MyDearest, the Japan-based studio behind the Tokyo Chronos VR series, revealed it’s next VR game, a team shooter called Brazen Blaze.
The studio describes Brazen Blaze as a “3v3 smack & shoot VR action with a heavy focus on close quarter melee combat.”
You’ll be able to “choose from a variety of characters with unique skills to destroy whatever lies in your path to achieve victory,” the game’s Steam page reads.
As seen in the reveal trailer, Brazen Blaze equips players with super-powerful gauntlets that let you dash through the air and destroy buildings, punch your enemy into space, and offers up some unique weapons to do things like shoot mini-missiles, activate large gravity fields, heal friends, etc.
There’s still plenty to learn about Brazen Blaze before its 2024 launch; MyDearest has only said so far that it’s targeting SteamVR headsets, where it will hold the game’s initial closed alpha. The studio’s head of oversees marketing & producer Alberto Moreno however confirmed in the game’s Discord that “Quest 2 can run the game,” which could mean we’re getting a version for Quest 2 and Quest 3 too.
In the meantime, you can request access to the game’s alpha test by joining the Brazen Blaze Discord (invite link), which will be open for signups up until September 24th. Announcements of who gets into the alpha are due on September 28th, with the closed alpha set to take place between October 6th – 8th.
Resolution Games revealed its popular tabletop dungeon-crawling RPG Demeo now features hand-tracking support on Quest 2 and Quest Pro with its latest mixed reality update. It also includes a few new features to its previously released MR mode that are aiming to appeal to both future owners of Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro.
Ahead of Demeo’s confirmed launch-day release on Quest 3 sometime this Fall, Resolution Games announced it’s now pushing out the game’s Mixed Reality 2.0 update, which is available starting today on the Quest 2 and Quest Pro.
Added to Demeo last Fall, the game’s mixed reality mode lets players take the gameboard out of the virtual world and into their living rooms. Now, in the game’s Mixed Reality 2.0 update, players can put down their controllers and use their hands to pick up miniatures, play cards, and roll the die.
The update also adds two new MR features: co-location to optimize local mixed reality multiplayer, and decorations (including candles and posters) that can be placed to set the mood.
Notably, the studio says the original Quest won’t be receiving the Mixed Reality 2.0 update, but instead is getting a separate final update, bringing ongoing support for the game on Quest 1 to a close. Cross-play support for Quest 1 has also been discontinued.
Demeo Battles, the game’s upcoming PvP mode, is set to feature a similar MR mode on Quest 2, Quest 3, and Quest Pro when it launches later this year, Resolution Games says.
At the moment, Resolution Games says it’s currently focusing half the studio’s workload on the creation of MR projects. The studio tells Road to VR it has “multiple mixed reality titles actively in development across a number of devices for 2024 and beyond, including several with dedicated controller-free play.”
Additionally, the studio confirmed Demeo is in active development for Apple Vision Pro for “fully virtual as well as mixed reality gameplay,” with a flatscreen version planned for release on Mac.
It’s been nearly five years since we played the Border Bots VR demo, then called ‘Border Patrol’, which first introduced the game’s undoubtedly Papers, Please (2013)-inspired border guard simulation. Now the full VR game has an official launch date on PSVR 2 and SteamVR headsets.
Border Bots VR is coming to PSVR 2 and SteamVR on September 28th, with a Meta Quest 2 release slated to arrive early next year, the developers say.
Created by Team17 Digital and Paw Print Games in association with vTime Games, Border Bots VR tasks you with some pretty standard stuff for a border patrol agent: analyzing documents for discrepancies, checking robots for unauthorized modifications, confiscating forbidden items, etc.
You’ll also get to power up with an array of handy gadgets such as a 3D printer, barcode scanner, and contraband detector as you rise up the corporate ladder.
The studios also released a new gameplay trailer that gives a first glimpse at life in the game’s robotic future.
You can wishlist Border Bots VR on Steam and PSVR 2 today.
Waltz of the Wizard (2019), the single-player spellcasting experience for SteamVR, Quest, and the original PSVR, is bringing its magical exploration and dungeon crawling to PSVR 2 next month.
Waltz of the Wizard started out life as a casual exploration game that put you at the top of a very Hogwarts-inspired castle spire. There, you combine arcane ingredients into a boiling cauldron with the help of an ancient talking skull, unleashing spells upon a fully interactive and mysterious world using technologies like voice interaction and gestures.
Introduced later in the ‘Natural Magic’ expansion, Waltz of the Wizard essentially tacked on a pretty substantial dungeon crawling game that tasks you with mastering arcane spells so you can also take on a dungeon of baddies.
New to the list of features is the addition of PSVR 2’s eye-tracking as an input method. We haven’t seen exactly what the studio has up its sleeve there, but it seems like it will at very least allow you to visually select baddies before blasting them to bits with your magical spells. There’s also set to be asymmetric co-op on PS5, letting you team up with a non-VR player to let you take on dungeons.
The studio says its PSVR 2 version includes:
Cutting-edge voice, eyes- and gesture interaction abilities
Large campaign with storyline, combat and challenges
Hundreds of voice interactions (English)
Infinite level generation mode for endless fun
Eye-tracking interactions with characters and magic
Dozens of unique haptic effects (rumble, trigger, head)
Team up with a friend in asymmetric co-op!
Aldin Dynamics says Waltz of the Wizard is coming to PSVR 2 October 3rd, 2023. You can wishlist it on the PlayStation Store here.
Another Axiom, the studio behind the viral VR indie hit Gorilla Tag, has revealed the first glimpse of its next project. ‘Project A2’ is an ambitious spiritual successor to the now shuttered Echo VR, and a full-circle moment for the studio.
With its low-fi graphics and simple gameplay, you might not think it but Gorilla Tag is one of the most popular Quest games ever. In fact, it holds the most reviews of any VR game on the platform and is also one of the best-rated free games.
While Gorilla Tag is still going strong (if not growing), the studio behind the game, Another Axiom, is already working on something new.
‘Project A2’, its codename, is shaping up to look like a spiritual successor to Echo Arena, the popular VR sport that was infamously shuttered by Meta.
The studio published this first in-development glimpse of the game which shows something undoubtedly like Echo VR both in look and feel:
Understand this is a work-in-progress. We’ve built a talented team, but this game won’t ship until late next year at the earliest.
Early access will give you a behind-the-scenes peek on how game development is made, gray block-out environments, programmer assets, all while the final look of the game hasn’t been established. You’ll see level layouts that will never ship, mechanics that are too OP, design explorations, lots of bugs and fun things in between.
This is not a beta … this is early access.
However, this is the fun part of game development and we are excited to bring you in.
Echo VR Evolved
But this isn’t just an Echo VR remake. Another Axiom has an ambitious plan to make ‘Project A2’ a much more social VR experience by incorporating and expanding some of Gorilla Tag’s underappreciated innovations.
Yes, GorillaTag has a novel locomotion and capitalizes on the seemingly innate human experience of ‘tag’, but the game’s seamless social structure—where game lobbies are ‘places’ and changing game modes is as natural as walking between rooms—is another key element to its success.
In the message on the studio’s Discord server, the developers explain the game’s structure.
Stations: Travel through a fleet of stations to find your community. Once arrived, float or take one of the many high speed systems to different casual game modes. However, if larger arena sport games are more your style, then find your way to one of the many stadiums. Hang out in the bleachers with your friends to cheer on your favorite players, commentate from the casters’ booth, or float through the locker rooms to join in on the action.
The studio plans to give ‘Project A2’ a seamless social structure, where game maps and modes are realized as ‘stations’ that players can navigate between by traveling through the game world. Don’t like how the people are playing in one station? Wander off and find a new group of players down the hall.
This social structure can lead to the kind of happenstance networking that delights us in the real world; maybe you’re wandering down the hall, peek into a station, and hear a funny conversation that has nothing to do with the itself game, but you decide to pop in and join the group for some laughs.
In essence it sounds like the studio wants to structure the game as its own sort of mini-metaverse—a ‘miniverse’, perhaps? It’s not terribly different from something like Rec Room or VR Chat, except there’s a greater emphasis on making navigation between ‘places’ more natural.
Your Domain
The studio also plans to give players wide-reaching control over ‘Project A2’, allowing them to create their own stations that they can adjust as they see fit.
“[…] players can run their own servers, control their own stations, host their own rule sets, moderate and customize the look and feel of, activities, posters, game modes and more,” the studio wrote. Not to mention plans for a level editor, allowing people to build interesting new maps to attract players to their specific station.
Full Circle
Image courtesy Another Axiom
‘Project A2’ is a full-circle moment for the studio. It’s co-founder, Kerestell Smith, has said that Echo VR—before it was shut down—was his original inspiration for Gorilla Tag.
“[…] Echo VR was the first game that really made me certain VR was going to be transformative. I got so into it that I started competing, which I had never done before, and my team, Eclipse, ended up winning the first two championships,” Smith has said. It’s unique zero-G arm-based locomotion was one of the key inspirations for Gorilla Tag’s movement system.
Another of the studio’s co-founders, David Neubelt worked at Ready at Dawn as one of the leads on Echo VR, and has since gone on to join Another Axiom.
Now that the game has been shuttered, Smith, Neubelt, and the rest of the studio actually have a shot at resurrecting a spiritual successor to the game they loved—for themselves and the community that was left behind when Echo VR was shut down.
New & Improved?
While ‘Project A2’ could revive the essence of Echo VR, it will be interesting to see how players of the original game and those of Gorilla Tag receive Another Axiom’s spin on zero-G locomotion.
Fundamentally the studio appears to be building on the foundation of Gorilla Tag’s movement (which, as we mentioned, was inspired by Echo VR’s movement!); but ‘Project A2’ will make some key tweaks, the studio writes:
Learn more about our new approach to zero-g movement. We’re targeting human scale speeds with more physicality, hand-based collision, sliding, and paddle-based momentum mechanics, all while using very few controller inputs. We have removed the ability to grab flat walls, only allowing grabbing on bars and handles that your fingers could wrap around. We hope this model will follow people’s expectations of how hands work in real life, while adding depth and a high skill ceiling by layering multiple physical mechanics together.
In a way, this system sounds like a fusion of both Echo VR’s movement (where players could grab and push off of any wall) and Gorilla Tag’s movement (where players can’t grab onto any wall, any have to move themselves purely with momentum).
– – — – –
With the success of Gorilla Tag, Another Axiom has set a very high bar for themselves. Can ‘Project A2’ achieve similar levels of success, or will Gorilla Tag remain the studio’s flagship game? Only time will tell, as the studio says it doesn’t plan to ship ‘Project A2’ until late 2024 “at the earliest.”
Fast Travel Games gave us a hands-on with Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice on Quest 2, the studio’s upcoming single-player adventure RPG set in the ‘World of Darkness’ universe. The vertical slice offered up an intriguing look into the game’s stealth combat mechanics, all of which feel pretty Hitman-esque, albeit with a sufficiently paranormal bend—not to mention a lot more VR-native design than Hitman 3’s VR mode.
In Vampire: The—ok, for brevity’s sake let’s just call it VMJ—players embark on an adventure to figure out who killed their sire and reclaim a stolen relic in the dark underbelly of Venice, Italy.
Arriving in Venice via gondola, I learn that my name is Justice—which admittedly isn’t the best name for a blood-sucking vampire who kills indiscriminately, but I digress. My vampire dad, Banu Haqim, was murdered and it’s my job to get through what I’m told will be a “gritty main narrative” and a number of side missions as I track down the culprits and unravel the game’s story.
Image courtesy Fast Travel Games
The demo offered up two partial levels: a slice of the tutorial level where I learn to move around, teleport from place to place, and suck blood by putting my literal mouth on a bad dude’s neck, and a more substantial mission that drops me right into what is probably the middle of the game, giving me access to a variety of combat tools and paranormal powers.
The tutorial level was fairly quick, teaching me how to teleport across canals and precarious window ledges. I found myself starting out in apartments, looting drawers and cupboards to find notes and other found items, and zapping around using my vampiric agility to scale buildings and execute a limited swath of attacks on some fairly brainless AI.
Image courtesy Fast Travel Games
In the demo’s next level, I got a brief taste of the three vampiric disciplines, which are supposed to be purchasable in-game via earned XP, letting so you customize your playstyle. These include:
Cloak of Shadows: Sneak up on enemies, blend into the environment, and turn almost invisible.
Cauldron of Blood: A powerful but noisy attack. Boil the blood of victims until their messy end. Very likely lethal.
Shadow Trap: Place a portal to the underworld on the ground, then close it on victims, dragging them into Oblivion.
To switch between disciplines, I simply press X on my left controller, then hover over the respective icon mid-air. Each of them makes a certain amount of sense, as they offer up chances for quiet melee or escape, loud and distracting mid-range attacks, and comparatively quieter distance attacks that you need to time correctly to set off properly.
While not a shooter as such, there’s also a hand-worn crossbow which come with two types of bolts: Corrosive and Oblivious Sleep. Each bolt has to be apparated into thin air, and loaded, so you can’t just fire away willy nilly.
Image courtesy Fast Travel Games
And the shooting experience doesn’t cheapen things either. Corrosive bolts make noise and corrode metal chains, but don’t harm enemies, while Oblivious Sleep bolts put mortals to sleep for a bit, giving you enough time to scurry away and nab those extra points for completing your objective without killing anyone.
That said, you can accidentally kill baddies, but only if you screw up selecting your paranormal powers, or by drinking a person dry, both of which can screw up your end mission rating.
Image courtesy Fast Travel Games
It’s still uncertain how large the game’s discrete maps are based on those two levels alone, but I’ll say at least the game’s fantasy version of Venice does a pretty spectacular job of replicating the storied island’s labyrinthine pathways and claustrophobic buildings. It certainly feels big. It also thematically purges the city of the throngs of ever-present tourists, making it feel much more like the Venice you’d imagine a vampire coven would call home, and not a German family looking for gelato nearby St. Mark’s Square.
It’s also still early days for VMJ in terms of polish. Graphics are good and the set pieces feel very much like finished products, although I feel like the demo was pushing the compute envelope for Quest 2 somewhat, making it difficult to even record a session without crashing. Avatar hand movements still feel like they need some sort of smoothing to correct for player jitteriness, and some of the object interaction still feels a little flighty as well. Fast Travel is a trusted name in VR development though, so it’s likely these issues will be solved, or reduced significantly before launch.
In the end, it will be really interesting to see how the whole package comes together. Will it be a big and sprawling game with multiple solutions to mission objectives like its Hitman-style gameplay might suggest? Will it provide the goth-kid within me enough of a vampiric thrill while not being too schlocky, like a lot of the Masquerade stuff can be at times? We’ll find out soon enough, as Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice is slated to launch on Quest 2, Quest 3, Quest Pro and PSVR 2 on November 2nd, priced at $30.
In the meantime, check out the gameplay video below to see some of the action I described above:
Funktronic Labs released a massive update today to its roguelike shooter The Light Brigade (2023), which includes new player classes, tactical items, power-ups, levels and more.
Called the ‘Memories of War’ Update, the new content drop is rolling out today to SteamVR, Quest 2, and PSVR 2, including a bunch of new stuff.
Check out what’s in the update below, courtesy of Funktronic Labs:
The Engineer: a new player class that deploys pilotable drones
The Breacher: a new shotgun-wielding player class, by popular request!
New tactical items and power-ups to find on runs or stock up in the shop: including flare gun, cigarettes/cigars (for style), equipable helmets to block damage, new health flasks, power-up syringes, and more)
New hand-crafted levels between procedurally generated stages
New shooting range mini-game
Game balancing and fixes
The Light Brigade is a roguelike shooter that mashes up fantasy ghosties with real-world weapons, making it feel like a spiritual successor to In Death: Unchained. The game was already noted for a high variety of upgrades and array of WWII-era weaponry, so today’s update is really only throwing more of the good stuff at us, making the already really great game even better.
Alvo VR (2021), the PvP shooter that offers up some CS:GO-inspired gameplay, is coming to PSVR 2 in September, as well as SteamVR headsets soon afterwards.
Publishers OutsideIn Entertainment say Alvo is slated to arrive on PSVR 2 on September 14th, 2023.
There’s also a new launch trailer that shows off the shooter’s multiplayer action, which in the PSVR 2 version is said to include enhanced dynamic lighting, “stunning 4k resolution,” and head and controller haptics.
Alvo has included cross-play between the original PSVR, Quest 2 versions, and Pico headsets. A SteamVR version is also coming, although it’s still uncertain when. The game’s Steam page says it’s “coming soon,” and will offer cross-play with all supported headsets.
For previous owners of the game on PSVR, the studio says you can upgrade to the PSVR 2 version for a fee of $5. Keep an eye on its PSVR 2 Store page for more information on how closer to its September 14th launch.
Polyarc Games, the studio behind hit single-player adventures Moss (2019) and Moss: Book II (2022), released Glassbreakers: Champions of Moss in early access today, a new 1v1 real-time battler set in our favorite pint-sized pal’s woodland universe.
To boot, today’s the first time the studio showed Glassbreakers in action, debuting the first real gameplay video alongside the announcement that early access is now available on Quest 2 and Quest Pro.
In Glassbreakers, players choose a combination of three Champions, each of which have their own unique abilities. Go head-to-head with friends in private games, or directly into matchmaking so you can duke it out with similarly skilled players. Check out the trailer below:
We haven’t gone hands-on yet, although here’s how Polyarc design director Chris Bourassa describes the action:
“Because this is VR, we literally place the opposing player across from you which brings a deep sense of immersion and competitive spirit to Glassbreakers that you can’t experience in other games,” says Bourassa. “When you play Glassbreakers, there’s an added level of strategic gameplay that needs to be considered as you can see in real-time where your opponent is looking, what Champions they’re grabbing, and where they are moving them. It really brings real-time gaming to another level.”
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Image courtesy Polyarc Games
Image courtesy Polyarc Games
Image courtesy Polyarc Games
Image courtesy Polyarc Games
Image courtesy Polyarc Games
If you want to jump into early access right now, you’ll find Glassbreakers over on App Lab for free. Polyarc says a SteamVR version is slated to launch sometime later this year, which we hope will also include cross-play.
Between today and September 4th, Glassbreakers is also hosting a Bonus XP Event, which will feature tokens for skin dyes, unique player masks, banners, and crests.
Meta’s social VR platform took a big step outside of Quest-exclusivity late last month, as the company launched a closed beta for Horizon Worlds on standard web browsers and Android. A version for iOS is now confirmed to arrive in “the coming weeks.”
Update (September 15th, 2023): Meta announced that in addition to rolling out early access version of Horizon Worlds on Android and web browsers, that iOS access is due to arrive in “the coming weeks.” For now, iOS users can play via Safari, however it seems the company is also set to include access directly in-app, as with the Android version. Access is still invite-only, which you can sign up for here.
The same country restrictions apply, only allowing access in the following regions: Canada, France, Iceland, Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The previous version of the article below incorrectly stated that the browser version wasn’t available yet, however it actually arrived during the launch of Android access late last month. This has been updated in the body.
Original Article (August 28th, 2023): You won’t find Horizon Worlds on Google Play. Users taking part in the closed beta can directly launch the app through the Quest Android app. It’s also available through web browsers on both mobile and desktop. On desktop, Meta recommends Google Chrome, Safari, and Microsoft Edge, and says Firefox is currently not supported.
X (formerly Twitter) user Lunayian was apparently one of those chosen few, showing off a brief hands-on in the Super Rumble lobby, Meta’s first-party hero shooter revealed late last month.
At the time of this writing, the standard geolocation restrictions are still in effect for Horizon Worlds, with only users in the following countries able to access the platform: Canada, France, Iceland, Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
When it does roll out to more locations and platforms though, it will be better positioned to actually compete with the most successful metaverse apps, such as Rec Room, Roblox, and VR Chat, all of which have benefited from releasing on essentially every major platform worldwide—VR headsets and traditional platforms included. Undoubtedly, Meta is looking to replicate this success with Horizon Worlds, as it is now offering up better (and decidedly more sticky) first-party content like Super Rumble.
We’re sure to learn more about new Horizon Worlds features at the company’s annual Connect developer conference soon, which takes place September 27th, steaming both online and in-person for a select few at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters.
