electronauts, which is available to purchase and download on the Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, SteamVR, and PSVR platforms today.
Update (August 21st, 2019): The Heatwave update added 39 new tracks to Electronauts, Survios has confirmed. This article previously stated the number was 45, but that was actually the number of artists (Survios said some tracks include more than one artist credit). The article above has been updated with this correction.
HBO, Warner Bros., and Survios today released a new VR game set in the wild (and often terrifying) android-filled universe of Westworld.
Called Westworld Awakening, the game takes place during the events of the TV series’ season two, offering up what the studios call a narrative-driven, stealth exploration experience played from the perspective of Kate, a newly self-aware android ‘host’.
Set in the heart of in the Mesa facility’s laboratories and offices, which the studios bill as a “dangerous underworld where no one and nothing is what it seems,” players are pitted against puzzles, and a dark game of manipulating the world (and other hosts) around you by using the seemingly godlike powers of the Quality Assurance tablet.
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Image courtesy HBO
Image courtesy HBO
Image courtesy HBO
Image courtesy HBO
Image courtesy HBO
Just like in the show, Hank, the black-hatted serial killer, is always in close pursuit, forcing you to confront Westworld’s secrets as you try to escape with your artificially intelligent hide intact.
Westworld Awakening was published by HBO and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and was developed in-house by Survios, the VR studio known for a string of successful VR titles including Raw Data (2017), Creed: Rise to Glory (2019), Sprint Vector (2018) and the upcoming titles Battlewake and The Walking Dead Onslaught.
Westworld Awakening is now available on Steam (Vive, Rift, Index), the Oculus Store (Rift), and Viveport (Vive, Rift, Index) for $30.
Westworld Awakening was just announced suddenly for PC VR headsets. Lucky for you we’ve already played it — here is our full review!
Westworld is an HBO show that asks a lot of philosophical questions. Examples include: What is life? What makes us human? And, of course, is it right to play God? They’re classic questions when you look back through the entire history of literature, and for good reason.
Questioning what makes us, well, us, is an intrinsically human thing, it’s a question that will be raised far more as time advances, with technologies like cloning, AI, and perhaps even digital copies of our own minds slowly changing what it means to be a person.
It makes sense then that a game set in the Westworld universe would ask similar questions. The game takes place during the early events of Season 2 and you play as a Host named Kate, who is the unfortunate – and unwilling – protagonist in a series of horror experiences, where she is continuously hunted by another Host named Hank. The game opens up with a warning about mature themes and violence; this is not a warning to be ignored. The first-person viewpoint is one thing, but playing through some of the scenes in this game in VR can be genuinely harrowing.
Westworld: Awakening starts you off within one of the false worlds, but things quickly go awry. Things unfold over a series of five chapters, with the first one taking place within the lie that you’ve been programmed into. These opening moments are perhaps the most disturbing of all, outside of the violence, there is the unshakable feeling that you are disposable, a toy to be messed with or ignored. Perhaps worse is the leering old man who eyes you up and down slowly as he talks to you, he just wants to be your hero, and you’re his prize. My skin nearly crawled off of my body, and the emotions forced upon you by Westworld: Awakening continue like this throughout the experience. The whole thing only took me about three hours, but the developers told us more like four to six hours for most playthroughs — meaning there are likely secrets to find.
The second chapter opens with you waking up in the Delos facility itself. You’re incredibly confused, unsurprising given the sudden leap forward in time, at least, that’s how it appears to you. This is where the game begins in earnest. At this point, you’ll find yourself sneaking around the offices and labs, hiding from one enemy or another, as you try and solve puzzles or follow instructions.
Hiding is simple enough, crouching down behind cubicle walls with a button prompt, hiding under tables, and climbing through vents are all viable ways of evading your pursuers. Fortunately, the AI struggles to check under objects. So you can avoid detection by ducking out of sight, at least if you aren’t playing on the highest difficulty.
The puzzles in Westworld: Awakening follow a fairly simple formula too. You scan something, track wherever it leads, find a key, do the thing. Each of these is made extremely unnerving though because you have to do all of this while avoiding a serial killer, or a team of people with guns. This is especially true when you know that unlocking a door, or flipping a switch, will end up drawing attention to where you are, meaning your timing has to be perfect in order to survive. These sections feel a bit like Alien Isolation, but in VR, and with the killer mocking you as you crawl around trying to remain unseen. It’s terrifying, my cat brushed up against my leg during one of these sections, and I can safely say that it aged me at least twenty years.
There are some great puzzles involving controlling the AI of other hosts, which is all the more affecting since you are one yourself as well. That’s where things become philosophical, and it’s used in key moments to help the story, rather than to be a tricky puzzle to be solved. It’s great, and while I understand why it isn’t in more of the game, it also would have been an excellent mechanic to dive into properly.
The gameplay in Westworld: Awakening is pretty good, even if it does feel a little shallow, but the short run-time of the game means you don’t feel the repetition as much. The main attraction here is the story. Needless to say, it’s hard to say much at all due to spoilers, but the story is as well told as you’d expect and is very compelling. Each twist and turn asks you some kind of philosophical question, but it has no interest in answering those, instead only answering the plot points that the game raises. This means you’ll finish the game questioning so much about real life but knowing full well what happened in-game. It’s the ideal really.
On top of this, both the visuals and sound design are stunning. The animations for each character are brilliant, and the voice acting is second-to-none. Every character feels almost too realistic, and it means you’ll be fearing for your life more than you’d like. You can also track your hunters by listening carefully to the spatial audio, which brings that fear factor up even higher when you can almost hear them breathing down your neck.
Westworld Awakening VR Final Thoughts
The whole experience is both haunting and fascinating, and a very worthwhile one as well. Also, you’ve got to love a short game when there are so many vying for entire months of our lives. Westworld: Awakening is an excellent story wrapped in a solid VR experience that is a good reminder of just what can be done with the amazing immersion that the tech offers us. It’s a very good game, and a must-play for fans of the show. Hell, even if you don’t know the show, it’s a worthwhile thriller that shouldn’t be ignored.
Westworld: Awakening releases Aug. 20 at a price of $29.99 on Steam, Oculus Home, and Viveport. It’s also coming to the Survios arcade platform with over 400 arcade locations. For more on how we arrived at this score, read our review guidelines.
Correction: The release date for Westworld: Awakening is Aug. 20. An earlier version of this post contained incorrect information.
Survios has or is working on several big interactive IP’s based on TV shows and films. Having launched Creed: Rise to Gloryin 2018 and with work ongoing with The Walking Dead Onslaught, today, the studio has announced another virtual reality (VR) tie-in based on HBO’s Westworld. Called Westworld Awakening, this has come completely out the blue and is due to arrive tomorrow.
Westworld Awakening is based on season two of the show, offering fans a narrative-driven, stealth experience. Players take on the role of Kate – a host within the Mesa facility who has suddenly attained self-awareness.
Players will be able to delve into the maze of laboratories and offices of Delos, using a Quality Assurance tablet to manipulate the world. Gameplay involves solving puzzles and interacting (as well as manipulating) other hosts, whilst at the same time being pursued by relentless serial killer Hank.
HBO is known for producing some of the most compelling shows, offer ing creative storylines and complex characters that keep our viewers coming back for more. Through VR experiences, we are bringing these fictional people and places to life for our viewers and letting them interact and engage with our shows in new, immersive ways,” said Aaron Nonis, VP of Interactive and Immersive Experiences at HBO in a statement. “‘Westworld Awakening’ is the perfect fusion of the right creators and story, the right IP, and the right platform that allows us to create the next – generation playground for our Westworld fans.
“With ‘Westworld Awakening,’ we had the privilege of going inside HBO’s popular show to create an entirely new storyline,” said Daniel Zeligman, Survios ’ Project Lead. “The end result is a VR experience unlike any other out there, that allows fans to dive deep into familiar settings and become a character on their favourite show, seeking to survive the dangers of Westworld.”
There isn’t long to wait for Westworld Awakening as the title will launch across 400 arcades as well as on Steam and Oculus Store for HTC VIve and Oculus Rift/Rift S tomorrow, 20th August. It will be available in English in the US, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, South Korea, and China (arcades only). For any further updates on Westworld Awakening keep reading VRFocus.
Get ready to set sail; Survios’ next VR game, Battlewake, launches very soon.
The ship battling multiplayer game hits on September 10. That’s a date for the PSVR and PC VR versions. The promised Oculus Quest version of the game will be coming later this year. The news was announced just ahead of Gamescom this week, where the game will be on display for attendees.
Battlewake gives you full control of a massive pirate ship. Across single-player and multiplayer modes you battle it out with rivals. The game will feature a full campaign mode with 20 levels that can be played either solo or with a friend. After that, there’s multiplayer modes like PvP and Warfare.
Along the way you’ll level up your character and be able to upgrade your ship. The game features thirteen different types of weapons you can fit to your war machine.
Survios has been running a beta for the game over the past few weeks. We’ve been hands-on with the game ourselves and found a lot to like in its explosive action. Whether or not that will make for a great full package remains to be seen but we’ve got our fingers crossed.
Elsewhere the developer is currently working on a Walking Dead VR game we’re also hoping will arrive soon. It’s a busy time at the developer, but when isn’t it? Last year we gave the studio our Developer Of The Year award based on its massive output and they don’t seem to be slowing down.
Several months ago virtual reality (VR) developer Survios announced work on a seafaring experience with combat at its core, that videogame was Battlewake. Having showcased the title during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in June, the team then held a closed beta last month. Ahead of Gamescom tomorrow, Survios has revealed that Battlewake will arrive for multiple platforms in a few weeks time.
Battlewake is an all-out combat experience featuring both single-player and multiplayer mode. You can choose from one of four Sea Lords (Diego, Rev, Calavera, or Zhang), each have their own unique ship and magical abilities taken from Pirate Legend such as powerful tsunamis or even the dreaded Kraken.
No matter what mode you play the basic gist is that as captain of your ship you can steer your crew in and out of trouble. At the same time when enemies are near you have an assortment of cannons and other weapons to call on to dispatch them. As an action title, Battlewake is all about fast combat engagements with each ship having a full 360-degree arsenal of 13 different weapons to choose from, with those magical powers having to charge up.
The single-player is a 20-chapter campaign as the pirate lords quest to discover an ancient seat of power which can also be played co-op. The Warfare Mode requires players to team up and complete various objectives. Or for those after sheer carnage, there’s always the PvP deathmatch mode. As you earn gold from matches you’ll be able to spend it in the Captain’s Quarters upgrading your ships stats and arsenal as well as those special abilities.
VRFocus previewed Battlewake’s single-player mode in June, finding: “At the moment the demo did everything right, providing a thrilling experience for roughly 15 minutes. Battlewake featured all the gloss you’d expect from a Survios title, with easy to use controls and exciting gameplay.”
Battlewake will launch for Oculus Rift/Rift S, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR on their respective stores 10th September 2019. The Oculus Quest version will arrive a little later this year, no date has been given just yet. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Battlewake, reporting back with any further updates.
Survios, the VR studio behind Raw Data (2017) and Creed: Rise to Glory (2018), today announced that their upcoming pirate ship battler finally has a release date; it’s slated to arrive on September 10th for most major VR headsets.
When the studio initially announced the closed beta, it wasn’t certain exactly which platforms the game would officially support. Now, the studio reveals, the game is slated to launch on September 10th for PSVR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive.
A version for Quest is also in the making, although its release date has yet to be revealed.
If you haven’t had a chance to jump into any of the game’s closed betas, check out our latest hands-on from E3 to get a taste of what the nautical battler has in store.
If you’re looking for the TL;DR though, here’s the skinny: Battlewake tosses you into a either a single player or co-op campaign filled with boss battles (massive Krakens anyone?). It also boasts multiplayer deathmatches as well, although when it comes to either co-op or multiplayer matches you’ll be piloting your own ship and controlling all manner of weapons and navigation yourself (i.e. everyone gets their own boat).
There’s plenty of opportunities to upgrade weapons, ultimates, and ship-specific stuff like defense points, health points, etc. The last bit: will it make you sick? The answer: probably not. Survios typically puts user comfort at the forefront of their games, with Battlewake being no exception. Again, for the full explanation, head over to our full hands-on piece.
Survios launched music remix videogame Electronauts in 2018, allowing players to twist and contort all manner of EDM, hip hop, trap and other musical genres. To celebrate the title’s first-anniversary Survios has released an update crammed full of new tracks for you to play with.
Called the Heatwave Update, Survios brings fans over 35 new songs from artists including Childish Gambino, Giraffage, JMSN, Kygo, and TOKiMONSTA, expanding the lineup to 80+ songs from over 80 artists.
In addition to the new tracks, Survios is making Electronauts even easier to get hold of. For starters, from today until Sunday, 18th August, at 11:59pm PDT the title is free to demo. Should you wish to purchase Electronauts then there’s a 50 percent Steam discount currently available, dropping the cost from £15.49 GBP down to £7.74.
“There’s a small, yet passionate group of people in the world who love music-making and creative tools in VR—and I think Electronauts has really captivated them,” says Director of Marketing Hunter Kitagawa on the Oculus Blog. “The main thing they’ve been asking for since launch is more songs. With this update, we hope we’re delivering on that.”
“People are using it in ways that we just never expected,” Kitagawa adds. “It’s been really gratifying to see this tool unleash creative expression, both in people who are already super creative and in people who don’t normally tap into their creative side. The magic thing about Electronauts is that anyone can feel like an amazing DJ—that’s the power of what the technology does. It’s to see people find hours and hours of enjoyment, getting lost in it and making music.”
Electronauts achieved a full five stars in VRFocus’ review which said: “Survios has managed to do what few VR developers have done, secure a hat trick of quality titles that should be in everyone’s library. Electronauts combines a wonderfully elaborate yet perfectly simple gameplay design alongside some of the best dance tunes from around the world, making for a videogame that will have you playing for hours and wanting ‘just one more go.’”
Survios has several other titles currently in development including Battlewakeand The Walking Dead Onslaught. As further announcements are made VRFocus will keep you updated.
