In September of last year, VRFocusreported on Ubisoft building a team specifically for virtual reality (VR) content development, with a lot of the positions at its Dusseldorf office – formerly Ubisoft Blue Byte. The team specialised in location-based entertainment (LBE) having already created Assassin’s Creed Origins: Escape the Lost Pyramid andBeyond Medusa’s Gate. Now its latest project has been unveiled, taking gamers on another immersive journey inside a popular videogame IP with Prince of Persia: The Dagger of Time.
Based on The Sands of Time trilogy, the narrative involves players being summoned to the Fortress of Time by Kaileena (the Empress of Time) to stop an evil Magi. Kaileena restores and gives the Dagger of Time to the players so they can reach the Hourglass Chamber and use it to stop the Magi, preventing an army of Sand Monsters from being unleashed.
The experience is designed for between 2 – 4 players, cooperating with teammates to complete the shared goal. Prince of Persia: The Dagger of Time will require players to solve puzzles by using the titular artefact’s powers to stop, rewind, or fast-forward time as well as utilising the benefits of roomscale VR, climbing walls and exploring the digital space.
“Our VR escape rooms are meant to be larger-than-life adventures; something you can’t do in the real world, something you can totally immerse yourself into once you put on the VR headset. Prince of Persia ticked all the boxes,” said Cyril Voiron, executive producer for Ubisoft Escape Games in a blog post. “The Sands of Time series seemed to be the perfect fit, because it not only offers a fantasy setting, but the original games also come with many elements that fit perfectly into VR, such as puzzles and, of course, using powers such as time control.”
Detailing a little more about how the gameplay works, Voiron went on to say: “Only the player who holds the Dagger of Time in their hands can control time, and they can stop, rewind, or move time forward. When they do so, we added some visual and audio cues so the other players also realize that time is being manipulated. It is quite impressive the first time that you can freeze the world around you!”
Prince of Persia: The Dagger of Time will be made available to VR arcades worldwide who use the Ubisoft Escape Games platform this Spring. For further updates on Ubisoft’s latest LBE VR offerings, keep reading VRFocus.
Ubisoft has revealed its third and latest VR escape room experience which is based on one of its classic franchises; Prince of Persia: The Dagger of Time will support up to four VR players who will control time itself as cooperatively solve puzzles.
While perhaps better known for their in-home VR games, Ubisoft has quietly built a series of successful out-of-home VR experiences which it bills as “VR escape rooms.” The company’s cooperative VR experiences are now available at 300 locations globally, with no signs of slowing down.
Coming soon to locations this Spring is a VR escape room experience which will breathe some life into one of Ubisoft’s most classic franchises, Prince of Persia, which hasn’t seen a major entry since 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands.
The franchise is known for its themes of time-control, and it’s clear by the name of the upcoming experience—Prince of Persia: The Dagger of Time—that the theme will be front and center. Created by Ubisoft Düsseldorf, the studio says players will fight their way out of the Fortress of Time:
In the story, players are summoned by Kaileena, the Empress of Time. They are asked to help her to stop the evil plans of a Magi who is attempting to restore the sands to the Hourglass of Time and create an army of Sand Monsters. To successfully escape the fortress, players must use cooperative teamwork and problem-solving skills to complete objectives, utilizing powers such as time control from the dagger of time.
“We decided to push the level of quality and complexity of our experiences to another level in Prince of Persia: The Dagger of Time. We added many features, like being able to play not only with two or four players, but now with three players,” said Cyril Voiron, executive producer at Ubisoft Escape Games, in a Q&A. “To do so, we are not mirroring the in-game environment like we did in Escape the Lost Pyramid, and this makes the riddles and the level design way more complex.”
Voiron explained a bit how the game’s time-control mechanic will work.
“Only the player who holds the Dagger of Time in their hands can control time, and they can stop, rewind, or move time forward. When they do so, we added some visual and audio cues so the other players also realize that time is being manipulated. It is quite impressive the first time that you can freeze the world around you!”
He also confirmed the company has tested to ensure that all of its VR escape rooms are wheelchair-accessible experiences.
Ubisoft has learned quite a bit about what does and doesn’t work in the VR attraction space after creating two prior experiences: Beyond Medusa’s Gate (2018) and Escape the Lost Pyramid (2019), both of which are set in the Assassin’s Creed universe. As for its third and latest, Ubisoft previously said that the Prince of Persia project is their largest team size yet for a VR escape room project.
Surprisingly, the Prince of Persia VR escape room, named The Dagger of Time, is set in the world of The Sands of Time, a PS2-era platforming action-adventure game. The VR escape room experience will be developed by Ubisoft Düsseldorf for all ages and requires 2-4 players.
According to a press release:
“In the story, players are summoned by Kaileena, the Empress of Time. They are asked to help her to stop the evil plans of a Magi who is attempting to restore the sands to the Hourglass of Time and create an army of Sand Monsters. To successfully escape the fortress, players must use cooperative teamwork and problem-solving skills to complete objectives, utilizing powers such as time control from the dagger of time.”
Ubisoft initially seemed bullish on the potential of VR as an interactive medium releasing several games quickly such as Eagle Flight, Werewolves Within, and Star Trek: Bridge Crew, but eventually abandoned their latest endeavor, Space Junkies. Since then we’ve heard rumors of upcoming big VR projects but never saw confirmations. In the meantime they’ve pivoted to using their IP in the location-based market instead.
There’s more information on The Dagger of Time over on the official Ubisoft Escape Games website. The attraction will roll out to over 300 locations worldwide this Spring.
Let us know what you think of the news down in the comments below!
While Ubisoft’s best known VR content has been its pioneering work in the consumer in-home space, another part of its business focusing on VR escape rooms has quietly become one of the most widely distributed in the industry, the company said this week.
Ubisoft has been investing in VR development early-on with games like Eagle Flight (2016), Star Trek: Bridge Crew (2017), Space Junkies (2019), and more. And while their in-home content is among the most recognizable of their VR projects, another portion of the company has been doing pioneering work of its own in the out-of-home (AKA LBE) sector.
Spearheaded by the company’s Blue Byte Düsseldorf studio, Ubisoft has released two games built for LBE under the Ubisoft Escape Games brand: Beyond Medusa’s Gate (2018) and Escape the Lost Pyramid (2019), both set in the Assassin’s Creed universe.
Making a distinction between VR content available to in-home consumers and that which is only available at out-of-home locations, Ubisoft Escape Games Executive Producer Cyril Voiron confirmed to Road to VR that the studio’s LBE content is operational in 240 locations across the globe, a “market leading” position, he said.
Image courtesy Ubisoft, Cyril Voiron
In a presentation at XRDC 2019 this week in San Francisco, Voiron spoke to the studio’s development approach for VR LBE content.
Designing for the Mainstream
As the name implies, Ubisoft Escape Games VR experiences are built as virtual reality ‘escape rooms’ more so than traditional VR gaming content. Rather than being built for VR players in mind, the experiences are designed to cater to a mainstream audience, most of which have never tried any sort of VR before. This is done to make the content highly accessible, similar to real escape rooms, which typically can be enjoyed by customers across a wide range of ages and physical abilities.
Image courtesy Ubisoft, Cyril Voiron
The experiences are also specifically designed around two or four players, Voiron said, and built so that each player must contribute to the success of the puzzle, preventing any one player from storming through everything without teamwork. This was all part of the Blue Byte team’s philosophy of designing for “what you feel, not what you see;” in particular, the team wanted every player coming out of the experience to feel like they made a meaningful contribution and had a story to share about the role they played in solving the escape room.
Another part of the core philosophy in designing the virtual escape rooms was giving players virtual experiences of things they couldn’t do in their home, like rock climbing or seeing environments of massive scale, as well as designing the experience to be as natural and intuitive as possible, Voiron said. That means simple mechanics like team communication, bow shooting, climbing, and only grabbing objects (no other button or thumbstick use).
A massive statue in ‘Beyond Medusa’s Gate’ designed to give players an immense sense of scale. | Image courtesy Ubisoft
All of the Ubisoft Escape Games experience are built around natural room-scale locomotion (though Voiron added that an optional teleport system was added to allow the game to operate in locations with smaller footprints). The experiences are designed with moving virtual platforms, so that they can move the players virtually over a larger distance than would otherwise be possible within the physical space.
Iterating on Feedback
Though the experiences are built for two and four players, Voiron added that the escape rooms were initially designed to split players up at different points and then gradually bring them back together into a group. This was to facilitate a feeling of space and separation between players, but ultimately feedback indicated that players preferred to stay together as a group. On that feedback, the latest escape room still separates players for some intrigue and use of the virtual space, but Blue Byte learned that allowing players to maintain line of sight (even from a distance) and continue to be able to speak to each other helped them feel not alone or lost; especially useful when players can help each other figure out what to do if they get stuck.
Voiron noted the challenge of getting customers who aren’t familiar with VR into the headset so that they can really understand what kind of experience they’re signing up for. To solve this, he recommended that the clients operating a VR escape room should steer clear of presenting it as a video game, and instead focus on marketing the experience that players would embark on.
Image courtesy Ubisoft, Cyril Voiron
As many players of the Ubisoft VR escape rooms may have never tried VR before, the team wanted to show them right away that VR is different than what they would expect from a traditional video game. This was done by giving users full-body avatars and mirrors right at the start so they can see themselves embodying those avatars. Voiron said this quickly ‘clicks’ with players, especially thanks to the accessories that they can use to change their look. He suggested that LBE clients could even set up a headset in their lobby and let users briefly look at themselves in a virtual mirror to understand what the virtual reality experience is like.
An important theme of Voiron’s presentation was that the studio was carefully monitoring player and client feedback and using it to iterate and improve the experience. One of those major changes was lengthening the average time to complete the experience so that players felt they got more value from the cost of admission. In the studio’s first VR escape room, Escape The Lost Pyramid, the average completion time was 44 minutes; in the followup experience, Beyond Medusa’s Gate, they managed to increase the average to 54 minutes.
The Next Ubisoft VR Escape Room in 2020
Image courtesy Ubisoft, Cyril Voiron
Voiron said that the Ubisoft Escape Games team is set up as a small and agile startup-like group within Ubisoft Blue Byte. Production on the first project started in early 2017; after the concept phase, 16 developers built Escape The Lost Pyramid which launched in mid-2018. The next project, Beyond Medusa’s Gate, had a 20 person team and launched in mid-2019.
Voiron shared that the studio’s third (and so far unannounced) project will have the largest team yet, with 23 developers, and is set to launch in Spring 2020.