Flat Head Studio announced at UploadVR’s Summer Showcase today that its time-bending puzzle shooter We Are One is set to be published by veteran VR studio Fast Travel Games, and is arriving on “all major VR platforms.”
We Are One is all about using time loops to blast your way through mechanical enemies hellbent on destroying mother nature.
“With cleverly designed action puzzles, We Are One provides beginners and the most seasoned VR gamers with endless challenges. Just make sure you coordinate your plan of attack with your own clones – if you fail, you have no one to blame but all the different versions of yourself,” the studio says.
First revealed in February and published as a demo on Quest App Lab, the full version of We Are One is said to feature over 50 action-packed levels, cloning and time looping, and an environmental story amidst bleak industrial landscapes.
We also named We Are One one of our top 10 demos from Steam Next Fest back in February, noting that it features a mobile arcade game feel that fans of Angry Birds VR will probably like.
Although supported headsets are still uncertain, “all major VR platforms” typically means Meta Quest 2, SteamVR headsets, and PSVR (or PSVR 2). There’s no release date yet, however you can wishlist the game on Steam now and join the game’s Discord (invite link).
Whether it’s time-travelling or time looping, virtual reality (VR) videogames have continually played with this mechanic, providing some truly head-scratching puzzles. The likes of Wandererhead down the more traditional route of travelling back in time to alter pivotal events whilst Transposeoffers a far more mind-bending experience with copies of yourself. That ability to buddy up is central to Flat Head Studios’ latest puzzler, We Are One, where success means making sure your past self doesn’t cock up.
We Are One – Image credit: Flat Head Studio
Previously known as Help Yourself, We Are One is a time loop shooter where the aim is to shoot a variety of enemies before they kill you, before you run out of ammo; and most importantly of all, before you run out of time.
Starting from a lofty position where you can survey the environment you’ll be able to select from a number of teleport points. Some may offer cover, other’s provide shields to repel projectiles but generally, you need guns and ammo to complete each level. As mentioned, puzzles revolve around the use of combining your various selves together, so one may have access to the gun but no ammo or you may need to protect a past version of yourself to complete a particular task.
Whilst it sounds complicated Flat Head Studios has done a great job of gently building up your familiarity with the mechanics. There’s no locomotion to worry about, so you can focus on your surroundings – which as you can see from the screenshots are quite striking between your colourful green character against the black and white environment. In fact, the mechanics are fairly simple, all you need to remember is that time resets once you leave one spot and head to another.
We Are One – Image credit: Flat Head Studio
This sets up some awesome sequences where early on you’re passing the gun up to yourself on a higher platform or catching it mid-air to pop the final enemy. Of course, you need to make sure you don’t muck up by fumbling a throw or getting shot. Should that happen you get the option to completely restart the puzzle or overwrite your last position – (and only your last position).
The prologue has a decent selection of levels to keep you busy, with the full game to feature a story mode, a level editor and more. It may have only been a taster of what’s to come but every level was enjoyable, offered a new twist from the last, and made progression really fun. There’s something quite satisfying about seeing your past selves working together, especially when it’s one of the latter, trickier puzzles.
If you own a Meta Quest 1 or 2 then you may have already played We Are One, as a beta has been available via AppLab and SideQuest since last year. Today, Flat Head Studios has progressed the title even further with the launch of the free prologue. This updates the Meta Quest version with new environments, better lighting, enhanced visual effects, more levels and other tweaks whilst making this early portion of the title available to PC VR owners.
We Are One is slated for an official launch later in 2022 and gmw3 can’t wait to see the final version in action.
