Cubism (2020) is consistently one of the best-rated games on Quest, and it just got a mess of new puzzles in a free update today which arrives to all supported headsets.
Called ‘Volume 2’, the free update brings 30 new puzzles to the game, marking the one-year anniversary of its release back in September 2020. This, its creator Thomas Van Bouwel says, brings “several hours of new spatial reasoning puzzles for fans to play through.”
If you haven’t played before, Cubism bills itself as a deceptively simple VR puzzle game where you assemble increasingly complex shapes out of colorful blocks. You’ll need to first unlock Volume 2 after solving at least 30 puzzles in Cubism’s original campaign. Check out the update trailer below:
Van Bouwel tells us that the new campaign is divided into five stages of six puzzles, each arriving with color palette. Puzzles are also underscored by an original piano song which players can gradually unlock as they solve the puzzles.
Cubism’s free update is now available on Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift and SteamVR headsets, with the whole package priced at its regular $10.
When it comes to deliciously simply yet highly effective puzzle gameplay, Thomas van Bouwel’s Cubism for Oculus Quest, Rift and SteamVR is a very good place to start. Officially released back in September 2020, for Cubism’s first anniversary this month the developer is releasing a free content update adding 30 new puzzles into the mix.
The Volume 2 update adds a second campaign to Cubism’s roster, split across five stages each with six puzzles apiece. And to give them a bit of pop the puzzles feature a new colour palette. Just like the first campaign, with each puzzle solved players will be able to unlock an original piano song. To access volume 2 you’ll need to have completed at least 30 puzzles from the first campaign.
Cubism captured hearts and puzzled brains because at first, it seems so deceptively easy; take coloured blocks and try to make them all fit with a predefined shape. As the shapes increase in size and with more blocks to try and place the difficulty soon ramps up, providing a mix of logic solving and trial and error to succeed.
While volume 2 is the first content update for Cubism van Bouwel has released other backend updates to improve the experience, especially where Oculus Quest is concerned. He added hand tracking back in March so players no longer required controllers, followed by 120Hz support a month later.
Reviewing the Oculus Quest version of Cubism at launch VRFocus said: “Easy to pick up yet difficult to complete, it may take some an hour whilst others will take five. It’s the kind of VR game you can give to anyone and they’ll instantly know what to do, because who doesn’t know how to place a few blocks together.”
Cubism’s free volume 2 update is available today. If you’ve not picked up the puzzle title then it’s only £7.99 GBP on Oculus Store and Steam. For continued updates from van Bouwel, keep reading VRFocus.
Thomas Van Bouwel is the one-man developer behind Cubism, one the best puzzle games available on the Oculus Quest. Van Bouwel now works full time on Cubism and is developing a set of DLC levels for the game, but five years ago he was working in a completely different industry with no experience in the world of VR.
“My background is actually not in computer science or game development at all. I actually come from a background in architecture,” says Van Bouwel, speaking to me in VR from UploadVR’s virtual studio. “I was a practicing architect for several years, until I made the switch. It was architecture that actually led me to move into VR. I was really fascinated by what VR could do for the design process and how it could make the design and architecture a lot more human-centered. Instead of looking at a plan for a building from top-down, you look at a building from a human perspective while you design it.”
Van Bouwel was always fascinated with the ways that immersive technologies and game engines could be used within an architectural context, and ended up investigating further during his university studies. In his third year, Van Bouwel gave a presentation of a 3D architecture model displayed in the PC game Crysis, imported using CryEngine. He found that from showing his friends and family the model in-game, he received a lot more feedback compared to showing them plans or scale models. “That was when it first clicked. Like, ‘Oh, these sort of immersive technologies can be very useful for the design process.'”
After working as an architect for several years, Van Bouwel decided to quit his job in 2016 and started learning how to develop for VR. He attended hackathons, went to game jams and landed a job at an enterprise VR startup, InsiteVR (now known as Resolve), within a year and a half. While he had a Vive headset at home, the job gave him access to a variety of different headsets, including an early Quest prototype — the Santa Cruz — in 2017.
It was around then that Van Bouwel came up with a new concept for a VR puzzle game. Working in his free time, he soon created the first build of what would become Cubism — an intuitive, deceptively simple puzzle game where the user must place different shaped blocks together to fit into a larger wireframe shape.
“It sort of really came out of that fascination with minimal design in mobile games and what that could mean in VR games,” says Van Bouwel. Minimalist mobile games like Mini Metro, Hitman Go and Lara Croft Go were big inspirations. “These games can use a very simple look and a very simple input scheme, but then can have a lot of depth to them. And more importantly, [they are] games that are really well scoped for small teams.”
“A big part of choosing to work on Cubism was that it felt like it was small enough in scope that I could work on it in my spare time. At the time I was working at that startup, which I really enjoyed working at. So I knew that if I was going to work on a project on the side, it better be something small and something that was manageable.”
Cubism’s puzzles are a riff on the classic wooden block puzzles that have been around for many years. In real life, the end shape is usually restricted to something quite memorable and solid — a rectangle or a cube. With Cubism, the shapes of the pieces and the wireframes vary wildly in both difficulty and design, no longer held back by gravity pulling at physical blocks.
The real beauty of Cubism is in its simplistic, clean design — the architectural influence is very clear. The entire game can be played with just the controllers and the triggers. If you’re using an Oculus Quest, you don’t even need controllers — you can just use your hands. This game-wide policy of simplicity and accessibility means that almost anyone, even those inexperienced with VR, can pick up the game and play it. “I put a lot of effort into that actually. The game came from being in a stage where it was a lot harder to use and learn.”
Earlier versions of Cubism mapped several actions to different controller buttons. This wasn’t initially a problem, as only experienced gamers and other VR developers were doing the playtesting. “I was missing a lot of UX issues early on, because if people are comfortable with VR or they’re comfortable with playing games in general, they learn these controller mappings pretty quickly. But if people aren’t, it’s really a roadblock for them.”
The UX issues became more apparent when Van Bouwel took his builds on the road to a wider audience. “Putting those people in the game and seeing them sort of struggle with the control scheme, that really sort of flipped the switch for me. Like, I really need to simplify this.”
“From that point on, I did everything I could to make the whole game playable with just the triggers, which required a few redesigns.” Small changes — allowing the triggers to be used for all actions, placing a menu indicator beneath the puzzle — made the game much more accessible to the uninitiated. “From the start of the game to solving the first puzzle, that became a really fast process. People could get started with their first puzzle within like 10 or 15 seconds of starting the game.”
“That was always a goal of mine — to make sure that it was something that was approachable,” he says. “I think that’s part of the appeal of VR too, right? That it should be more intuitive.”
Cubism released last year, and while the game is available on both PC VR and Quest, it shines on the latter. Not only is it among the best puzzle games for the system, but since launch Van Bouwel has also added hand tracking and 120Hz support, which both elevate the game to an impressive new level. It’s also one of the best showcases of the Quest’s cutting-edge VR technology and features.
Now, approaching a year since release, Van Bouwel is designing and playtesting a set of 30 new DLC levels for the game.
“DLC seemed to be like the best way to give people more puzzles to play,” he says. “It’s still a work in progress, but hopefully [the DLC levels] are going to have a bit of a different look from the main campaign to differentiate them. But they will play very similar to the puzzles in the main campaign.”
“And much like the campaign, there’s going to be a song that’s sort of tied to the puzzles, specific to the DLC.”
Sound is another big part of Cubism’s design. In the main campaign, each different puzzle piece has an associated piano note. When you solve a puzzle, each of the notes will play together to form a chord. If you combine all the chords from each level together, it forms a song. “The main campaign is basically this big song that you unlock as you play it. And the DLC will have a song of its own that you unlock as you play the puzzles as well.”
But how does Van Bouwel approach designing a Cubism level, both in terms of its form factor and its difficulty?
“Usually, it starts with a shape,” he says. “Then I start filling it in with pieces.”
“I try to make the puzzles in such a way that you can approach them with some reason, so that you don’t just have to trial and error your way through it. There are like certain tricks that I know I can design for — maybe there’s one or two pieces that can only go in several spots of the puzzle, so it gives a starting point.”
Likewise, on the other end of the scale, certain elements will bring complexity. “If there’s a limited number of symmetries in the puzzle shape or in the piece shape, then it becomes a lot harder to sort of do these mental rotations when you’re placing the pieces into the puzzle.” Despite this, playtesting puzzles is essential, which is why Van Bouwel has been running a series of weekly playtests with Cubism fans over the last six weeks as he works on the new levels.
Beyond the DLC, a local editor might be on the cards eventually, allowing players to create their own levels and share them online via sideloading, similar in process to installing custom Beat Saber levels. In terms of adding multiplayer modes or leaderboards, Van Bouwel isn’t too bullish. “It’s something that I’ve sort of consciously shied away from in this game. Part of the design of the game is to be a relaxing game and a relaxing experience. I wouldn’t want any of the mechanics to pressure you into needing to find a solution.”
When it comes to future projects beyond Cubism, Van Bouwel has nothing official to announce just yet. “It’s a bit early,” he says. “I do have some ideas of next projects that I would want to work on, but [they are] ideas without any execution… I’m looking forward to [when] I have time to prototype these new ideas. Hopefully then I have something that I’ll be happy to share.”
Cubism is available on Oculus Quest and PC VR now, with extra DLC currently in development.
Cubism is one of the best puzzle games available on Quest, with excellent native VR design and an excellent showcase of hand tracking capabilities on Oculus Quest. We’re sitting down with Cubism’s developer, Thomas Van Bouwel, to talk about developing the game, plans for DLC and more.
The interview is set to take place later today, Wednesday the 16th of June at 2:00pm PST, on our YouTube channel. It will be broadcast live from our virtual studio in VR, where we also host our podcast, The VR Download.
If you manage to join us for the interview livestream, please leave your questions in the chat and we’ll try to get to as many as possible. If you miss it live, you can still check out the recorded broadcast at the same link below.
Cubism launched just under a year ago, but has consistently rolled out a series of impressive updates and new features for Quest since then. Its implementation of hand tracking is absolutely sublime and one of the best showcases of the technology on the system. You can also pair hand tracking with the recently added 120Hz support as well, which rounds Cubism out as one of the best titles to showcase most of the Quest’s cutting edge features all at once.
Last month, Van Bouwel announced that a series of DLC levels were in the works for Cubism and signs-ups were open for those who wanted to help playtest new levels. I was able to join the playtesting group and gave some of the new puzzles a try over the past six weeks. I’ll be discussing the approach taken in designing these DLC levels and the original campaign with Van Bouwel in our interview today, going over the process from start to finish and how the upcoming levels might differ to the existing campaign.
Let us know if you’re looking forward to Cubism DLC and be sure to leave your questions in the chat during the live broadcast.
Two days ago Oculus announced what new features would be added in the next software update for the Oculus Quest platform. v28 will see several additions specific to Oculus Quest 2 including 120Hz refresh support in the experimental section. Today, developer Thomas Van Bouwel has ensured his popular puzzler Cubism is ready when that time comes.
Patch 1.2.4 is live, adding a refresh-rate option for Quest 2 users in the settings, including experimental support for 120Hz!
(120Hz needs to be enabled in the experimental features menu of Oculus home first) pic.twitter.com/SbLYWXIsjl
Over on the Cubism Twitter account, the developer confirmed that patch 1.2.4 has now gone live, adding a 120Hz refresh rate button in the settings menu. You’ll have to be patient to try it out as you’ll need the v28 update first which is being gradually rolled out to users. Once you have it, head to the Experimental Features section to activate the 120Hz mode before diving into Cubism.
Just like Van Bouwel has done, 120Hz support has to be implemented by developers so their applications can run at higher frame rates. For a simple puzzle title like Cubism which isn’t heavy on performance, those higher rates are achievable, but many titles on Oculus Quest 2 likely won’t manage it. As John Carmack previously Tweeted on the subject: “Only a few existing games will be tweaked for 120, but some new titles will consider it an option in their design phase.” So native support could be a common occurrence in the future.
Cubism launched in September 2020 and quickly became a favourite of VRFocus as well as many other Oculus Quest owners thanks to its addictive puzzle gameplay. “Easy to pick up yet difficult to complete, it may take some an hour whilst others will take five. It’s the kind of VR game you can give to anyone and they’ll instantly know what to do, because who doesn’t know how to place a few blocks together,” VRFocus said in its review.
Van Bouwel has been quick to enhance the videogames’ mechanics since launch, with hand tracking support being a major addition recently. With it, players can grab a puzzle piece rather than merely pinching and buttons can be naturally pushed for a more immersive feel.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Cubism as well as any other Quest titles adding 120Hz support, reporting back with regular updates.
It’s been six months since 3D block building puzzler Cubismarrived on Oculus Quest, offering its simple yet addictive gameplay. Today, indie developer Thomas Van Bouwel has released the next major update to Cubism, adding hand tracking support as well as other content improvements.
Whilst the original SideQuest demo of Cubism did feature hand tracking, that wasn’t implemented into the official Oculus Quest release until now. On that first iteration van Bouwel notes in a statement the: “initial version didn’t properly take the limitations of the technology into account, meaning the quality of people’s experience would vary highly depending on their lighting conditions and their expectations of the feature.”
As for the improvements the developer has made to get the hand tracking to this stage, these include:
Puzzle pieces can be normally grabbed with fingertips instead of needing to be “pinched”
Buttons can be naturally pushed instead of needing to be “pinched”
Hand motion is smoothed out to prevent shaky-ness, which also results in more stable looking grabs
Fingers lock in place once an object is grabbed to give the appearance of a stable grip
Fingertips are coloured according to the puzzle piece you’re interacting with
Additional audio cues indicate when a piece is grabbed or a button is pushed
The game starts with a disclaimer to inform players on ways to improve the hand tracking experience (playing in a well-lit area & not crossing hands)
The hands indicate when they have lost tracking by fading to red, and inform the player if this is caused by them crossing their hands
“Hand tracking still has its limitations to be sure,” he adds, “but I’m excited to start supporting these new input methods that will hopefully make games and experiences like this more accessible and easier to share with new VR users.”
In addition to the hand tracking the update also features 5 new classical piano pieces by Robert Schumann and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikoyvsky and repositioning of the play area by pressing down on either joystick.
Cubism became one of VRFocus’ favourite puzzle titles of 2020, saying in its review: “Here you have a good example of why indie developers are such a vital part of the VR industry. Cubism would never have been made by a big studio yet it deserves your attention nonetheless.”
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Cubism, reporting back with the latest updates.
It’s been six months since 3D block building puzzler Cubismarrived on Oculus Quest, offering its simple yet addictive gameplay. Today, indie developer Thomas Van Bouwel has released the next major update to Cubism, adding hand tracking support as well as other content improvements.
Whilst the original SideQuest demo of Cubism did feature hand tracking, that wasn’t implemented into the official Oculus Quest release until now. On that first iteration van Bouwel notes in a statement the: “initial version didn’t properly take the limitations of the technology into account, meaning the quality of people’s experience would vary highly depending on their lighting conditions and their expectations of the feature.”
As for the improvements the developer has made to get the hand tracking to this stage, these include:
Puzzle pieces can be normally grabbed with fingertips instead of needing to be “pinched”
Buttons can be naturally pushed instead of needing to be “pinched”
Hand motion is smoothed out to prevent shaky-ness, which also results in more stable looking grabs
Fingers lock in place once an object is grabbed to give the appearance of a stable grip
Fingertips are coloured according to the puzzle piece you’re interacting with
Additional audio cues indicate when a piece is grabbed or a button is pushed
The game starts with a disclaimer to inform players on ways to improve the hand tracking experience (playing in a well-lit area & not crossing hands)
The hands indicate when they have lost tracking by fading to red, and inform the player if this is caused by them crossing their hands
“Hand tracking still has its limitations to be sure,” he adds, “but I’m excited to start supporting these new input methods that will hopefully make games and experiences like this more accessible and easier to share with new VR users.”
In addition to the hand tracking the update also features 5 new classical piano pieces by Robert Schumann and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikoyvsky and repositioning of the play area by pressing down on either joystick.
Cubism became one of VRFocus’ favourite puzzle titles of 2020, saying in its review: “Here you have a good example of why indie developers are such a vital part of the VR industry. Cubism would never have been made by a big studio yet it deserves your attention nonetheless.”
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Cubism, reporting back with the latest updates.
It’s the time of the season again for reflection, when we look back at this year’s greatest achievements in VR gaming and remind ourselves just how far we’ve come in the four years since consumers first delved head-first into truly immersive worlds.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, this year was plunged into an global economic cooldown which saw many industries grind to a halt. Comparatively unaffected though was the games industry, which could thankfully continue as developers took to finishing their projects at home from a safe distance.
In our fourth annual Game of the Year Awards, we again put ourselves to the task of celebrating this year’s greats in VR gaming. Moreover, we salute all developers for offering up their hard work and steadfast curiosity in the face of the same personal adversity we’ve all no doubt shared. We’re grateful for having safe places where we can connect and explore, and for lighting a world which at times may have seemed grim and unrelenting.
For many, this steady stream of VR games has been a lifeline to sanity, as physically stepping outside of our homes could mean either putting ourselves or our loved ones in danger’s path. We thank you for willing your virtual realties into existence for all of us to enjoy.
If you would have told anyone back in 2016—the year the first consumer PC VR headsets hit the market—that Valve (of all companies) would one day build a AAA Half-Life game (of all franchises) specifically for VR, we’d say you were crazy. Yet here we are, in 2020, giving Half-Life: Alyx our PC VR Game of the Year Award.
But before the release of Alyx earlier this year, there was still plenty of skepticism to go around. It was Valve’s first full-fledged VR game and the first Half-Life game in more than a decade. Could Valve deliver anything to possibly meet all that hype?
Well, the answer is now resoundingly clear. It turns out that Valve’s old-school, methodical (if sometimes messy) approach to game design works just as well for VR games as it does for non-VR games.
From the very opening scene—where players are, for the first time, truly standing before the monolithic Citadel in the middle of City 17—Alyx is immersive through and through thanks to heaps of detail, an engaging and interactive world, and one of the most memorable sequences seen in any VR game to date… the dreaded ‘Jeff’.
With excellent pacing that weaves together combat, exploration, and puzzles, Alyx takes players on a seamless journey through the well-realized streets, cellars, and rooftops of City 17, all the way to a mysterious conclusion that has serious consequences for the future of the franchise.
Against all odds, one of the most legendary game developers brought one of the most legendary franchises to VR in stunning fashion. Given that the studio stood to make tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions) more in revenue by making a non-VR game, it’s hard to call Alyx anything but a love letter to the VR medium.
Half-Life: Alyx stands as VR’s new benchmark in graphics, immersion, and scope, and I’m sure that Valve itself is as eager as the rest of us to see who will be next to raise the bar.
While it surely brings ample opportunity, there’s nearly an equal amount of risk in using the likeness of an iconic character like Iron Man. While the character has plenty of backstory to draw from, delivering the experience of actually stepping into the character’s shoes—the experience of actually being Iron Man rather than just watching him—is no trivial task, especially in the still young and often ill-defined medium of VR.
Before Iron Man VR arrived to the rescue, there really were no standout superhero games in VR. There were attempts, certainly, but none that truly planted a flag and said “this is how it’s done.” Developer Camouflaj, however, turned out to be up to the task.
And they did it in a most ambitious way. While choosing to focus their game on a superhero that didn’t fly would have surely avoid plenty of headaches, picking one that did fly forced them to tackle the serious challenge of keeping players comfortable even as they sailed through the sky.
What’s more, the game’s innovative flying system was specially designed around Iron Man’s character—around his palm-mounted repulsor jets specifically—bringing an immersive flair to the way players control themselves in the game by aiming their hands to control thrust. The result was a truly fun and thrilling method of locomotion that balanced high-speed maneuvering with aerial combat.
But more than just coming up with a novel flight system for VR, Iron Man VR contextualized its gameplay with an engaging story that explored the man behind the mask, Tony Stark, nearly as much as his superhero persona. Combined with immersive details sprinkled throughout, Iron Man VR delivered a package that felt whole and delivered the fantasy it promised.
It wasn’t clear what to expect from Skydance Interactive’s take on the storied The Walking Dead zombie franchise. The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners could have easily been a ham-handed attempt at shoehorning a standard first-person shooter into VR. We’ve seen them before, and they weren’t pretty.
As soon as you start the game though, it becomes immediately apparent that Saints & Sinners demands the player to invest themselves completely in the experience—it’s a true VR native. In this scaled-down RPG, moral choices meet zombie-killing carnage in a way we simply haven’t seen in VR up to this point. You’re instantly thrust into a world where supplies are scarce, crafting useful items is key, and coming in contact with any zombie is a fight for survival.
It’s a gruesome and realistic experience in all the right ways: a zombie can be hacked to pieces with any manner of sharp object, but you’ll lose precious stamina than you’ll need as you run away from the evening horde. If you’re a decent shot, you can try to stick to headshots the entire way, but as the mob grabs at you, you’re left with very little choice but to look them straight in the eye sockets and brain them with a knife, cleaver, or pointy stick. Complete your mission and get the hell out of dodge, or face the consequences; with each zombie presenting potential death, the horde isn’t something you’ll ever want to face.
Outside of its impressive physics-based melee and gun combat, one of the most frightening parts is navigating the muddy waters of the New Orleans gang life, where you literally choose to side with one faction by stoking blood fueds by personally executing NPCs, or by walking your own path as a freelancer. Although the adventure isn’t open-world, discrete maps are so large and rich in detail that you’ll probably forget in the first five minutes anyway.
The standalone version of the game on both Quest and Quest 2 is lower res than its PC VR forbear, but that’s saying very little. As is, the game is more than the sum of its parts, and shines even with the obligatory knock in visual fidelity for a game of this scale, polish, and depth.
Each year we try to come up with games that shine in specific departments, so we tend to highlight titles that haven’t already won our platform-based awards. This year though, there’s simply no ignoring the titanic effort that went into making Half-Life: Alyx the most immersive VR game of 2020.
From the liquid shaders inside the many errant bottles laying around, to flippable light switches, to the full baby grand piano, every object has been loving realized with one thing in mind: immersing the player into the world of Half-Life like never before.
While full, unfettered object interaction is great for immersion, this also lets players get creative with how to use seemingly banal stuff to their advantage, like carrying a basket full of grenades when you run out of space in your inventory.
In Half-Life: Alyx, there are only a few misses in terms of immersion, which are more linked to stylistic choices by Valve. You can’t melee enemies, and the gesture-based menu pulls you out a bit from the action, but even with those minor offenses, Valve has effectively created VR’s most detailed game to date that will be difficult to rival in the years to come.
Building a new car is, for the most part, putting new spin on a concept that’s largely already been figured out by those that came before. While non-VR game development similarly stands on the shoulders of past giants, in VR, almost any step you take is likely to mean breaking fresh ground—right down to rethinking how players will even move around your game world.
Developer nDreams embraced the unknown and built an entire game around a novel locomotion scheme that had players sleuthing through sluices in a tactical kayak.
It might sound a little ridiculous on the surface, but dive a little deeper and you’ll see that it really fits VR well. Not only is paddling a much more immersive and intentional way to get around than using using a joystick, the kayak worked great as a sort of ‘inventory’ system for the player thanks to weapon and ammo holsters along its sides.
While a smooth moving and turning kayak could surely prove challenging from a comfort standpoint, nDreams managed to come up with a snap-turn solution that worked seamlessly with the kayak locomotion, allowing more players to enjoy their time on the waterways.
The locomotion innovation of Phantom: Covert Ops makes us excited to see what the studio comes up with next.
Flying an X-Wing in VR has been the dream ever since EA Games released the free X-Wing VR Mission DLC for Star Wars: Battlefront Rogue One in 2016 on PS4. And in a big way, EA’s Motive Studios delivered on that dream with this massive first-person dogfighter, which lets you play through an well-crafted singe-player campaign, or cross-platform online battles.
Motive Studios took on the mantle of making Star Wars: Squadrons feel like a native VR game which lets you play with a giant pool of players, delivering support for PC VR, traditional PC monitors, PSVR, PS4, and Xbox One players together. And when it comes to dropping in for a casual dogfight, you simply can’t waste time waiting around.
To boot, playing in VR has its clear advantages, as you can naturally track enemies by looking through your cockpit’s canopy windows, all while keeping an eye on your 3D radar. One of the hopes we had for the game was motion controller support for added immersion, however simulator enthusiasts know that the most immersive way to control a vehicle in VR is using a HOTAS setup, which lets you play with physical thrusters and flight sticks so you can truly feel like you’ve stepped into your own Star Wars universe spaceship. You can also play with gamepad, which is fun too since the game offers up arcade controls instead of pure simulator-style flying like you might find in Elite Dangerous (2014).
Both the world inside and outside of your canopy is a visual treat. While cinematic cutscenes are reduced to 2D windows, the game makes up for this by putting you on the deck of each ship to speak face-to-face with some of the most detailed character models we’ve seen in VR. Crafted with motion capture, the game’s NPCs seem to inch very close to the far side of the Uncanny Valley—something you’ll appreciate more from the inside of a VR headset.
In all, Star Wars: Squadrons gives VR gamers everything it has to offer on traditional platforms and more. It also sends a clear message to AAA studios that VR doesn’t have to be a second class citizen when it can slot in so well.
Cubism is a spatial puzzle game that shows that an interface can be beautiful through simplicity. The interface strikes a perfect balance between recognizable affordances and VR native flourishes like the use of depth and placement within arms reach. When it’s done the job selecting a level, it gets completely out of the way, allowing the player to directly interact with the puzzle before them.
The interface also hides a little secret which also doubles as a subtle but enjoyable means of ‘progression’ in the game. Each puzzle you complete represents a musical chord which you can hear when you select the level. Played one after another, each of these chords is part of a complete song which is every bit as beautiful in its simplicity as the interface itself. Once you complete all puzzles, the song is yours to enjoy.
There’s not much else to say—and that’s the point. Cubism’s interface does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
Indie studios take risks that larger, more established names in the industry simply won’t. And supporting those indie devs can mean playing some of the most unique and inventive games out there. Granted, there was a tad less risk involved for Pixel Ripped 1995, a retro-inspired VR game that follows in the footsteps of its popular predecessor, Pixel Ripped 1989 (2018). Still, it’s an amazingly creative slice of mid-90s nostalgia that’s expertly interwoven into the pioneering genres that made so many of us fall in love with games in the first place.
Pitching a unique ‘game within a game’ storytelling style, Pixel Ripped 1995 acts as the setting for its constant flights of fancy, mashing up the fourth console generation’s pioneering genres into a charming 3D world. Without brushing to close to infringe on any copyrights, Pixel Ripped 1995 authors a love letter to the generation’s colorful platformers, side-scrolling beat ’em ups, and RPGs.
At five hours of gameplay, it’s short and sweet, but critically doesn’t overextend itself either. Its linear gameplay offers a virtual smorgasbord of variety as you’re always left guessing at what’s next, leaving little room for boredom.
Release Date: Available from July 7th- November 15th, 2020
The Under Presents (2019) wasn’t released this year, but it did host a very special limited time immersive theater show to Oculus Quest and Rift-owning audiences that delved into some seriously interesting experimental territory. In a sea of graphical and technical marvels this year, the game’s immersive reinterpretation of William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest took the cake.
In a time when live actors are mostly out of work, The Under Presents invited expert thespians to lead groups of up to eight VR users through a rejuvenated retelling of the popular 17th-century theater piece. Built with user participation in mind, it felt more like acting in a high school theater play, with roles dolled out on the fly.
Showing up in the lobby, which is conveniently placed at the entrance of the game’s main area, participants were greeted with interesting toys and magical object to play around with as you hang with your fellow amateur actors. Once the show begins, you’re transported to a campfire to meet a live actor, who in the show’s meta-narrative took on the role of Prospero and many others. The guide weaves the story throughout dreamlike set pieces, and gets everyone involved in acting out parts in the story. Since players are mute, your guide acts as a professional voice over artist by filling in your lines.
In a time when interacting in large groups can be dangerous, The Under Presents The Tempest offered up a truly novel and creative experience that, even with its low-poly art style, felt like a tantalizingly real break from reality. We’re hoping to see more from developers Tender Claws in the near future, whether it be encore presentations of the experience or entirely new interactive theater pieces yet to come.
Note: Games eligible for Road to VR‘s Game of the Year Award must be available to the public on or before December 13th, 2020 to allow for ample deliberation. Games must also natively support the target platform as to ensure full operability.
Recently released on the Quest store, Cubism is a spatial puzzle game with a slick minimal presentation. Designed by a solo indie developer Thomas Van Bouwel as a side project, the game impressively holds the highest user rating among all Quest apps with more than 100 reviews, according to our latest ranking. We reached to Van Bouwel to learn more about his approach to the project and lessons learned along the way.
Thomas is a Brazilian VR developer currently based in Brussels, Belgium. Although his original background is in architecture, his current work in VR spans from indie games like Cubism to enterprise software for architects and engineers like Resolve.
In September I launched Cubism, a minimal VR puzzle game about assembling colorful blocks into complex geometric shapes. It was my first commercial release as a game developer.
I developed Cubism on my own in my spare time, all while keeping my job as lead product engineer at Resolve, a Brooklyn-based enterprise VR start-up. I’ve only recently transitioned into working part-time for the game in the months leading up to its release.
Bootstrapping your first game alongside a full-time job can be a good way to allow for a flexible development schedule and reduce financial risk—but I think it’s only feasible if you design around your limitations and don’t over-scope your game.
In this article, I want to share some lessons I learned on how to stay on track when bootstrapping your first VR game.
1. Prototype & Playtest as Soon as Possible
The first questions you need to answer when starting any new game is: “is this fun?” and “could this have an audience?” A good way to answer these questions is to build a vertical slice—a small but fully playable segment of your game idea—as soon as possible, and put it in front of strangers to gauge their reaction.
I built the first functional prototype for Cubism over a weekend back in 2017. The prototype was pretty bare bones, but playable, and was enough for me to test the concept with friends and colleagues and to share the idea with strangers online to see if a game like this could spark interest.
The first prototype of Cubism had 3 puzzles, but no menu or game logic. Two of those three original puzzles ended up in the final game.
2. Scope Within Your Constraints
Choosing the right scope for a game is the best way to ensure you can actually finish it, and this will be determined mostly by your constraints (budget, skillset, time, etc).
For Cubism, I knew I’d have limited time to work on it, I knew I wanted to work solo to keep my schedule flexible, and I knew that things like 3D modelling, graphics programming and audio design weren’t my strong suit. Cubism’s minimal aesthetic and straight-forward gameplay leaned into these constraints, and helped inform many design decisions along the way.
For example, the minimal environment removed the need for detailed environment modelling or complex lighting, and helped put the focus on the puzzle in front of the player. This lack of environment also meant that having gravity made no sense, since pieces had no surface to fall on other than the floor—so instead, everything floats. This actually made puzzle solving a bit easier and enabled more complex puzzle shapes which wouldn’t be possible if gravity applied.
The lack of gravity in Cubism allows for more complex puzzle shapes.
Adjusting scope is something that will inevitably happen throughout development as well. One instance where I realized I was over-scoping was with my plans to support hand-tracking in the initial release of the game.
When hand-tracking first became available, I quickly prototyped experimental support for the feature and released it in a demo on SideQuest as it seemed like hand-tracking could make for a very intuitive way of playing the game. The reality was that hand-tracking at the time still had limitations, and the quality of people’s experience with it varied highly depending on their lighting conditions and their expectations of the feature. The demo I made did not handle these limitations well.
Linus from Linus Tech Tips struggling with Cubism’s experimental hand tracking input (source).
I realized that properly implementing this feature would require much more work than I originally anticipated, which would delay the release of the actual game. I instead decided to remove the feature from the release scope and plan it for a future update.
This was a difficult call to make, since the SideQuest demo set expectations for the full game to support this feature as well, but I think it was the right call as it ensured I could give the development of this feature the time it required to be done properly.
3. Build Tools That Save You Time
When you recognize that an aspect of your game will require a ton of iteration to get right, it’s worth looking into what tools you can buy or build to help make that iteration more efficient.
For Cubism, I realized early on that I would need to iterate a lot on the design of the puzzles in the game, so one of the first things I built was a simple puzzle editor. It was far from release-ready, but as a developer tool it had a huge impact on how quickly I was able to iterate and find interesting puzzle designs.
An early in-VR level editor tool helped me speed up puzzle design and iteration
Another aspect of the game that required a lot of iteration was the audio design. In Cubism, every puzzle piece is associated with a note, meaning every puzzle forms a complete chord once finished. Completed puzzles and their associated chords form a complete song. When a player presses the play button in the menu, it will play this song as it goes through all the levels they’ve solved.
Pressing the play button lets players hear a song composed of chords associated with each puzzle they’ve completed.
In Unity3D, I built a simple editor tool that would let me modify the notes associated with the puzzles and would save these notes in a separate file. This allowed me to test multiple songs for the game in parallel and made it easier for me to keep the notes associated with puzzles up to date while the puzzle designs evolved during development.
This simple puzzle song editor let me modify the notes associated with pieces of each puzzle and preview what this would sound like in sequence in the game.
4. Don’t Playtest Your Game with Gamers (at first)
If you want to make your VR game accessible for newcomers to the medium, take special care to playtest it with non-gamers during development.
Since Cubism was meant to be a casual game, one of my design goals was to make it as pick-up-and-play as possible for newcomers to the medium. However, about a year and a half into development I realized one of the biggest blockers for newcomers was the game’s control scheme and the onboarding tutorial to teach new players.
Almost every button had a function mapped to it, and the game would start by walking you through each button, which would be very disorienting for people who weren’t used to holding controllers.
Cubism originally used every button on the controller and the onboarding tutorial would walk users though each one.
It took me a long time to realize this was an issue, because I had mainly been testing the game with other developers, gamers, and VR enthusiasts who would tend to breeze through the controller onboarding. It was only during a more family-oriented game event, where I got a chance to test the game with more non-gamers, that I realized input was a barrier to entry for some folks.
After that insight I focussed on simplifying the control scheme by making the entire game playable with just the triggers. This had some design implications as well: the menu moved from being anchored to the player’s hand to being anchored underneath the puzzle. And moving the entire puzzle, which used to be mapped to the grip buttons, now happened by grabbing the puzzle within its bounding box.
These changes greatly simplified onboarding and made the game much more easy to pick-up-and-play. Where some players used to get confused by the original tutorial, they would now breeze through it and be solving their first puzzle within 10-20 seconds of launching the game.
Cubism can now fully be played with just the triggers, greatly simplifying and shortening the onboarding tutorial.
5. Don’t Solo Dev Alone
Even though I made Cubism on my own, I would never have been able to finish the game without the support of various friends and organizations within the VR community. They kept me motivated throughout development and have given me valuable advice when I was stuck.
In most cities I’ve lived in since I started working on Cubism, I’ve been able to find meetup groups for Unity developers, indie game developers, or VR enthusiasts. And even though going to actual meetups is harder these days, many of these groups also have active online communities on Slack or Discord.
If you’re planning on developing on the Oculus platform, I also highly recommend joining their Oculus Start program. Beyond the support Oculus provides to Start developers, they also have a really active and supportive community on Discord.
– – — – –
The choice of whether or not to work solo and/or part-time on a project will likely depend on your circumstances and the nature of the game you’re making. I’ve definitely felt the downsides of solo spare-time development as well: a dev cycle that was probably longer than it needed to be, being confronted with gaps in my own knowledge when it came to actually finishing and publishing a game, or the lack of a creative sparring partner to work through design problems and help make decisions.
But for Cubism, there was a flip-side to each of these downsides as well: not having to compromise between a game I wanted to make and a job I enjoyed doing, being forced to learn new skills, and being incentivised to seek out the wider gamedev community for advice, support and motivation.
In many cases, it will make more sense to work together with others or to seek funding for development, but if you’re planning on solo-bootstrapping your first game, I hope this article will be helpful!
Cubism is a casual VR puzzle that plays a bit like a 3D version of Tetris. The game is due to launch on September 17th on Quest, Rift, and Steam. A future update will add hand-tracking on Quest.
Cubism from Belgium-based developer Thomas Van Bouwel is a cheery brain-teaser that tasks players with solving 3D puzzles by fitting Tetris-like shapes into a larger pre-defined shape.
The game’s sleek, casual design makes it great for relaxing seated play. But fear not, while the puzzle concept is simple, Cubism will have you scratching your head in short order as difficulty increases across 60 stages. As any puzzle game should, Cubism’s puzzles always feel satisfying when you click that last piece into place.
Image courtesy Thomas Van Bouwel
Though the game won’t support Quest’s controller-less hand-tracking at launch, the developer says a future update will add the feature, making playing Cubism as easy as putting on your headset and grabbing the pieces with your hands.
Cubism will launch on September 17th on Quest, Rift, and Steam for $10. Developer Thomas Van Bouwel has confirmed the game will support cross-buy between Quest and Rift.
