Two years in the making, Budget Cuts has remained almost completely off the radar after briefly surfacing back in 2016, but this week at GDC 2018 the game has reemerged with fresh details, including a May 31st release date, which, for this promising title, still manages to feel like an eternity away.
Update (5/9/18): Budget Cuts was set to launch on May 16th, but has not been pushed back by two weeks, with a new release date of May 31st, according to a post from developer Neat Corporation. The original article has been updated with this information.
The studio cites “unforeseen obstacles in the development of Budget Cuts,” and says “we want to release Budget Cuts in a state that we’re proud of and know will be enjoyable throughout the entire game (without killing our devs in the process).”
Original Article (3/19/18), Updated: Budget Cuts impressed us back in 2016 when it demonstrated smart and innovative VR game mechanics back before any consumer VR headsets had even hit the market. Today, many VR developers are still struggling to come to grips with VR game design, but developer Neat Corp has been busy toiling away, in stealth (if you will), turning Budget Cuts into something that’s still promising, even as VR game design has advanced a good two years since the last time we saw the game. We went hands on with the latest build of Budget Cuts at GDC 2018.
Neat Corp tells us that Budget Cuts will launch on May 31st priced at $30. Promising seven or so hours of content, the game will be released for both HTC Vive (SteamVR) and Oculus Rift (Oculus Home).
Neat Corp developer Linnéa Harrison tells us that the game will support full room-scale locomotion, and, while the studio plans to encourage Rift users to use three Sensor configurations for greater immersion, the game will support typical two Sensor front-facing setups as well. When it comes to locomotion, Harrison and team said that the game’s teleporting movement is here to stay, as it’s intertwined with both gameplay and story and slapping smooth movement into the game simply wouldn’t work with the game’s underlying design.
The team told us that players can expect stealth, action, puzzles, and bosses. They also said that a number of new mechanics have been introduced since the release of the game’s demo back in 2016, which support varying modes of gameplay, giving players choice in how they want to experience the game. Indeed, they said the game can in theory be played 100% stealth, for those patient and cunning enough to go completely unseen. Also at one point in the new build I opened an office cabinet and found a single cookie inside, so there’s curiously placed cookies too.