Sólfar Studios, the Iceland-based studio behind roguelike VR archery game In Death, has announced that the game is set to launch out of Early Access on October 2nd, accompanying the ‘Paradise Lost’ update which will bring new enemies and a new weapon.
As part of the company’s ongoing development of the Pimax “8K” headset, a select group of Kickstarter backers recieved pre-production units to aid in testing and feedback ahead of production. Today those backers are allowed to talk publicly about their time with the latest ‘M2’ units. A preview from one of those backers, Thomas “VoodooDE” Poersch, speaks glowingly about the headset’s wide field of view, but suggests that it’ll take ultra high-end rendering hardware to reach the headset’s true potential due to the high resolution displays.
Chiaro and the Elixir of Life (2018) is a single-player, story-driven adventure game with emphasis on puzzle-solving and some light platforming. Accompanied by your penguin robot pal Boka, you go out in search of the Elixir of Life, a special alchemical brew that brings life to machines like Boka. Grand Studio Ghibli-style set pieces, mostly fun characters, and some interesting puzzles are however hobbled by finicky object interaction and a tone-deaf script that doesn’t ever quite deliver the punch it promises.
Charm Games, the studio known for the critically-acclaimed VR puzzle game FORM (2017), today announced their upcoming puzzle-adventure Twilight Path is slated to release arrive soon on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
Synaptics, a developer of input and display components for computers, smartphones, and other devices, recently introduced a new version of its ClearView display driver chip which has been optimized for head-mounted displays with high density displays, including a specialized feature for foveated rendering.
The long-awaited Vox Machinae is almost here, as developing studio Space Bullet Dynamics Corporation recently announced that the multiplayer mech battle game is finally heading into Early Access soon, supporting traditional monitors, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows VR headsets starting in early fall.
Chiaro and the Elixir of Life (2018), a first-person VR adventure from Montreal-based Martov Co., launched today on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows VR headsets. The result of a successful Kickstarter campaign, which saw a complete funding total of $10,088 CAD (~$7,730 USD), Chiaro is the new indie studio’s first game.
Though there wasn’t much groundbreaking in the Daydream news shared at Google I/O this year, the company is growing its AR/VR team at an accelerated rate, suggesting Google has a number of things up its sleeve yet. One recent job listing which caught our eye suggests that the company is ramping up its R&D efforts for lenses, now hiring a ‘Diamond Turning Technician’ to assist with rapid prototyping of “new and novel” optics for AR and VR devices.
Elijah Wood’s studio SpectreVision and Ubisoft Montreal announced Transference at last year’s E3, a VR thriller-adventure that takes into something of a virtual reality inside a virtual reality. It’s only a few more days until the game is officially released, with the highly-polished Transference hitting all supported platforms next week.
I Expect You to Die (2016), the spy-themed puzzle game from Schell Games, generated $1 million in revenue between its late-2016 launch and August 2017. Now a little over a year later, the studio reports they’ve recently closed in on the $3 million mark.
As a current artist-in-residence on the Facebook Social VR team, Goro Fujita has been making some pretty impressive “quillistrations” as a part of his daily creative regime using Quill, Oculus’ first-party VR paint and drawing tool that he helped develop. In a few of his latest creations though, Fujita has been plumbing the possibilities of bringing comics to life in VR. As Fujita puts it, he’s now convinced “VR comics will be a thing.”
While there’s a steadily growing number of quality VR games, it’s still well understood that VR is in need of more great content. But what kinds of VR games should developers focus on creating? That’s one of the primary questions we want to help VR devs answer with a survey which aims to understand real VR users.
Apple’s ‘Gather Round’ product event took place today, and while the company is predictably heavy on the new hardware iterations, including Apple Watch Series 4, the A12 Bionic chip, and new iPhone X versions, the company is still plugging its AR capabilities with two featured ARKit 2.0 apps. Taking the stage was NEX Team, which showed off an updated version of their HomeCourt basketball app, and Directive Games, which debuted Galaga AR, an upcoming augmented reality multiplayer version of the classic arcade game.
Windlands 2 (2018), Psytec Games’ sequel to their high-flying, first-person platformer adventure, is now available on Oculus Rift.
The VOID, an out-of-home VR destination that melds wireless VR with real warehouse-scale environments, has partnered with Lucasfilm’s ILMxLAB to bring five new Disney and Marvel experiences to their growing number of VR facilities.
