‘Astro Bot’ Inspired VR Platformer ‘Max Mustard’ Lands on Quest This Month

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Toast Interactive, the developer behind Richie’s Plank Experience (2017), announced its Astro Bot Rescue Mission (2018) inspired VR platformer Max Mustard is set to launch on Quest later this month.

When it was first announced, we called Max Mustard a “spiritual successor to Astro Bot Rescue Mission,” however the studio says in a Reddit post that’s not entirely accurate, as Nintendo’s Super Mario 3D Land is its “closest refence to gameplay and difficulty.”

“If you do love the challenge, the levels are scattered with what the designers call ‘greed bait’ it’s optional coins and creates that are really hard to get and if you get greedy, you’ll need to be up for the challenge. Thing is, you need coins to buy upgrades. So it becomes a nice meta juggling act for the player,” the studio says.

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Still, Toast Interactive says that while it’s not supposed to be a spiritual successor to Astro Bot, it was an inspiration.

Astrobot [sic] set a really high quality bar. It’s an inspiration. Thing with platformers is that if they don’t cross a certain high-quality threshold, they only get bought by platformer fans. They need to be REALLY good to also appeal to into mainstream market. Customers will soon decide if we’ve done that.”

It’s set to arrive with 40 levels packed with first-person gadgets, classic third-person gameplay, four bosses and eight upgrades to unlock along the way.

Max Mustard is set to launch on Quest March 21st, priced at $30. You can now find it available for pre-order on the Quest Store. The game is also slated to release on Steam and PSVR 2 at some point later this year.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Insta-instabuy.
    []^ )

  • ViRGiN

    Looks solid for a VR platformer.

    • ViRGiN

      Challenged as I am with a mental age of an 8 year old, this looks solid for a VR platformer. I’ll tell all my friends from school in Rec Room.

      • ViRGiN

        That’s completly not true. I have the most elite friend group in VR Chat, and we hang out daily with sadlyitsbradley, I even bought a dedicated mattress and upgraded my Quest 3 to 2019 Valve Index with 13 HTC Vive Trackers with a mix of 2 Valve Base Stations and 2 HTC Base Stations, and I’m having the best time of my life. I actually hate seeing my friends in real life.

      • May the house recommend: ^DuneBuggiesPvP …?
        #RedBaseReallySucks

  • JCat_NY

    It’s excellent, though now I wish I had gotten the Steam VR version to take advantage of resolution and 120Hz.