Windlands (2016), one of the founding pioneers of modern VR gaming, has made the quiet leap to Oculus Quest this past week where it lives on to finally serve up its dizzying heights and grappling hook-based movement scheme to the standalone headset.
Initially released by indie developer duo Ilja Kivikangas and Simo Sainio as an Oculus Rift DK1 tech demo way back in 2014, Windlands (then called Guardians of the Winds) was one of the first games to introduce the grappling hook locomotion scheme.
After successfully competing an Indiegogo campaign in fall of 2014, the team went on to join Psytec Games to further developer the project into a full-fledged title that offered early VR users their first taste of large, open-ended exploration which challenges the player to navigate up impossible heights hanging in mid-air.
Despite its age, Windlands still proves to be one of the best implementations of grappling hook movement out there, and its lovably low poly aesthetic and cleverly-built environments still manage to feel fresh.
Unlike Windlands 2 (2018), the first in the series doesn’t include combat or bespoke missions outside of making it to the top of the level, so it proves to be less frantic and much more about hitting your stride as you swing from tree to tree. There are plenty of collectibles throughout too, which will have you clambering up some of the most difficult bits of the game for hours.
You can now find Windlands over on both Quest’s native App Lab for $15, which hosts games that haven’t yet made it through Oculus’ review process. It’s also available on PC VR via Steam, the Oculus PC Store, and Viveport, and on PSVR.
One of the first PC VR and PSVR games to ever be released, Windlands, has finally made the jump to Oculus Quest via App Lab.
The first-person platformer from Psytec Games surprise launched on the App Lab store today for $14.99. It contains the full original game that launched on PC and PSVR all the way back in 2016.
Windlands is a platformer in which players operate two grappling hooks. They use these to swing through floating islands, finding collectibles. It was one of VR’s first really intense experiences, pushing the boundaries of comfort to deliver a fast-paced game.
The game did eventually get a sequel, Windlands 2, which was released on PC VR a few years later. It added in co-op support and combat using archery. It’s also due to hit PSVR a little later on this year. No word yet on if Psytec could be working on a Quest version of the sequel as well, but we’ve asked.
Will you be checking out Windlands on Oculus Quest? Let us know in the comments below!
After nearly a year of silence, Psytec Games has confirmed that a Windlands 2 PSVR version is nearly ready to release.
A tweet from the game’s official account — the first since August 2020 — confirmed the news. Windlands 2 had always been planned for PSVR but, given that it’s been well over 2 years since the game’s original PC VR release, we’d assumed those plans had been shelved. Apparently that’s no longer the case.
The Windlands series first came about with the launch of PC VR headsets in 2016. It tasked players with navigating huge environments using a pair of grappling hooks. The game’s intense swinging mechanics made it unique amongst other VR titles at the time, and recent games like Yupitergrad and the upcoming Vertical Shift no doubt owe a debt to it.
Windlands 2 switched things up with boss fights and online cooperative play. We gave the game 7/10 when it first launched, saying it built on its predecessor. “Windlands 2, when at its best, is a delight to play,” we wrote. “Swinging through the air with friends, rhythmically grappling between trees, and feeling the rush of adrenaline as I arc across the sky — all while shooting my bow into the distance — is an unrivaled joy in VR. There’s a great foundation here, but it could have been so much more.”
With a PSVR version now on the way (which, by probably no coincidence, was reconfirmed on the day a new PS5 VR headset was announced), we have to wonder if an Oculus Quest version of the game could be in the works too. We’ll let you know if we hear anything.
Windlands 2 (2018), Psytec Games’ sequel to their high-flying, first-person platformer adventure, is now available on Oculus Rift.
Armed with two grappling hooks and an energy bow, you battle titanic robots and swing your way through a fallen world—a bit like your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man would if the only thing your webs could stick to were tree branches. That’s the short of it at least.
Boasting online co-op with up to three other people, you can either attack the world’s gigantic bosses together, or all on your lonesome if you please. It’s a bit of a tonal change from its solitary zen-like predecessor, but if you liked the original Windlands (2016), this marks your next chance to jump back into a world with a whole new set of difficult parkour maps to explore.
You’ll be treated to a few new bits too, including a genuine story replete with NPCs, some difficult fetch quests, multiplayer races, and combat-focused gameplay that’s poised to set the stage for a series of Windlands titles.
The game is considered a timed exclusive on Rift. Both PSVR and HTC Vive versions should be headed to their respective platforms, which the Psytec Games says should happen sometime in 2019.
In the realm of what you should do for a sequel, Windlands 2 gets a lot right. Just like its predecessor, you still spend most of your time with your arms outstretched, above your head, swinging between trees. You still gasp in desperation as you attempt a last-ditch effort to hook onto that tree just outside your reach as you plummet towards the ground. And you still get frustrated at just how floaty and imprecise the movement mechanics can be from time to time.
But like any good sequel, Windlands 2 is all of that and more. This time around there’s elegant and effortless multiplayer integration for cooperative fun, a lot more action with a brand new bow, and dramatically enhanced visuals that really make the bright, colorful world pop more that ever before. Make no mistake: if you adored Windlands, like many VR early adopters, then you’re gonna find a lot to love in Windlands 2.
Windlands 2 is directly connected to the previous game in terms of lore and setting, but this time around you’re supposed to care a bit more about everything going on around you. There’s an admirable amount of world building going on this time around with lots of characters, an excellent soundtrack, and large areas ripe for exploration, but it all feels like things were placed out of necessity rather than as pieces to a living, breathing society.
For example, all of the environments, which are expansive and full of vertical layers just waiting to be explored, are completely empty. An objective might consist of reaching a handful of checkpoints or collecting a certain number of random doodads before progressing to the next boss fight, but seldom do any of the regions feel alive in the way you might expect.
Traversing the world of Windlands 2 is exhilarating. The simple act of going from point A to point B is often more exciting than even the most intense boss fight in many other VR games. When you’re nailing each grapple and swinging through the air it feels amazing. But then you fall, or miss your landing, or skid off the edge of a platform because it’s nearly impossible to cease your momentum.
In Windlands 2 there really isn’t a punishment for death at all. In fact, you’re expected to fall to your death repeatedly. You’re expected to die so much, in fact, that there is a dedicated respawn button on the controller. Rather than fine tune things like movement accuracy and combat difficulty, the developers at Psytec opted to just diminish punishment for mistakes so much to the point that you can never actually mess up.
Windlands 2 does feature two major additions that weren’t in the previous game: a bow and arrow weapon and co-op multiplayer. Thankfully, both are excellent inclusions that expand on the foundation in logical ways and enhance what already made the premise so much fun.
Obviously adding friends to any game can make it better, but it’s particularly noticeable in this case. The character models are animated wonderfully with accurate joint movements and hand tracking. When swinging through the sky you can see your friends as if they’re streaks of color through the air, emboldening you to keep going faster and higher. It’s quite the rush when you get into a good rhythm.
Combat is fun when you’re dialed in, but can quickly get sloppy and frustrating. The issue is that a bow and arrow is a weapon that demands literal pin-point accuracy, while Windlands 2’s floaty, nearly frictionless controls make it difficult enough to land on a giant, stationary platform, let alone shoot a window-sized panel on a moving robot from a hundred yards away while falling through the air. But when you do, you feel like a God.
I love shooting arrows in VR and I love swinging through the air in VR, so you’d think those two things would go well together, and there is a lot to love with both mechanics individually, but when paired together the faults stick out more.
For all that it did right in terms of making players feel free and powerful as they swung through the sky, the original Windlands felt very much like a tech demo for a movement system that could be used in an otherwise much larger game. I’m not sure Windlands 2 has fully realized that vision just yet, even if it is a step in the right direction.
Final Score:7/10 – Good
Windlands 2, when at its best, is a delight to play. Swinging through the air with friends, rhythmically grappling between trees, and feeling the rush of adrenaline as I arc across the sky — all while shooting my bow into the distance — is an unrivaled joy in VR. There’s a great foundation here, but it could have been so much more. It’s just a shame that it doesn’t have the execution to fully live up to its potential.
Windlands 2 is available for Oculus Rift on September 12th, 2018, for $29.99 (plus a pre-order discount to knock a few bucks off) and is slated for release on HTC Vive and PSVR in early 2019. And check out these official review guidelines to find out more about our process.
As one of the first full-length games for VR, Windlands (2016) pioneered a movement scheme that sends you soaring high into the air, using your grappling hooks to swing from bush to tree in the desolate world that was fractured and destroyed after a planet shaking conflict. The latest Windlands isn’t simply a continuation of the hunt for all-important power crystals and Easter eggs though, now boasting enemies, multiplayer co-op, races, and a classic gaming-inspired story that confronts players with the disastrous forces that wrecked the once prosperous world; it feels like the true beginning of the series.
Developer: Psytec Games Available On:Oculus Store (Rift) – Coming to HTC Vive & PSVR Reviewed On: Oculus Rift Release Date: September, 12th 2018 (Rift), TBD (Vive & PSVR)
Gameplay
Windlands 2 is a first-person VR combat platformer that builds on the lore explored in the first; you don’t need to play the original Windlands to know what’s going on, because all of that’s largely fleshed out in the second installment anyway. The game introduces us to the history of the world and the reasons behind your quest. Here’s the short of it: long ago a dimension-jumping demon destroyed the lizard-people’s world with giant automatons, reducing the alien planet to a barren wasteland. He was slain by your golden-eyed human ancestor though, and generations later, you find yourself as an apprentice of a new class of humans, called ‘guardians’, that are capable of wielding impressive jumping and swinging abilities. You’re on a journey to an island with your master, Tohir, who starts—forgive the pun—showing you the ropes through the puzzle-like configuration of the world. There you battle the dark forces that rise again.
If you thought the addition of combat and NPCs was going to change the amount of platform-jumping and swinging madness seen in the first Windlands, you shouldn’t worry. There’s still plenty of that to go around as you gain one new ability not seen in the game’s pacifist forerunner: bow-shooting.
A timed shooting puzzle, Image courtesy Psytec Games
The new world of Windlands 2 delivers giant bosses, annoying laser-shooting droids, and a few timed shooting challenges to sharpen your new bow-handling ability. And you’ll need those shooting skills too, as bosses fire lasers, energy bombs, homing missiles, and spit out other droids to harass you. By the time you pass the half-way point in the game though, you don’t really see any new attack types, just a higher quantity.
Bow-shooting, while overall good, was at first a fiddly thing, and there’s a few things to know before heading it. There’s a reticle, but your infinite laser arrows have a definite arc affected by gravity, making it more of an indicator of whether you’ve lined up the shot correctly on the x-axis. Activating the bow is handled via Oculus Touch’s grip buttons, and can be deployed while using the grappling hooks, which are mapped to the triggers. Swinging and shooting at the same time, which becomes a necessity in some levels, isn’t as dead simple as I would have hoped, although it’s entirely possible once you get the hang of it. Set as default, the first grip button you activate deploys the bow, while the other hand (using grip) can draw arrows. About half the time I would instinctively activate both grip buttons for a quick shot, and would accidentally switch the bow to my non-dominant hand, something I think could be easily solved by simply checking a box at the beginning of the game. About half-way through, I dug into the advanced settings and found a selector that would allow me to lock the bow to my left hand, relieving the issue entirely. From thereon out, shooting became less and less of a hassle as I got the hang of it.
Unlike the first Windlands, there’s no central hub to return to. The world is a few disparate open areas with distinctive pathways that can take you in different directions, all of which is connected together by a couple of world portals that activate as the result of completing key missions in the storyline, letting you progress through the increasingly perilous biomes; jungle, desert, and mountain. By default, waypoint markers send you to your next objective, and plenty of checkpoint gates are littered along the way to make sure you’re not pulling your hair out at every massive fall. I have very little love for waypoints, but it’s easy to understand why Windlands 2 relies on these as a default to help you navigate through the divergent mass of spaghetti of the game’s map. If there weren’t enough challenges to worry about along the way, I might see it as an overall negative, but in the end it’s a necessary evil so you don’t go clambering up the wrong path and get completely lost. These can also be turned off entirely in the advanced settings.
The story itself is simple, and harks back to a time in classic gaming when quest-givers didn’t ask questions, but rather sent you, the silent protagonist, on your merry way to fetch something important: A to B. I found it a bit too simplistic personally, acting really more as an ends to means: fetch the thing, or kill the thing—so basically the early Zelda games. After a while the fetch quests start to feel a little contrived, and while it didn’t really ruin any of the jumping, swinging and shooting fun of the game, it didn’t really add anything either. It’s a classic story of an evil guy who does evil things because he’s evil, and everyone on your team is a helpful good guy because they’re helpful and good. I’ll soften that some in the Immersion section, because in the end, it’s a tried and true method of giving some structure to the real stars of the show, traversing the moving puzzle that is Windlands 2, and smacking down a few titanic bosses in the process.
That said, there is no leveling mechanic, and no new weapons or grappling hooks, which isn’t really a bad thing in my opinion. You’re simply left with the task of getting better at the game, and aren’t fed any cheaty tools to do so.
Soaring to the next checkpoint, Image captured by Road to VR
Except for the addition of a bow, the basic controls are virtually unchanged from the first Windlands. This may be a bit of a sticking point for some, since the game has a characteristic ‘floatiness’ that can be difficult to master. Landing those far parkour jumps isn’t easy, as you slide across most surfaces, and getting that double-hook swing and transitioning to a single hook whip around is even harder. Judging the distance of those far grappling hook grabs has to become something you intuit after a while.
Then, you can imagine the grappling hooks take a while to master. Both grappling hooks have a reticle that lights up when you come close enough to a leafy object—the only thing your hooks can grab onto in an inhospitable world of sand, rock, and streaming lava pools. I found that more often than not, the max effective range was actually a bit farther than the reticles would have you believe, making for daring saves that can mean the difference between having to repeat an extremely difficult jump and quickly making your way to the objective or level boss. Multitasking a few frantic arrow shots while flying through the air to your next landing point can be really satisfying, although hard depending on how comfortable you get with the movement scheme.
World portal incoming, Image captured by Road to VR
That brings me to difficulty. While there is an easy, medium, and hard mode, these only change how powerful an enemy’s shots are and how accurate they’ll be. On hard mode, you’re given only one direct hit before you’re tossed back to your last checkpoint. This doesn’t change the difficulty of the game’s platforming aspect though, which crescendos in the game’s third and final level. There, every jump has to be near perfect, which is equal parts frustrating and rewarding.
Since you can respawn at your last checkpint ad infinitum without any consequence, boss battles can turn into you slowly chipping away at them without fear of ever really losing anything. Playing through the game mostly alone, I found it took several deaths before I could figure out each bosses attack style, and started exploiting the area’s natural hiding places and angles of attack. Bosses follow a familiar pattern: beat them three times and they’re done. To beat a boss, you simply shoot out the glowing red armor on their bodies, which vary in position and number depending on the boss’ difficulty level. In between these moments, the area is usually filled with droids, which you have to destroy to carry on with the boss battle.
The worm’s underbelly with red targets, Image captured by Road to VR
I would have liked to see more variability in this area, as after a while each enemy starts to feel more of less the same—still pretty exhilarating, but trending toward a standard interaction despite the physical differences of each boss. While the game’s ‘zero penalty’ death scheme mitigates some of the frustration of getting ganked—you pick up in real-time where you last died—this limits the ultimate reward felt after defeating them.
Here’s a quick one-minute clip of a boss battle in the desert world. Yes, I died around a dozen times to chip away at its armor.
Bosses are much more simple to take down with a few more friends on hand though, letting you team up with a max of three other people. Playing with Road to VR’s Ben Lang, who joined my game already in progress, we took down a massive flying ship in about half the time. Beyond making bosses easier to take down, the added ability of having a few friends or strangers in-game inevitably leads to sharing techniques, goading people to hurry up and make more impressive jumps, and talking crap to each other. Multiplayer isn’t required to beat the game, but it’s a really fun touch nonetheless.
Windlands 2 personally clocked in at six and a half hours total, playing only story mode in single-player. That said, you can spend a lot more time hunting hard-to-reach collectibles, or playing the other multiplayer ancillary games like racing on one of the five available tracks, or alternatively playing a ‘collect’ mode where you race to get all of the map’s collectibles and make it to the finish line before you three other competitors. These both were fun places to show off your skills once you’ve finished the game, but with so many multiplayer options available, it’s a danger that servers won’t be populated enough for quick pick-up games.
Immersion
The visual style, while patently low poly-ish, offers up a genuinely beautiful world. Taking a look back to the first Windlands, it’s clear the studio has refined the overall aesthetic to be more varied in both texture and architecture, but it still retains the charm of open vistas and precipitous areas to scramble up.
Character design is ostensibly inspired by Studio Ghibli films, although it features more of a Saturday morning cartoon-quality that you might see on Dragon Ball Z. There isn’t any interaction with NPCs outside of automatically handing over whatever you may have fetched, be it a robot part or a crystal to power a world portal. NPCs tend to gesticulate with their hands, but they never seem to open their mouths to talk. It’s not unnerving, but a bit strange just the same. They’re perfectly useful as quest-givers though, and are both extremely well voice-acted and realized from a design perspective.
Image captured by Road to VR
Positional audio is also extremely well done, with moments where a tinkling Easter egg collectible will drive you mad searching for it, or alternatively send you into a panic as a beeping homing missile closes in on your position.
As for object interaction, there’s no inventory to faff about with, or any objects to handle, so the meat of the game’s immersion plainly rests on the feelings of adrenaline and triumph of clattering up that difficult wall near a pool of insta-death lava, or swinging to that barely-reachable cactus.
Looking out over a steep drop doesn’t illicit the same pit in my stomach after a few minutes of playing as it once did, but I’ve also played through the first Windlands, so if it’s your first experience with the series, soaring through the air and hooking your way to the top is ultimately a really novel experience that just feels right.
Comfort
Windlands 2 has a buffet of comfort options, although since it’s a smooth-forward running and jumping game, it could be intense for newer VR users.
To mitigate this, the game features a few advanced options. There is a ‘comfort cage’, a literal cage around you, offered in both translucent and opaque varieties. Floor markers are also available, which give you a constant translucent floor area. There are vignettes (aka FOV-limiters), although I preferred not to use it to no obscure my peripheral vision for that next hook hold.
The game features seated and standing options, smooth turn or variable snap-turn, and hand-relative or head-relative forward motion. With all of these in place, most new users should be able to adapt to the game’s swinging locomotion scheme without too much issue.
Final Thoughts
In retrospect, I wasn’t sure whether I’d really like Psytec’s choice to flesh out the Windlands brand, changing it from the zen-like platformer to its now combat-focused co-op story. And while some of that story was less clever than I would have hoped for on first blush, it left me feeling like I had re-entered a classic game, where your goals are complicated, but your motivations to those goals aren’t. In a way, letting you tackle those barriers together as friends felt a bit like a group hiking trip.
In the end, I’m happy to see the original’s hard-won locomotion scheme, which was pretty experimental in the early DK2 days, make its way into something that most importantly hasn’t overextended itself too much into being the end-all, be-all. On an indie budget, biting off more than you can chew usually backfires, as promises go half-completed, and the player is left wondering what the hype is about. Blemishes and all though, I’m ready to play more.
Windlands 2 was somewhat hidden at this year’s PAX West. The staff in the convention center didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked about it, but suggested that I head offsite, to the VR play area at the nearby Mattis hotel. There, with a relative lack of ceremony, Windlands 2 was one of the twenty or so games that was available to play at every station.
It’s actually refreshing. Not only was there no attendant hype blitz, but many of the people who would otherwise be there to talk the game up weren’t entirely sure what the game was. In some ways, this was the perfect booth demo: “I think it’s over there. Go play it. Or don’t. Either way.”
When I did finally track the damn thing down, Windlands 2 took some getting used to. In a low-gravity world that looks like it was carefully built out of modeling clay, you play the role of a novice “hunter,” who’s being shown the ropes of the profession by an elderly mentor. This involves exploring the landscape with the help of twin grappling hooks, as well as fighting robots with the help of your trusty bow and arrow.
You spend most of Windlands 2 high in the air, floating between giant rock islands in the sky. If you miss a jump, you simply respawn back on solid ground without much more than damage to your pride, but the fall takes a long time. There’s an entire button dedicated to respawning, the same way puzzle games often have a reset switch for a given room, so you don’t have to watch the landscape rush up at you for any longer than necessary.
Your primary tools for exploration are a pair of grappling hooks, which are linked to the triggers on both controllers, and which can be used independently. You can hook onto specific parts of the landscape above you, mostly the bits that aren’t visibly made out of rock, and use them to pull yourself into the sky.
The trick is that you only really have the momentum generated by that initial pull, so you go sailing in the general direction of your target. From there, you must hook onto your next point, and the next, in such a way as to carefully control your flight through the air. The hooks have a surprisingly long range, but not as long as you might think, and while the areas that can be grappled to are very well-labeled, they’re also surprisingly easy to miss. When it works, you gently soar through the air, flying around like Tarzan in a Technicolor jungle; when it doesn’t, you describe a long, dizzying arc directly towards the ground, and it’s going to be a lot faster to hit the respawn button than it is to wait to land.
I get the feeling this is the sort of thing that’s got a learning curve to it, and which will feel and look amazing once you put in the time to master it. Grappling around the landscape is smooth and relatively intuitive, although you have to be very sure to remember to release your previous hook before you try to throw out a new one, but I could tell from the moment I first left the ground that it would have a learning curve. You really aren’t in as much control as you feel like you are at any given time, so it tests your reaction and spur-of-the-moment decisions as much as anything else.
The penalty for failure is basically zero aside from a little wasted time; you just reappear at the nearest spawn point in a puff of cartoon smoke. That, and the low gravity, lend the whole thing a dreamlike quality, like old surreal cartoons.
When combat comes up, which was rare in the demo but involved hostile mechanical creatures, the bottom two buttons on the controllers were set to pull out your character’s bow and arrow. The left button turned your grappling hook into the bow, while the right button let you pull back on the glowing orb in the bow’s center until it turned into a makeshift arrow. You get a tiny laser sight to indicate where the arrow’s going to hit, which is helpful, since accuracy is important; most of the enemies I saw had a big glowing weak point to hit.
The combat didn’t actually strike me as that remarkable, but the bow looks cool. The whole game has this crawling-from-the-wreckage aesthetic underneath the colorful scenery, like you’re using some of what little high technology was left over after some long-ago apocalypse, and the magic tech-punk bow fits neatly into it.
I only got the chance to play Windlands 2 for a little while, which was long enough to take a look around and get a feel for the experience. It reminds me of some early NES games, where there’s a substantial challenge lurking underneath the colorful landscapes and bright visuals, although the challenge here is in mastering the act of movement. At the same time, the lack of punishment for failure makes it feel like a sort of designer playground. It’d make a great game for kids, or for parents to play with their kids, as long as nobody has a problem with (virtual) heights.
Windlands 2, Psytec Games’ upcoming multiplayer sequel to the high-flying grappling hook adventure, is nearly here. Psytec has today announced that Windlands 2 is set to land on Oculus Rift next week.
Update (September 6th, 2018): Windlands 2 pre-orders are now available on the Oculus Store, featuring a 15% pre-order discount off its regular price of $30, making it $25.50 before launch on September 12th. Check out the new feature trailer, which includes a better look at some of the upcoming bosses, maps, and story behind it all (linked above and below).
Original Article (September 3rd, 2018): Arriving as a timed exclusive on Rift September 12th, Windlands 2 takes some of its forbear’s game mechanics, such as the dual-handed grappling hook, and changes things up a bit with its imposing level bosses and four-player co-op.
Image courtesy Psytec Games
We went hands-on with Windlands 2 back at Oculus Connect 4 last year and were impressed with what we saw. The game’s major new addition, four-player co-op, is somewhat of a departure from the zen-like feel of the original Windlands, but it’s likely to strike a chord with anyone who found the first a little too lonely at times; you’ll likely be goaded into pulling increasingly harder and faster jumps on your way through the parkour-heavy levels. There is of course the option to play single-player, although having a few buddies by your side as plan your attacks on level bosses certainly sounds more fun.
Both HTC Vive and PSVR versions are slated for a 2019 release, although the exact launch dates for either aren’t certain at this point. Psytec maintains in a press statement that all platforms will launch with a $30 price tag.
Christmas is past, and many people no doubt peeked under the Christmas tree to find a shiny new PlayStation VR waiting for them, some of which may well have been obtained during Black Friday, judging by the listed sales figures.
For those looking to spend their gift money on some titles for their new PlayStation VR, or veteran owners looking for a good deal, all could do worse than to cast an eye over these end-of-year deals on the PlayStation Store.
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
A riotous VR party game. One person is ensconced in VR, looking at a bomb about to go off. Another person, out of VR, has the instructions. Players have to learn to quickly and effectively communicate, or… well… kaboom.
Players of Tethered are placed in the role of a spirit guardian who is trying to release other guadians who have been trapped by evil energy. To do this, players must solve puzzles and gather resources from across the beautiful hand-painted islands with the help of loyal servants, the ‘peeps’ who can be sent to do certain tasks to help you in your goal.
Fast-paced rhythm game Thumper was a launch title for the PlayStation VR. Gameplay involves steering a small ship through a course filled with psychedelic colour, moving always with the beat of the music, which gradually becomes increasingly complex.
One of the PlayStation VR’s earliest contenders for an eSports title, RIGS: Mechanised Combat League is a first-person arena shooter where players take control of powerful robotic battlers to take part in a futuristic sport that mixes elements of combat, motorsport, basketball and football.
This puzzle-platform title from Psytec Games is expecting a sequel at some point in 2018, so now is a good chance to experience the original. Players need to plot a route through a stylised, hard-angled landscape by running, jumping or swinging using a grappling hook. The result is a system that is easy to learn, but tricky to master.
Scarcely needing an introduction is Rebellion’s VR remake of the classic 1980s Atari title where you take control of a Tron-inspired tank and go around shooting other tanks and enemy towers to bits. The developers regularly introduce updates, so there’s often a new challenge to take on.
Battlezone is available for £9.99, a 71% discount.
Weeping Doll
Dark winter nights are perfect for some horror in VR. Weeping Doll is a dark, story-based experience that challenges players to explore various creepy environments and solve tricky puzzles as a sinister doll, fueled by all the negative thoughts of an abused child seeks to take revenge on the parents responsible.
Weeping Doll is available for £3.29, a 58% discount.
Headmaster
Want to improve your football skills? (Or soccer skills, for our American readers), then Headmaster is here to help. With a framing device of an unexpectedly prison-like ‘Football Improvement Centre’, the player is subjected to several lessons aimed at improving various football skills, including an option to engage in 6-player local multiplayer in a ‘pass-and-play’ high score challenge.
Headmaster is available for £7.39, a 53% discount.
The Assembly
British development studio nDreams had its first big-budget VR title with the release of puzzle-based adventure The Assembly, which combines a relatively simple gameplay with a series of moral dilemmas as players explore a mysterious underground bunker.
The Assembly is available for £9.79, a 51% discount.
PlayStation VR Worlds
For those who have purchased, or been given, a new PlayStation VR and are unsure what genre of type of videogame to try first, there is the option of getting a compilation title such as PlayStation VR Worlds, which offers a variety of VR experiences to try, including the highly praised ‘The London Heist‘.
Who said virtual reality (VR) was anti-social and wasn’t co-operative? 2017 has been chequered by announcements of videogames that will offer co-op. From the most recently announced co-op shooters EvasionandGunheartfor HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, to Marvel Powers United VR on the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR puzzler Statik just to name a few. Most of those videogames however don’t give the player the option to explore and choose their own routes whilst gliding through the trees with Spider-Man-esque abilities. Windlands 2 is a refreshing VR videogame exclusive to the Oculus Rift, a sequel to last year’s Windlands. VRFocus spoke to Nick Pittom, Co-Founder of Psytec Games about adding story, multiplayer and combat to Windlands 2.
Simplicity is key, and that was certainly the case for Windlands, where VRFocus recommended short bouts of gameplay in order to avoid motion sickness. Windlands 2, may look simple with it’s polygon like environments, but has truly upgraded in its design. Pittom explains that users use hooks to explore and swing through the world. Psytec Games have also added storyline with MPC’s giving the player the option to follow certain missions if they choose to. In addition, there’s now the option to fight evil robotic creatures with a bow and arrow as well. That is – if your aim is good enough.
The story basically goes as follows: You are a guardian. The world used to be destroyed by an evil demonic being in the very far distant past, but was vanquished by the guardians. The guardians have existed for centuries and start noticing evil robotic machines waking up. You have to save the world once more and destroy evil, collecting mystical crystals to rid the world of evil and rebuild the world.
You can play with three other players online or choose to play offline in single player. So in total, four players can play Windlands 2 together if all players own an Oculus Rift. MPC’s will try and hint that something interesting may lie in a certain direction and when the mission is finished, new parts of the world start opening up. Instead of XP or weapon upgrades, Pittom says it’s “similar to a Zelda game, you get another significant power as you progress”.
The title is set to be released in 2018 and Pittom hints that Windlands 2 might be coming to other platforms. To find out more watch the video below.
The story basically goes as follows: You are a guardian. The world used to be destroyed by an evil demonic being in the very far distant past, but was vanquished by the guardians. The guardians have existed for centuries and start noticing evil robotic machines waking up. You have to save the world once more and destroy evil, collecting mystical crystals to rid the world of evil and rebuild the world.