tender claws – Page 3 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

November 19, 2019

Tender Claws’ Theatrical Game The Under Presents Takes Center Stage

When it comes to out the box thinking for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) projects, Tender Claws is hard to beat. Having previously released award-winning VR title Virtual Virtual Reality and AR app TendAR, today the studio has launched The Under Presents, an experience which combines gaming with immersive theatre.

The Under Presents

Arriving first for Oculus Quest, The Under Presents is an interactive adventure with both single-player and multiplayer elements. One of the most intriguing features of the title is the ability to bump into live actors who will appear on the odd occasion as well as scripted performances.

There’s a hub world called The Under, this is where players can meet each other, explore and watch ever-changing stages shows. The main event is The Aickman which is purely single-player. This is a set narrative piece which takes place on an ill-fated research ship. You can wander around meeting the crew members whilst having the ability to manipulate time and attempt to change their fates.

At The Under, Tender Claws has over ten acts you can watch on stage, some scripted some live. For these live performances, the studio partnered with Piehole, a New York-based experimental theatre collective. They will appear regularly for an initial run of four months, with the actors having access to unique features so they can improvise within the experience.

The Under Presents

“At Tender Claws we aim to push the boundaries of how games are experienced and defined. VR is still an emerging medium and with the specific capabilities of the Oculus Quest, we used The Under Presents as a way to explore how traditional gaming and performance could intersect,” said Samantha Gorman, Co-Founder of Tender Claws, in a statement. “The Quest’s untethered freedom and remote accessibility enabled our actors to perform freely and made distributing this project possible. We’re thrilled to have collaborated with Piehole to create this innovation into both theatre and VR that blurs the lines between live performer or a pre-recorded NPC.”

The Under Presents is available now for Oculus Quest, retailing for $19.99 USD. For further updates on this unique title, keep reading VRFocus.

November 15, 2019

‘Virtual Virtual Reality’ Studio to Launch ‘The Under Presents’ on Quest “very soon”, New Trailer Here

From Tender Claws, the studio behind Virtual Virtual Reality (2017), and the New York-based live theater company Pie Hole comes The Under Presents, something its creators call “part game, part theater, part extravaganza.”

The Under Presents doesn’t have an official launch date yet, although the studios say that it should land on Oculus Quest “very soon.”

First debuted at Sundance earlier this year, The Under Presents presents a bit of a mashup between game and live performance piece.

Here’s how Tender Claws describes it:

Where live immersive theater meets VR to bring live actors into your living room. An intriguing experience set between two worlds: a jaunty vaudeville stage and the harrowing survival narrative. Uncover the story of a ship stranded in time as supplies dwindle and day-by-day an otherworldly mist rolls closer. Follow characters’ interlocking fates as all journeys forward must turn back or become lost.

The VR Game Launch Roundup: Mid-November Madness

VRFocus brings you another list of virtual reality (VR) titles being released over the course of next week. Be sure to check out our freshly made roundup video made to accompany this article and stay tuned to check out all individual game reviews as soon as each title is released.

The VRFocus team have been busy covering the events of VRDays in Amsterdam. So make sure to stay following our various social media feeds to get up-to-date information on this event along with all other things VR as usual.

BoxVR– FitXR

This fitness app has everything you need for a VR high-intensity boxing workout. Featuring workout routines advised and regularly updated by various actual professional fitness instructors, activities can range anywhere between 3 to over 20 minutes long. Users can record workouts to track progress and beat personal records and enhance workouts with the help of music from a range of different artists.

Supported platforms: PlayStation VR
Launch date: 19^th November

The Under Presents – Tender Claws

First previewed during the Sundance Film Festival, The Under Presents is a new interactive theatre experience by Tender Claws where users interact with both other VR users and scripted film characters. Entering a dimension that exists outside of time and space, you encounter a mysterious being known as “The Under.” Featuring two unique settings of a theatrical stage show and a survival mission, the title has been described as an experience “where live immersive theatre meets VR to bring live actors into your living room.”

Supported platforms: Oculus Quest
Launch date: 19^th November

DEEMO -Reborn- – Rayark Inc.

First released in 2013, Rayark Games are back with a VR updating of their popular rhythm videogame, Deemo, now featuring brand new elements and an extended story. Once again, having fallen from the sky, a young girl finds herself in a mysterious unknown world. She discovers a castle and is welcomed by the mysterious Deemo. She discovers a small tree that grows whenever Deemo plays the piano. If the tree grows enough, the girl can reach the sky and return back home, will she make it back? New sheet music is unlocked for the user by exploring the castle and solving various puzzles and activating switches. Featuring the new “Exploration Mode” to accompany the “Music Mode,” this enchanted musical adventure is back and better than ever.

Supported platforms: PlayStation VR
Launch date: 21^st November

Vader Immortal: Episode III – ILMxLAB

Coming soon from ILMxLAB comes the third and final adventure in the Star Wars spin-off series, Vader Immortal. In Vader Immortal: Episode 3, you are joined by your droid companion, ZO-E3, and must stop Darth Vader from returning to his castle and activating a deadly Bright Star artefact. If activated, life on Mustafar could be wiped out forever. It’s up to you make use of the classic lightsabre, the force and any blaster you find to break into the castle and stop the activation taking place, eventually coming face-to-face with the iconic Sith Lord himself.

Supported Platforms: Oculus Quest/Oculus Rift
Launch date: 21^st November

January 27, 2019

Oculus Debuts Two VR Experiences at Sundance, One is an Oculus Quest Title

The Sundance Film Festival is currently taking place in Park City, Utah, showcasing not only the best in original film but also the very latest in immersive experiences. As part of the event Oculus has premiered one title while teasing another, they are Traveling While Black and The Under Presents, respectively.

Traveling While Black

Traveling While Black is the work of Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams and co-directed with Ayesha Nadarajah and Felix & Paul Studios, created in collaboration with The New York Times Op-Docs. It is a 20-minute documentary focusing on the long history of the restricted movement for black Americans and the creation of safe spaces in communities.

“I hope Traveling While Black sparks a conversation that inspires real solutions and awareness,” Williams told Oculus Blog. “If this film asks the right questions and gets people to think about this ongoing crisis in America — not avoid or gloss over it, just to have a profound discussion about race in America instead of looking the other way — then we’ve succeeded.”

If you own an Oculus Rift or Oculus Go headset then you can watch Traveling While Black for yourself, available through the store for free.

The Under Presents

The Under Presents, on the other hand, is merely a teasing glimpse at what’s to come later this year. Created by the team behind Virtual Virtual Reality and augmented reality (AR) experience Tendar, Tender Claws aim to blend immersive theatre and virtual reality (VR).

“There is a lot of interest in exploring the overlap of immersive theater and VR,” says Samantha Gorman, co-founder of Tender Claws. “The project’s narrative revolves around fate and free will and as part of that we’re interested in playing with the change of feeling of interacting with both pre-recorded and live characters. As well as other players and past recorded versions of themselves.”

Merging live actors and scripted performances with a narrative arc that centers on themes of time, fate and free will, for The Under Presents Tender Claws collaborated with NYC-based theatre collective Piehole to feature both motion-captured characters and live actors throughout the story.

The Under Presents will be coming to standalone headset Oculus Quest later this year. When VRFocus has further details we’ll let you know.

January 25, 2019

‘The Under Presents’ Is A Theatrical Oculus Quest Project From Tender Claws

The Los Angeles-based creators of Virtual Virtual Reality and AR software Tendar just announced an Oculus Quest project.

From Tender Claws, “The Under Presents” is a theatrically-centered VR project funded by Oculus Studios featuring a “vaudeville stage that exists in a special dimension outside time and space.” A sneak peek of the project is being shown at the Sundance Film Festival.

According to a blog post announcing the project, this virtual theater will feature a loop of “different live and recorded acts coming and going” and it was produced in collaboration with NYC-based theater group Piehole. “And the experience is designed to take advantage of the untethered Oculus Quest, allowing the actors to join the experience in Oculus Quest too and conduct performances from different physical locations,” according to the post.

Tender Claws co-founder Samantha Gorman says the narrative surrounds “fate and free will and as part of that we’re interested in playing with the change of feeling of interacting with both pre-recorded and live characters. As well as other players and past recorded versions of themselves.” Fate and free will certainly sound like normal questions for Tender Claws to grapple with, but both live and pre-recorded characters makes it sound like the developers are taking their exploratory work in VR and AR game design to the next level.

We don’t know when The Under Presents will launch just yet. The $400 Oculus Quest headset is due to launch in the coming months, but this project’s release is just listed as later this year.

Tagged with: Oculus Studios, Tender Claws, The Under Presents

The post ‘The Under Presents’ Is A Theatrical Oculus Quest Project From Tender Claws appeared first on UploadVR.

November 17, 2018

Feed an Emotional Fish in Tender Claws’ First AR Game Tendar

Having created the humorous and award-winning virtual reality (VR) title Virtual Virtual Reality for Google Daydream in 2017 – porting it to more headsets this year – developer Tender Claws set its sights on a project using augmented reality (AR). Called Tendar, the AR experience has now arrived, specifically for Android compatible devices.

Tendar Screenshot5

Tendar isn’t your average AR title like Ghostbusters World or The Walking Dead: Our World. Using Google’s ARCore technology, the team wanted to address themes around biometric data, artificial intelligence, deep learning, and social interaction in the digital age.

“Our goal for this project was to apply long-form interactive storytelling to the emerging field of augmented reality, specifically for mobile so that the experience is easily accessible and encourages social interaction,” said Samantha Gorman, Co-Founder of Tender Claws in a statement. “By using the very mobile devices that we’re all so attached to, but infused with parody and hyperbole, the experience helps us examine how we relate to others through our devices and current topics in computer vision as it becomes more sophisticated and pervasive. We’re thrilled to be launching Tendar on the Google Play Store and are eager for players to delve deep into this curious AI world!”

The AR experience revolves around emotions and facial expressions, with players tasked with training one of Tendar’s unique AI “Guppies” to identify human emotions. Players must bring the Guppy out of its virtual fishbowl and into their physical surroundings via AR, and feed Guppy with “emotion flakes” – achieved by showing it a well-balanced diet of varying facial expressions. Guppy can also recognize and respond to over 200 objects, building up knowledge as it interacts more and more with the physical world.

Tendar screenshot1

Players will be able to see Gubby evolve over time starting as a non-verbal AI and soon developing its own unique personality as it encounters more people, expressions, and objects.

Tendar will support compatible Android devices, find it on the Google Play Store. For further updates from Tender Claws, keep reading VRFocus.

July 5, 2018

Preview: TendAR – Literally Feeding on Your Emotions

Being completely honest, the idea behind what augmented reality (AR) can possibly achieve is all well and good but at this moment in time it just doesn’t have the same wow factor that virtual reality (VR) does. Yet there are developers getting to grips with software like ARKit and ARCore, producing some interesting projects that have caught VRFocus’ eye. A recent one that came to our attention was TendAR, a videogame/app from Tendar Claws.

Tendar

Tendar Claws has already made a name for itself in the VR world with the suitably wacky – and extremely fun Virtual Virtual Reality – and now turned that same inventive process towards AR with an app that feeds on your emotions (not in a scary way).

Kind of mixing the Tamagotchi idea of looking after a pet, whilst examining our modern relationship with technology, TendAR is about teaching a virtual guppy (a fish) to live in the real world by feeding on emotions you provide it. Like any animal your guppy needs a well-balanced diet that’s rich in different emotions, so this invariably means pulling all sorts of faces at the phones camera. TendAR will ask for a sad face or a happy expression for example which sounds easy enough, yet trying to pull an unhappy expression when you’re trying not to giggle is a lot tougher than it looks.

Adding to this is the fact that TendAR is a two player experience, so you both hold the phone at either end to begin with. After going through several options the screen splits allowing both players to see their faces and cooperate on pulling expressions to feed the guppy. The app can also be used to scan the area for faces and pick up on their facial expressions as well.

Tendar

The short demo during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2018 was certainly one of the more inventive use cases of AR that VRFocus has come across. The facial recognition technology definitely seemed to work on point for most of the experience (apart from sad face), even managing to capture those around the show floor who were several feet away. How well this might be perceived somewhere more public is another matter.

Due to the length of time and the actual build on display VRFocus didn’t see much in the way of the long form interactive storytelling aspect Tender Claws has touted TendAR will have – an important aspect to keep users playing – but the main gameplay aspect was enjoyable and light-hearted. Much in the same way the visuals have been designed, bright, bold, with an air of whimsy and energy.

If there’s one studio that can turn AR development on its head and create something unique, bizarre, and engaging then Tender Claws has to be near the top. TendAR is an intriguing concept and one that VRFocus looks forward to seeing in greater depth soon.

June 25, 2018

‘Virtual Virtual Reality’ Developer Teases New Project Backed by Oculus Set for 2019

Virtual Virtual Reality is a VR gem which launched first on mobile VR headsets and recently came to the Rift. As a game which demonstrated an intricate understanding of VR interaction design and freeform narrative, Virtual Virtual Reality turned out to be one of mobile VR’s most immersive titles to date. Now Tender Claws, the studio behind the game, is teasing a new project in the works.

Virtual Virtual Reality is a game that looks and sounds great, and manages to give players a strong sense of freedom and interaction while guiding them through an interesting narrative—all the ingredients for an engaging and immersive VR game. Players seem to agree; Virtual Virtual Reality is rated nearly five stars on every platform on which it’s available.

So it’s good news to know that the talented studio behind the game, Tender Claws, is pushing ahead with a new project, this time backed by Oculus, and slated for 2019. The studio has yet to make a major announcement, but revealed as much in a brief mention tucked away in a recent Q&A on the Oculus blog:

We’re hard at work on a new AR game called tendar, where players teach a virtual guppy to live in the real world by “feeding” it through a well-balanced diet of emotions. Your guppy will learn, evolve, and analyze the world around it based on players’ facial expressions and level of cooperation. It explores some of the same overarching technological and societal questions as V-VR but in a new light. E3 attendees can see a demo of tendar in the IndieCade zone in the West Hall. And … we’re collaborating with Oculus on a new experience coming next year! [our emphasis]

Oculus further added, “Look for more news from Tender Claws in the months ahead […].” Perhaps we’ll hear more at the company’s annual developer conference, Oculus Connect, in September.

It isn’t clear if the new project will be a mobile-first VR title (like Virtual Virtual Reality), or built for tethered headsets like the Rift, or perhaps both. There’s also no word at this point to the extent of Oculus’ involvement; the company sometimes acts as the exclusive publisher of games under the Oculus Studios moniker, but could be collaborating in a less significant way.

The only other hints we have so far is another tease from Tender Claws in a recent Road to VR guest article about the design of Virtual Virtual Reality. At the end of that piece, guest author Mitch Mastroni, Interaction Designer at Tender Claws, left us with the following:

Designing Virtual Virtual Reality was an incredible learning experience for our whole team. We all have backgrounds in gaming but none of us had ever worked on anything quite like this—a dense three-hour narrative adventure in VR. We are currently working on several new projects that leverage our lessons learned from Virtual Virtual Reality and further our integration of systems and narrative. The state of interaction design in VR has come so far in the past few years, and we’re excited to continue exploring and innovating as we create new experiences.

It sounds like we’ll hear more concrete info before the year is up, and while we’ll be anxiously waiting until 2019 before we see more VR content from Tender Claws, it’s encouraging to know that the project has a sizeable development runway, as quality content takes time to gestate, especially in a medium as new as VR.

The post ‘Virtual Virtual Reality’ Developer Teases New Project Backed by Oculus Set for 2019 appeared first on Road to VR.

June 7, 2018

One of Mobile VR’s Best Games, ‘Virtual Virtual Reality’, Now Available on Rift

Virtual Virtual Reality is one of mobile VR’s best games to date, and you can now play an enhanced version on the Oculus Rift.

Created by studio Tender Claws and initially launched back in 2017, Virtual Virtual Reality goes far beyond the expectations set by most mobile VR titles by delivering strong visuals, great sound, intuitive interaction, locomotion and a proper narrative, culminating in a strong feeling of immersion.

Having played through the entirety of the game on a mobile VR headset, it’s no wonder to me why the time and effort has been put in to bring it to the Oculus Rift. As of today, Virtual Virtual Reality is available on the Rift priced at $20 (also available on Oculus Go, Gear VR, and Daydream for $10). The game is rated nearly five stars on each of its available platforms.

Virtual Virtual Reality tells the story of a far future where a company called Activitude offers up human labor to artificial intelligence personalities for the novelty of human imperfection. Sort of like an ‘Uber for human labor’. Virtual reality headsets, which act as the access points for performing your human service tasks, are littered throughout the game’s world, and players can put them on and take them off at will, going deeper and deeper into virtual reality as they explore the depths of Activitude. It’s an exploratory adventure—with a dash of puzzle solving and meta-humor—and one that’s worth taking without having too much spoiled for you.

What’s more, VVR developer Tender Claws teased on the Oculus Blog announcement of the game’s Rift launch, that the studio is “collaborating with Oculus on a new experience coming next year!” which certainly has our interest piqued.

The post One of Mobile VR’s Best Games, ‘Virtual Virtual Reality’, Now Available on Rift appeared first on Road to VR.

May 7, 2018

Award-Winning VR Title “Virtual Virtual Reality” Expands To New Platforms

Creative studio Tender Claws has announced that their virtual reality (VR) videogame Virtual Virtual Reality is reaching out to new platforms in the form of releasing to new headsets. The title was initially launched last year as an exclusive for Google Daydream and has since become an award-winning, narrative driven VR experience.

Virtual Virtual Reality

In Virtual Virtual Reality, players find themselves in a near future where artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed society and now humans are searching for a purpose. Players are welcomed by an AI overlord, Chaz, to Activitude, a virtual service where humans must assist AI clients in a number of tasks that increase in curious natural. Players will have to wear dozens of virtual VR headsets within the title to be transported between the different virtual realities, and complete the tasks that are put before them. As players progress deeper into the experience the story starts to unfold and players will ultimately need to break free and reclaim their humanity before it is all to late.

The release of Virtual Virtual Reality was meant with praise the the title went on to be a success. Now Tender Claws are bring it to a number of new platforms including the Oculus Go, Lenovo Mirage Solo and the Samsung Gear VR.

“Since we first launched V-VR last year, we’ve been humbled by the enthusiastic response and working hard to bring the game to new platforms so that players can access V-VR regardless of their setup,” said Samantha Gorman, Tender Claws Co-Founder and V-VR Game Lead. “We’re thrilled to be launching the game on the new Oculus Go and Lenovo Mirage Solo headsets, plus on the Gear VR platform, which will introduce the crazy world of V-VR to many new communities.”

Virtual Virtual Reality

Back in July 2017, VRFocus’ Nina Salomons got the chance to talk to Samantha Gorman about Virtual Virtual Reality and learn more about the future of VR and the studio Tender Claws. During this internet Samantha gave advise for artists and writers saying: “One of the things I see is the danger of thinking that you can make something in 2D or think of a game or even a screenplay and import into VR I think you really need to think about what the medium can do, and design for the space and think about the user experience in VR and what it does best accordingly.”

Virtual Virtual Reality is available now for Google Daydream, Oculus Go, Lenovo Mirage Solo and Samsung Gear VR. For more on the title and Tender Claws in the future, keep reading VRFocus.