Unplugged isn’t an app that teaches you guitar — on the contrary, it’s app where you can live out your air guitar dreams, playing to a virtual screaming crowd. It uses hand tracking on Quest to identify the position of your hands and fingers and translate that into music in a Guitar Hero-fashion. It makes sense, then, that ex-Guitar Hero lead guitarist and game designer Marcus Henderson has been brought on board.
Anotherway’s producer Julia Casal said in a prepared statement: “Marcus dove right into the project from the very beginning. It’s amazing to see how the game has grown in such a short time, thanks to his efforts on brand partnerships and his game design experience.
“I’m thrilled to be joining the Vertigo and Anotherway teams on such an amazing and exciting new game,” said Henderson. “Music games and VR are a perfect match and the team has crafted a true love letter to guitar and rock music in general with Unplugged. We can’t wait to get it into your (virtual) hands later this year!”
Henderson’s statement seems to confirm that the game is still on track for its planned Q3 2021 release. Keep an eye out for more details soon.
While 2020 may have been rubbish when it comes to almost everything, virtual reality (VR) developers have provided some awesome content to fill the time. So now it’s time to look ahead and see what the next 12 months will bring.
There’s no shortage of VR titles already slated for 2021, some have moved over from last year whilst others are looking to make their mark. Those such as Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creedand Splinter Cell don’t make the main list as these aren’t expected anytime soon.
Hitman 3
The main videogame a lot of PlayStation VR players are likely to be looking forward to, Hitman 3 arrives in a few weeks, the only title on this list with an actual launch date.
Putting you back into the shoes of the infamous assassin, Hitman 3 is fully VR compatible across its main campaign as well as its four other modes. Developer IO Interactive is making it possible to bring the two previous instalment’s maps – if you own Hitman 1 and 2 – into the third edition so you can play them in VR. Plus, the PlayStation 4 version will freely upgrade to the PlayStation 5 edition, whilst the PS5 version comes with a digital PS4 copy so there’s no need to worry which console you own.
Supported headsets: PlayStation VR
Release date: 20th January 2021
Lone Echo 2
Announced as an Oculus Rift exclusive back in 2018, originally Lone Echo II had been slated for 2019. Over the course of 2020, a couple of updates were released noting that work was still ongoing as the team adjusted to working remotely but it was clear from the last one the videogame wasn’t going to make it this year.
The single-player sci-fi adventure, Lone Echo II continues the story where you play a robot called Jack who needs to help Captain Olivia Rhodes survive the perils of space. Exclusive to the Oculus Store, it’s worth taking a look at the original even if titles like Half-Life: Alyx have now surpassed it.
As there’s no actual release date just yet, Lone Echo II could well arrive after Oculus Rift S is discontinued so there’s little doubt it’ll be Oculus Quest (via Oculus Link) compatible.
A horror title with a twist, Fast Travel Games’ Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlifelooks to be quite an intriguing experience. Set within the World of Darkness universe, you play as a wraith stuck in the mysterious Barclay mansion with the ability to walk through walls and pick items up remotely.
This being a horror videogame, just because you’re a wraith doesn’t mean to say there aren’t nasty beings lurking in the darkness. In fact, they’re called Spectres and they stalk your every footstep. Suspense is key here, there doesn’t look to be any combat just exploration, puzzle-solving and hiding when appropriate.
Supported headsets: Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index & PlayStation VR.
Release date: Early 2021
Maskmaker
From the team that brought you A Fisherman’s Tale, InnerspaceVR is working on a puzzle adventure called Maskmaker. Set in a realm ruled by the titular character, you’re his apprentice, learning his secret, magical ways of making masks. These are no ordinary masks, allowing you to freely explore 8 levels ‘biomes’ and discover their secrets.
As an apprentice, you’ll have to learn to build various masks from blueprints using materials you find. Eventually, you’ll be given free rein to make your own designs, although the studio hasn’t revealed what will happen when you do. Grander in scope than InnerspaceVR’s previous projects, Maskmaker is expected early next year.
Supported headsets: PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive & Valve Index
Release date: Q1 2021
Low-Fi
Iris VR Inc. – the team behind Technolust – held a successful Kickstarter back in 2019 for its ambitious cyberpunk project Low-Fi, which supports both VR and non-VR gameplay. An epic sci-fi adventure where you play a cop patrolling the dark crime-ridden streets of city-block 303, you’re able to choose between keeping law and order or exploiting its seedy underbelly.
While the Kickstarter offered backers access to the development build depending on which tier they purchased, that early access was then made available to everyone. Low-Fi is available on itch.io for $35 USD, once the videogame is ready to launch you’ll get a Steam key.
Supported headsets: PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index & Windows Mixed Reality.
Only a few teasing details of the gameplay have been revealed so far such as the image below and that the action will be a mix of melee combat and powerful, motion-based spellcasting. One aspect Carbon Studio has been detailing is the storyline through a selection of dev blog’s over on Steam. If the team’s recent The Wizards – Dark Times game is anything to go by Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Tempestfall is in good hands.
Supported headsets: PC VR & Oculus Quest
Release date: 2021
After the Fall
Another videogame falling foul of remote working in 2020, Vertigo Games’ After the Fall is its next big blockbuster shooter. Originally unveiled during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2019, the studio has released few updates over the past year, the main one being the delay.
A promising action-packed FPS from what’s been shown so far, the studio behind Arizona Sunshine is heading for chillier climes for this adventure. Not to some northern outpost, rather Los Angeles set in a desolate future consumed by climate change and where most of the population have turned into monsters because of a designer drug. Survival will require scavenging for parts to build deadly weapons and other tools.
Supported headsets: PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive & Valve Index
Release date: Early 2021
The Climb 2
Revealed during Facebook Connect in September, Crytek’s free-climbing sequel was slated for an Oculus Quest launch by the end of 2020. Nothing has been heard of The Climb 2 since then including a reason for the delay.
Just like before you’ll need a head for heights, assailing cliff faces whilst looking for the best route up. This time around, however, it won’t just be scenic views of the ocean and countryside you’ll be able to enjoy, it’ll take you into cities to scale massive skyscrapers like you’re Tom Cruise in a Mission Impossible movie. Hopefully, more news will come available in early 2021.
Supported headsets: Oculus Quest
Release date: ‘Coming Soon’
Sniper Elite VR
Bringing its popular sniping franchise into VR, Rebellion has teamed up with Coatsink and Just Add Water on the production of Sniper Elite VR. A single-player, story-driven campaign takes you to Italy during World War 2, helping the Italian resistance to rid Sicily of the Nazi’s.
You’ll be exploring scenic locations, finding the best spots to snipe enemies or when necessary employing sub-machine guns, pistols and other weapons at close range. And let’s not forget about the infamous X-ray kill camera to really make those long-range shots standout. While no official release date has been mentioned, having demoed Sniper Elite VR in 2019 VRFocus has its fingers crossed this might appear in 2021.
Supported headsets: PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive & Valve Index
Release date: ‘Coming Soon’
Unplugged
Rhythm-action videogames can be awesome fun and Unplugged from Anotherway and Vertigo Games looks like it could be a blast. It’s also the only title here which uses Oculus Quest’s hand tracking feature for some air guitar rock and roll.
So far a couple of teasing videos featuring Searching for the Truth by The Electric Alley and Roadie by Tenacious D have showcased the gameplay no guitar controllers needed. You’ll score points and build combos when playing well or booed and beer hurled at you when you mess up.
Thursday on the Winter Wrap-Up brings not one but two festive treats from publisher Vertigo Games: new dev diaries for Traffic Jams and Unplugged.
The After The Fall developer is releasing both titles on VR headsets next year, and will share the latest on both below at 9am PT/12pm ET today. First up, Little Chicken drops by to talk what’s new with Traffic Jams, a manic game in which players control the flow of traffic using their hands. We’ve gone hands-on with the experience already and it holds promise as an intuitive use of VR that anyone could pick up and play.
After that we’re getting a fresh look at Unplugged, the hand-tracked VR air guitar game Vertigo announced it would be publishing earlier this month. We’re super intrigued as to if this Guitar Hero-alike can pull off its lofty ambitions of making us feel like we’re really shredding away.
A big thanks to Vertigo, Little Chicken and Another way for joining us for today’s debut on the Wrap-Up.
Not much longer left on the Winter Wrap-Up. We’ve already had a huge week, revealing the first gameplay of The Wizards: Dark Times on Quest, new footage of Wraith: The Oblivion and updates on Blaston and Demeo. Plus we’ve broken down our most anticipated VR games of 2021 and discussed the biggest headlines of the year. Check back in tomorrow when we’ll be revealing world exclusive gameplay of Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual and, to close us out, announcing our 2020 VR Award nominations! Check out the full schedule below.
In search of that festive feeling? Well we’ve got a little surprise for you – UploadVR’s Winter Wrap-Up kicks off next week!
We’ll be rounding out the year in style with the help of some of our most anticipated projects of 2021. Join us every day next week at 9am PT when we’ll be debuting exclusive content for new VR games and incoming updates for some of 2020’s best titles. Check out the full schedule below!
Get Festive With UploadVR’s Winter Wrap-Up!
Starting out on Monday we’ll have the very first footage of a new Quest 2 game. What is it? We’re keeping that under wraps for now – you’ll just have to tune in to find out! Moving on to Tuesday, the team at Resolution Games has updates on its 1v1 shooter, Blaston, as well as a sneak peek at the just-announced turn-based RPG, Demeo.
Wednesday brings seasons greetings from Fast Travel Games as the team talks five reasons to play its new game, Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife, complete with the first-ever Quest 2 development footage! Meanwhile, Vertigo Games takes over Thursday with new looks at two games it’s publishing in the new year – Traffic Jams and Unplugged.
Finally, on Friday, we’ll round out the week with a brand new look at Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual. We can’t wait to see what the team at Happy Giant has in store.
But that’s far from all! Across the week we’ll have plenty more content to share, including a chat with Atlas V about its upcoming slate of VR movies, a first look at Arizona Sunshine’s new horde map, and the reveal of an all-new VR kaiju game! Plus team Upload will be in the Download studio to talk over some of the year’s biggest topics and look forward to what’s coming in 2021. Don’t miss out on Friday, when we’ll reveal our full VR awards 2020 nominations!
So that’s next week sorted for you! UploadVR’s Winter Wrap-Up is coming in hot – don’t miss it.
The developers of Arizona Sunshine and After the Fall, Vertigo Games, have slowly been expanding their publishing portfolio. In addition to several location-based VR arcade properties, A Fisherman’s Tale, and others, Vertigo Games is now adding Anotherway’s Unplugged to their publishing portfolio with a slated release window of Q3 2021.
If the name Unplugged sounds familiar, that’s because we’ve covered it before back in April of this year. Unplugged (working title) is a hand-tracking based air guitar VR music game for Oculus Quest. We’ve written about VR guitar games before, from Rock Band VR which uses an actual plastic guitar peripheral to Rocking Hero and Riff VR which both approximate movements using VR motion controllers, but Unplugged is pushing boundaries in other ways.
Since it’s a hand-tracking based game, precise finger placement is critical, but it will be challenging to accurately track quick movements and impossible to provide the tactile feedback of touching the instrument.
“What started out as a passion project seemed to grab the attention of many VR media and content creators, and we soon realized that the project had much potential and we needed a partner to help us bring it to life,” said Julia Casal, Producer at Anotherway, in a prepared statement. “By partnering with Vertigo Games we are able to scale up the project and pursue our ambitious goals. The experience has been wonderful so far and we are extremely motivated to start the journey of working on Unplugged along with them.”
Unplugged is currently slated for a Q3 2021 release, but there are no specific dates beyond that. Quest is not mentioned as the only target platform, but it’s the only hand-tracking headset we’ve seen the game played on thus far. Check out the game’s official website for more details.
A video teaser popped up for a VR game on Oculus Quest that uses controller-free hand tracking for a familiar musical experience similar to Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
And it already carries the perfect name — Unplugged: Air Guitar.
The game is a side project by Ricardo Acosta that he’s been working on at night. He works at Microsoft on the Maquette art app team but Unplugged is a personal project he’s been developing on his own time.
It is still pretty early in the work and there are some major obstacles to overcome for this project to see the light of day. There are of course questions surrounding copyright and what kind of songs people will be able to play in the finished game. The developer is thinking of partnering with small bands who want to promote their music in the game.
Right now Oculus Quest hand tracking is a cool experiment but also far from perfect. Musical instruments in particular test the quality of the hand tracking system and experienced musicians suggest it is pretty limiting. For example, doing things like playing a physical piano with Quest hand tracking can only go so far with the current implementation. Nonetheless, there are glimmers of hope in ideas related to music and hand tracking with VR. For example, one of our writers, Harry Baker, recently synced up his physical piano to a SideQuest app and used it to learn how to play the Tetris theme on it in VR.
Acosta says he’s thinking of taking Unplugged: Air Guitar to Kickstarter to crowdfund further development. The current idea is an evolution of an idea he explored several years ago with Vive wands and Oculus Touch controllers. You can see the earlier “Rock The Stage” idea in the video below:
As of this writing Quest hand tracking software is still firmly in the experimental category. Facebook is only accepting apps to its Oculus Store that use the Touch controllers and meet their high bar for quality and market viability. But that should change at some point, with some games expected to get new features that’ll make them compatible with the controller-free tracking mode. When that happens we sure hope to see an app like Unplugged available on Quest.
We’ll bring you the latest updates about Unplugged: Air Guitar as we follow the game’s development. You can follow the game’s Twitter account UpluggedVR for updates as well and let us know in the comments below whether you want to see something like this on Quest.
