Transpose is one of the best VR puzzle games on the market and you can grab it entirely for free this weekend (from today April 10-13) on Steam. All you need is a PC VR headset and you’re good to go.
Free weekends aren’t rare on Steam, but usually when they happen they’re more like extended demos and you lose access to the games after the weekend period is over. In this case, if you redeem it for free this weekend, you actually get to keep it forever in your digital library as if you had bought it.
Developer Secret Location revealed the news yesterday on Twitter. The move is a response to current efforts by governments around the world to insist on people staying home as much as possible, limiting travel, and avoiding contact with people outside of your own household to undercut the spread of the coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19.
Thankfully, the puzzle genre is a natural fit for VR. It’s one of the most well-represented genres with several amazing games on every platform. Back when we reviewed Transpose in late 2018, it felt like a revelation. For me personally, I think it’s probably one of my all-time favorite VR games.
What makes Transpose unique is that you record yourself doing things and then have those actions played back by apparitions that act as echos of your past actions. Combining multiple echos with your real-time movements is key to solving the game’s 30+ levels.
Transpose is a stunning VR puzzle game that elevates the genre and delivers an out-of-body-like experience about manipulating gravity and bending time. There isn’t much of a story to follow and not all of the puzzles are as satisfying as the rest, but fans of the genre would be doing themselves a disservice to not play this excellent adventure from Secret Location.
On Steam Transpose has official support for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index, and Windows MR headsets, but Oculus Quest via Link and any other SteamVR headset (such as Pimax) should work fine as well. Normally, Transpose costs $19.99.
Let us know if you grab it this weekend and what you think down in the comments below!
Many of the best VR puzzle games, such as Transpose and A Fisherman’s Tale, use VR in novel ways to bend your mind and challenge your intellect, so The Room VR is rather muted by comparison. But what it lacks in brain-busting creativity it more than makes up for with a genuinely gripping narrative, excellent production values, and just good old-fashioned puzzles.
Fireproof Games have been making entries in The Room series for eight years now and each of their past games are some of the best you can play on mobile devices, so they’re a studio accustomed to getting the most out of new gaming platforms.
The tricky thing about reviewing a game like The Room is that the sense of continuous discovery is the crux of what makes it so special. You’re more than welcome to watch the gameplay video above, which includes the first segment of the game covering almost 10 minutes (although I’d wager it will take closer to a half hour if you didn’t watch it and went in blind) but I’m hesitant to show anything else. Going in blind is crucial to get the most enjoyment out of The Room VR.
Everything from the voice acting, environmental designs, object interactivity, and sense of existing in a living, breathing world are top notch here. Many VR puzzle games whisk players away to fantastical settings to sidestep the need to make places look and feel real and lived in, but that grounded nature is what makes The Room VR so good.
You begin the game on a balcony overlooking a very average city in a very average old-timey police station. There’s a projector rattling, a desk with some papers, and a sense of believability that’s missing from lots of VR spaces. This is what makes the paranormal aspects and otherworldly interference feel so intrusive and mysterious: it’s as if the real world itself is getting warped.
In The Room VR you’re tasked with investigating the disappearance of a renowned Egyptologist after a police investigation comes up with nothing. The adventure that follows spans around 5-6 hours, depending on how quickly you solve some of the more intricate puzzles, and spans much more than just the confines of a handful of boring police station offices.
What really sets The Room VR apart from its contemporaries is how effortlessly it melds various other things into its puzzle solving and exploration. Games like Form do a good job of subtly implying its narrative and Transpose is almost entirely esoteric in its delivery, but The Room VR wisely unravels a truly Sherlock Holmes-worthy drama with you at the center.
Visually, The Room VR is a feast for the eyes. Playing on PC with Oculus Rift S revealed great details in the textures, like when reading books such as the one pictured above for clues, and everything in the environments was extremely rich with detail. Obviously the Quest version doesn’t look quite as good, but I’ve played it on that platform as well and have no problems labeling it as one of the best looking games on Quest for sure.
Perhaps the biggest fault with The Room VR overall though is that, like a lot of puzzle games, it does sometimes struggle with pacing and difficulty. As intriguing as much of the story is, it would often feel like I’d go long stretches of time with nothing but my own frustration with getting stuck to keep me company. Getting stuck in a puzzle game in VR feels a bit more aggravating than in non-VR games because taking a break or occupying your mind with something else isn’t as simple as looking away or checking social media on your phone.
Once the headset is on you’re locked in which usually means solving puzzles more quickly since it has your full attention, but sometimes it means your frustration is compounded instead. On the flip side of that, it does give you plenty of time to solve things without holding your hand, which can be refreshing if you enjoy brain teasers.
Another impressive bit is how deftly The Room VR juggles so many different atmospheres and themes. It’s at once a detective mystery, an archaeological adventure, and an otherworldly thriller all wrapped together.
Comfort
Some people will definitely take issue with the movement system, since the game is entirely built upon node-based teleportation and snap turning. But realistically it makes sense for a puzzle game since all of the actual gameplay can be done standing in place interacting with your hands. You don’t really need to sprint around rooms using smooth locomotion at all. Plus, it’s got the added bonus of eliminating the guess work of blindly searching a room for what to do next since you can surmise that important things are probably at each of your teleport nodes. That being said, it would’ve been great to explore areas more freely.
One of the game’s most important mechanics, Spirit Vision, reminded me of the Lens of Truth from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. When you hold the lens up to your eye it lets you peer into the past and look through into another dimension to reveal clues and traces within the world around you. You can see an example of what that looks like in the trailer thumbnail up above.
The Room VR: A Dark Matter Review Final Verdict
The Room VR: A Dark Matter is an exemplary puzzle game that not only serves as a prime example of what makes puzzle games so compelling in the first place, but elevates the genre via VR with supreme interactivity, excellent visuals, and a palpably mysterious atmosphere. It’s only held back slightly by some minor frustrations with pacing and difficulty, but is otherwise one of the best puzzle games available in a VR headset. It carries the torch lit by Myst and demonstrates how engrossing a puzzle game can be when done right.
From Immersion VR, the same developers behind The Ancients, Extreme Escapes is an upcoming VR puzzle game that will support “all major headsets.” The footage shown above on Reddit is from the Oculus Quest version, but tethered headsets like the Rift S will have “better visuals” according to the developer on Reddit.
What’s notable about the brief bit of gameplay, other than the obviously impressive visuals, is just how interactive everything is. You can see the player reaching out and touching with tons of objects in the environment. It looks like a fiddler’s paradise in that floating contraption. For more, you can see this three-month old beta gameplay video too.
Stylistically I’m getting strong Red Matter vibes, which is certainly a compliment for the artists on the project, and gameplay looks a bit like an expanded and more free-form version of I Expect You To Die.
If puzzles and escape games are your jam, then you definitely need to keep an eye on The Room VR: A Dark Matter, which releases later this month on all major VR platforms. Check out our hands-on and interview right here for more on that one.
We don’t know a release date yet for Extreme Escapes, nor do we have any other concrete details, but the footage looked too promising to ignore. We’ve reached out to the developer for more details and will follow-up with more coverage when we hear back.
Don’t Knock Twice developer Wales Interactive is returning to VR with a retooled version of its 2016 puzzle game, Soul Axiom.
Originally announced for PC release earlier this month, Soul Axiom Retooled does what it says on the tin; enhances the original version of the cyberpunk puzzler with new features and fixes. As confirmed today, though, the game will also add optional VR support to the experience for the first time.
In the game, you assemble a range of unique powers to solve various puzzles in a neon-lit future. Wales Interactive promises multiple endings and between 20 to 30 hours of play.
Along with VR support, Retooled will also add new features like an improved objective system, checkpoints for bigger levels and a revised narrative. It’s also launching at a lower price of $12.99 and comes with digital artbook and soundtrack DLC for free. The original version of the game, has, however, been removed from the Steam store.
It’s one of a number of VR games released by Wales Interactive over the past few years, though the studio doesn’t have the greatest track record. We thought Don’t Knock Twice was a by the numbers horror game, for example. Soul Axiom itself wasn’t particularly well received when it first launched, though hopefully the improvements added in Retooled will go a long way to fix any issues.
Soul Axiom Retooled will support the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Valve Index and Windows Mixed Reality headsets when it launches on Steam on February 27. That’s next week! Will you be picking the game up? Let us know in the comments below.
The road toUploadVR’s Best of 2019 awards starts here! We’re getting close to revealing our Overall VR Game/Experience of the Year after counting down to the reveal of our full list of categories and nominees soon. Today we’re looking at A Fisherman’s Tale, which is a mind-bending VR puzzler that consistently surprises with its inventive mechanics.
A Fisherman’s Tale is developed by Innerspace and published by Vertigo Games. In it you play as a tiny little puppet in a tiny little lighthouse. Located in the middle of your home is an even tinier model version of that same lighthouse that you can lean down to look at and see a replica of your surroundings, complete with a smaller version of yourself inside the replica that matches everything you do. And to complete the loop if you look out your window you’ll see a giant version of yourself in a larger home that’s also matching your every move.
What follows in A Fisherman’s Tale is a mesmerizing experience that shifts perspectives and really forces you to think outside the proverbial and literal box more than just a few times. It’s the rare sort of experience that leaves you mouth agape, in awe, and constantly muttering to yourself, “Oh wow, that was cool,” from start to finish.
The poetic narration, delightful visuals, cozy setting, and self-aware narrative beats help sell the experience even further. Unlike most games in this genre, in A Fisherman’s Tale you don’t need to be a savant at spatial awareness and tricky puzzle solving to find pleasure here — it’s just as much about making you think as it is about subverting your expectations.
“This isn’t simply swapping tiles and pushing buttons in order; it’s genuinely stimulating puzzling. Early levels have you bending your brain to the breaking point as you reason your way through the model paradox. At one point you turn a hefty obstacle into a level-progressing key. Later on, you repurpose some seemingly useless furniture to reveal hidden secrets. Oh, and then you turn a fish into a taxi service. Brilliant!
This is the kind of reality-defying gameplay that thrives in this medium.”
The only real negatives we found during our time with A Fisherman’s Tale is that it just feels a bit too short, coming in just around two hours, but the ride itself is amazing while it lasts.
Earlier this year at Gamescom we got a glimpse of an intriguing new VR game named Down The Rabbit Hole. Developed by Wands studio, Cortopia, the game boasted a few unique ideas that helped it stick in the mind. This new video showcases some of those features.
We just debuted this clip during our Holiday VR Showcase earlier in the week. In it, the developer walks us through an overview of its new game, which is incredibly different to Wands. Down The Rabbit Hole plays out a little like a picturebook in VR; you control an unnamed protagonist (specifically not Alice) as she explores Wonderland, completing tasks for a strange assortment of characters.
In the game, players move between panel-like scenes, navigating the protagonist from a third-person perspective. You grab roots protruding from scenes to pull yourself around environments but you can also reach into scenes to solve puzzles and occasionally you’ll also embody characters to interact with others. We also love how the video above plays with scale and utilizes some of the more familiar characters.
When we tried the game at Gamescom, we thought it had a fascinating mix of ideas, though some of its puzzles were a little on the obscure side. That could all change when we’re given the freedom to play the game outside of a demo booth, though.
Down The Rabbit Hole is due for release on PC VR, Oculus Quest and PSVR headsets in Q1 2020. Are you looking forward to tumbling into Wonderland in VR? Let us know in the comments below!
I Expect You To Die’s generous supply of free missions finally wraps up this month.
Developer Schell Games just announced that the final free mission, Operation: Death Engine, launches on all platforms on November 19. As with other missions, the new level will be entirely free to download.
Operation: Death Engine has been teased for some time. It finally takes players to space for a final showdown with Dr. Zor. You’re tasked with dismantling the deadly… death engine. You’ll need to infiltrate a space station and avoid whatever perils stand in your way. Check out the first trailer for the mission below.
“Without the ingenuity and skill of our development team, I Expect You To Die would not be the success that it is today,” Schell Games CEO Jesse Schell said of the final level’s launch. “For the sake of fans everywhere, the team hopes to be able to continue this franchise into the future.”
Indeed, it’s rare to see a VR game three years into its life get this level of support. I Expect You To Die first launched with support for HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift before making its way to other platforms.
Given that this is the last level, Schell’s comments seem to suggest a sequel to the game is on the cards. Currently, Schell Games has its hands busy with the Early Access version of Until You Fall. The VR sword combat game continues to see plenty of updates and is planned for release on Oculus Quest and PSVR, too.
I Expect You To Die is available on all PC VR headsets, Quest and PSVR too for $24.99.
Another big release date for you following today’s Doctor Who news. This time it’s for Fast Travel Games’ The Curious Tale Of The Stolen Pets.
The adorable little puzzler arrives on November 14 for $14.99/€14.99/£11.99. It will launch on pretty much everything: Oculus Quest, PSVR and PC VR headsets. Get a glimpse of the game below and try not to let your heart melt.
We revealed Curious Tale at our E3 VR Showcase in June. It’s a cutesy puzzle game in which the player revisits childhood memories with their grandfather. Each level is presented as a diorama with plenty of puzzles to solve. We’ve been hands-on with the first level and fell for the game’s incredible animations, which look like a stop motion film come to life. It was enough to win it an award at last month’s Raindance Film Festival.
November 14 is the same day that Insomniac Games and Oculus Studios’ Stormland touches down. Doctor Who: The Edge Of Time is also coming to all platforms two days earlier on November 12. Busy week for VR fans, then!
Curious Tale will be Fast Travel’s second VR game, following up from last year’s Apex Construct. Elsewhere, the studio is co-developing Budget Cuts 2 with Neat Corp. According to today’s press release, that’s still planned for launch this year. That window is obviously running out, so expect to hear more news soon.
Will you be picking up The Curious Tale Of The Stolen Pets? Heck, will you be getting all three big releases that week? Let us know in the comments below!
Psychonauts In the Rhombus of Ruin takes place between the events of Psychonauts (2005) and the upcoming Psychonauts 2 due out later this year. Exclusively available in VR, In the Rhombus of Ruin strays from the 3D platformer genre of its flatscreen cousins and harks back to the early days of point-and-click games using a locomotion system that lets you teleport your consciousness into other living creatures.
Developer: Double Fine Available On: Steam (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Windows VR), Oculus Home (Rift) Reviewed On: Oculus Rift Release Date: April 19th, 2018 (Feb. 21st, 2017 on PSVR)
Gameplay
The story picks up exactly where it left off at the end of Psychonauts—with Raz, Lili, Sasha, Milla, and Coach Oleander flying off to rescue Truman Zannotto, the Grand Head of the Psychonauts. For Raz’s first mission as a honest-to-goodness member of the super hero team, you’re taken into the heart of the Rhombus of Ruin, an ultra mysterious and dangerous part of the ocean similar to the Bermuda Triangle. With the rescue party’s plane drawn into the Rhombus of Ruin and held prisoners, you find yourself immobilized with only your psychic abilities to reunite the rest of the Psychonauts, reveal the identity of the mysterious kidnapper, and free Truman before the madness of the Rhombus turns everyone crazy. In short, it’s basically the plot of an animated adventure you might find in theaters or on Cartoon Network.
Despite being kidnapped and having your team put under a mind-bending spell by a mysterious nemesis, the game includes only one (very tame) combat situation while primarily focusing on puzzles. With the ability to teleport your consciousness to any living being in sight, you’ll explore levels and generally solve puzzles through buttons and levers, but also using some of your other psychic skills such as pyrokinesis and a psy-blast, a percussive surge of psychic energy.
image courtesy Double Fine
Puzzles range from extremely simple (find the code) to a little more taxing, but ultimately pretty easy difficulty level. Much to my chagrin, Raz the protagonist is voiced, so you’ll always have that helping hand to lead you through each puzzle. Personally I find this annoying on principle, because if you don’t immediately get something right, you’ll be forced to hear an exclamatory (and entirely unprompted) bit of repeating dialogue to the effect of “I wonder what will happen when I do this obvious solution.” The voice acting itself is very well done however, taking the edge off what might otherwise be a fun-breaking annoyance. In the end, I found the puzzles varied, but too simple to really keep my attention.
Humor is on the campy side, but it’s the sort of corny dad jokes that make you groan, but also smile a bit too; that’s the Psychonauts franchise for you.
Tossing a roll of burning toilet paper to Coach Oleander in his time of need, image courtesy Double Fine
Level design, while only allowing for a straight path through the game, takes you through an interesting assortment of environments. After a while though, the whole forward push through got a little too paint-by-numbers for me, as you teleport from nodes that always appear on cue, be it a fish that conveniently swims into view or a rat that scurries out from a hiding place just in time. Combined with the fact that you’re constantly swept along by Raz’s helpful direction, there’s unfortunately little to no true exploration to be had—a shame considering how inviting everything seems.
In the end, I found the 1.5 hour gameplay length on the short side, including an abrupt ending that left me a little deflated.
Immersion
One of the first things you notice about the Psychonauts inRhombus of Ruin is just how good everything looks. The art style totally captures an incredible vibe that actually makes you feel like you’ve stepping straight into a late ’90s Saturday morning cartoon.
image courtesy Double Fine
The character design is nothing short of masterful, not only making good use of color and texture, but also shows great attention to detail in how characters express themselves. To that effect, I felt the world’s humanoid characters creep a little too close to the uncanny valley—if only because of how human theyacted while still appearing truly bizarre from the 1:1 immersive viewpoint of a VR headset. It’s not something I got too hung up on though, because most of the time you’re zipping from one cartoony animal to the next, or to the occasional diving suit-wearing antagonist.
image courtesy Double Fine
Hand presence is unfortunately nill, as you are a bodiless, handless entity that pops into the minds of other people and species. But even when you should have arms, you don’t, making it a little less immersive than it could have been. Since you don’t have any hands, you interact with the world’s many objects through telekinesis, which fits in well at least.
My primary beef immersion-wise with Rhombus of Ruin is the constant chatter from both Raz and your teammates, but you’ve already heard me gripe enough about that. From the difficulty level to the art style – everything leads me to believe Psychonauts is skewing more for the younger teenage crowd, and let’s face it: those people don’t know when to shut up, so it’s a lot less damning than I make it seem on face value.
Comfort
Gaze-based controls, while fitting the whole psychic ability motif, can be fiddly at moments. Highlighting and selecting an object or node isn’t always an easy task, and I found myself having to use my neck for something it isn’t designed for—as a fine point device that I know with time can lead to neck strain. Because of the relative length of the game, I didn’t have any issues with my neck seizing up, but I wouldn’t want to go in for a 2 hour session if it the game were somehow longer.
Besides that, node teleportation is by far one of the most comfortable ways of moving through a VR game, although it carries with it the usual caveats of limiting the visual continuity, knocking a few ticks from the player’s overall immersion.
Fantastic Contraption (2016), the building puzzler from indie studio Northway Games, is getting its first big update since launch, which includes double the levels and a few new tantalizing features that didn’t make the cut back in April 2016 when it hit Steam.
The free update, dubbed Version 2.0, comes with what Northway calls in a blogpost “a whole new ‘B-Side’ playlist,” which puts the game to 100 levels strong. The creators say the new levels help smooth out the introductory learning curve and add some high-end challenges in the later part of the game.
The ‘B-side playlist’ also includes a number of levels featuring all-new gameplay mechanics: contraption-destroying Cactuses, and Balloons which can carry your creations past obstacles to safety. Northway says the new features should be considered “little teasers […] things that we’ve been working on since version 1.0, way back when VR was just a baby.”
As a result of building support for several different platforms—including Vive, Rift, Windows MR, and PSVR—Northway says that on PC you’ll also be able to play Version 2.0 with a below min-spec computer. Since Valve hasn’t established a minimum spec, and only a recommended spec, we assume the studio is referring to Oculus’ Min Spec, which sets that bar at an NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti / AMD Radeon RX 470 or greater, and an Intel i3-6100 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200, FX4350 or greater (older equivalents included).
Fantastic Contraption is also seeing a 33% permanent price drop, bringing the game from $30 to $20. Check it out on Steam, Oculus Store, Microsoft Store, and PSN.
