At GDC this year, I had a chance to step into Beat Saber, an upcoming rhythm game from Czech Republic-based indie studio Hyperbolic Magnetism that tasks you with slicing flying cubes with lightsabers to electronic dance music. If that sounds cool to you, then you’re in luck. It is cool – but more than that, it’s also ridiculously well executed.
Because VR can take over our entire reality, it can be great for entertainment. But when it comes to AR, the hope is that the tech will be a transient and beneficial addition to reality, rather than taking over your world completely. But figuring out how that works means first understanding how we can interact with AR information at a basic level, like being able to do the same kinds of simple, information-driven tasks that you do hundreds of times per day with your smartphone. Leap Motion, a maker of hand-tracking software and hardware, has been experimenting with exactly that, and is teasing some very interesting results.
Based on Klaus Teuber’s popular board game Settlers of Catan (1995), the VR version of Catan is available now on Oculus Rift and Gear VR, and will be a launch title for Oculus Go. The game features cross-play multiplayer, and is said to be coming to more VR platforms in the future.
Kat VR, a China-based company known for their crowdfunded Kat Walk VR treadmill, are hitting Kickstarter again soon with a new design that promises to accommodate smaller spaces.
Warhammer Age of Sigmar Champions is an upcoming physical and digital trading card game coming to iOS, Android, and PC in July. Announced at GDC 2018, the augmented reality experience uses PlayFusion’s proprietary ‘Enhanced Reality Engine’ to unlock gameplay options on the physical cards when using mobile devices.
At GDC 2018 this week, Oculus revealed some additional details surrounding their high-end standalone VR headset prototype, Santa Cruz. Among those details, the company plans to replace the current controllers’ trackpads with buttons and sticks, much like the Rift.
Squanch Games, the studio behind Accounting+ (2018) and brainchild of Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland, is coming out with a new Daydream exclusive that follows the exploits of the titular Dr. Splorchy, plopping you aboard a spaceship with dangerous bugs that you have to shoot for a reasons that seem strangely improvised.
At a sponsored GDC 2018 session, the still mysterious augmented reality company Magic Leap has revealed how their prototype hardware has evolved from 2014 to present day.
Magic Leap is hosting a sponsored session today at GDC 2018 which promises a “deep dive” on developing for augmented reality. Having released their SDK earlier this week, we’re hoping to hear the company talk more specifically about what it’s like to develop for the Magic Leap One headset. Join us for a liveblog of the session right here at 4PM PT.
Survios, the studio behind Raw Data (2017) and Sprint Vector (2018), are gearing up to release a new VR game this year, an arcade boxing title that puts you in the shoes of Adonis Creed, son of Apollo Creed and protegé of Rocky Balboa.
Here’s a roundup of news from the third day of our GDC 2018 coverage. Qualcomm’s latest reference headset supports Vive Wave, HTC Vive Focus international launch, Oculus talks about their 2018 ecosystem, announces ‘Positional Timewarp’, reveals new Oculus Go details, and Unreal Engine’s real-time ray-tracing demo.
At GDC 2018 this year, Oculus released word during their ‘Inside Oculus 2018’ developer talk that Home, the customizable user space for Rift, is gaining the ability to host multiple players as well as user-generated content.
Oculus Go was announced months ago, but it wasn’t until this week at GDC 2018 that the company actually made the headset available to try.
Owlchemy Labs, the studio behind the hit VR parody game Job Simulator (2016) and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017), debuted their upcoming game here at GDC 2018, an aptly named sequel to Job Simulator that delves into the imagined world of what vacations must have been like for us humans before all the jobs (and presumably vacations) were automated away. Called Vacation Simulator, I got a chance to go hands-on with what aims to be a longer, narrative-driven sequel in the growing franchise.
Here’s a roundup of news from the second day of our GDC 2018 coverage. We go hands-on with Budget Cuts, Google presents ARCore and Maps API-enabled apps, Squanch Games’ Daydream exclusive title announced, and Magic Leap talks about developing games for a spatial computing platform.
