The Gallery: Call of the Starseed (2016) is a first-person adventure from Cloudhead Games that’s unashamedly a ‘first’ in many categories. As a Vive launch title, it was one of the most cutting-edge adventure games of its time, and although it’s showing its age at this late review date, it remains an intriguing, well-realized cinematic experience that will leave you more than ready for the next episode. Since we didn’t have a chance to review it the first go around last year, we took a moment to go through in preparation for the sequel due this month, The Gallery: Heart of the Emberstone.


The Gallery: Call of the Starseed Details:

Official Site

Developer: Cloudhead Games
Available On: Steam (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift), Oculus Store (Rift), Viveport (Vive, Rift)
Reviewed On: Oculus Rift
Release Date: April 5, 2016


Gameplay

Created with the love of ’80s fantasy films like The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986), Call of the Starseed begins in the most patently ’80s way possible—you’re left a cassette tape from your twin sister, Elsie, beckoning you to meet her down by a deserted, windswept cove as she’s taken the liberty of running off on a wild adventure of her own; to what end, you’re not sure. Drawing you further with yet more tapes found along the way, you meet a sewer-dwelling, addle-brained professor who knows where Elsie’s gone, and sends you after her in what proves to be a mind-bending ride into the unknown. And what’s a Starseed? You’ll have to play to find out.

Like many adventure games, puzzles aren’t high on difficulty in Call of the Starseed, acting more as an interactive way of pushing the story forward. That said, the first puzzle you encounter doesn’t really make sense outside of the explanation of “Duh, it’s a game. Games aren’t supposed to be realistic,” which doesn’t really feel like a great start for something that should strive to create presence. If you can ignore it though, you’ll find the rest of the hour-long game much more thematically consistent.

SEE ALSO
'Skydance's Behemoth' Gets First Quest 3 Trailer Ahead of December Release

Note the reader: This gripe has been marked for easy gripe-skipping. If you don’t wish to read this gripe, please jump down right before the ‘Immersion’ section for a less gripe-filled reading experience.

Gripe begins: Wandering along the beach, I pass by a seemingly important basket. Before I can inspect it though, the basket is automatically winched out of reach, almost as if the developers themselves are saying “nice try.” In fact, that’s exactly what’s written on the bottom.

Continuing forward, I walk into the professor’s cave hideout where I decipher a message written in Morse code that tells me to ‘shoot the bells’. Finding myself with the task of using a flare gun to shoot a number of bells to distract an inexplicably sentient lighthouse, I dutifully aim and take fire without the slightest idea why. Once you’ve shot the right bells and sufficiently distracted the lighthouse, the epic music swells, telling you you’ve done something magical and important. Did I? I wasn’t so sure. And I still feel like I’m missing something.

Clattering down to the beach, you return to the basket which you find lowered to reveal a door handle to the sewer where the old professor can be heard crowing away about the CIA or some such. Why was the basket lowered? Why did the old man keep an extra handle there? Why did he write “nice try” on it when any able-bodied person could hit the damn thing down with a bat? Maybe I should lighten up. After all, it’s just a game, right?

Gripe deescalates: While These things can’t go without saying, the first episode of The Gallery has to be viewed within context. As the first class of motion controller, room-scale games that allowed full object interaction, its job was much bigger than to just tell a logically consistent story with equally consistent puzzles. It had to teach us how to move through the world and pick things up; it created a unique inventory system, pioneered blink teleportation, and it did it all without tutorializing the player to death.

SEE ALSO
'The New Salsa Academy' Teaches You All The Right Moves, Now Available on Quest

Despite my overblown gripe, Call of the Starseed could have suffered a much worse fate as one of the first built-for-VR adventure games for motion controllers, and while it’s hard for me to judge it with the same temerity that I would a modern game that’s necessarily had the benefit of learning from Call of the Starseed’s misgivings—i.e. short gameplay length and some less than perfect locomotion—the game is decisively a joy to play, offering something truly out of the ordinary, even with a year and half of games between its debut and now.

Immersion

Again, as one of the first games of its kind, there’s plenty of slack to be cut for Call of the Starseed when it comes to some of the more negative visual aspects. Both Oculus and Valve have done much to optimize VR’s graphical load on GPUs, not to mention NVIDIA and AMD have brought out new, more powerful GPUs in the meantime. That said, even on high settings, textures seem a little too basic for such a well-realized atmosphere, detracting from the game’s ingenious lighting and frankly awe-inspiring cinematics.

Object interaction isn’t nearly as fine as you’d see in later titles either, the exemplar being Lone Echo (2017) for its dynamic hand poses that allow you to grab items at any angle and grip them realistically. Holding items never quite feels ‘right’ in Call of the Starseed because you’re given only a few specific handholds for each item, giving a knock to immersion somewhat.

Story-wise though, Starseed nails the plucky ’80s fantasy vibe it was going after. Its cast of characters, although cartoonish, are undeniably real people. You can attribute this to a well cared for script, and top-notch voice acting that really make the world’s characters come alive.

SEE ALSO
'Minecraft' is Also Now Dropping PC VR Support in 2025 in Addition to PSVR

Comfort

Cloudhead Games was one of the early developers of teleportation and snap-turn comfort mode, both of which are industry standards of locomotion. There’s a few different styles of teleportation, so you’ll have to experiment to find what’s right for you. Despite this, the locomotion scheme shows its age somewhat, as I often had trouble getting a lock on an appropriate place to teleport.

Smooth-turn junkies will find the settings menu critically lack their world-twisting yaw motion. Better luck next time, guys.

You can also force-grab items from a close enough distance, removing the labor of constantly bending down to pick things up. This was also a bit inconsistent though, the best example being fiddly puzzle that required you to grab battery cells floating in zero G. This puzzle took its toll on my patience as I practiced force-grabbing batteries rather than physically plucking them out of the air like I would naturally, simply because as soon as you tried to grasp a battery, it would invariably fly away in the opposite direction.

Frustrations aside, all of this makes Call of the Starseed an exceedingly comfortable experience for anyone, seated or standing. We’re hoping to see some seriously smooth second generation-level improvements in all of these departments when the sequel launches.


The Gallery: Heart of the Emberstone is almost here, so check back on launch day (TBA) for our full review.

REVIEW OVERVIEW
Overall
7
Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


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.
  • Mane Vr

    Good review glad u guys are telling the kind of locomotion alone with rotation i have like 2 games i got without knowing the locomotion or rotation and now stuck with games i can’t play so this kind of review should be a standard so we have this info before buying games… i won’t be getting this game.. thanks to this heads up “Smooth-turn junkies will find the settings menu critically lack their world-twisting yaw motion. Better luck next time, guys.” Thanks for saving me money

    • elev8d

      The locomotion is straight teleport. You can just choose the direction you want to be in when you teleport. There’s no way you can get sick in this game. Watch some gameplay videos.

      • Mane Vr

        I don’t get sick ever in vr so i hate teleporting all together so i would never play this game let alone buy it

        • elev8d

          I don’t get sick anymore either, but it’s somewhat irrelevant in this game. Sliding locomotion would make the a little better, but it’s not essential since it’s more of a puzzle based game. It’s an atmospheric puzzle game with relatively small maps, not a first person shooter. It feels more like a cinematic puzzle experience than a game.

          • Mane Vr

            Ok noted all around not my kind of game

  • Arne42

    Denny Unger and Cloudhead games were way ahead of their time with Call of the Starseed. This was the first app I could back on Kickstarter related to VR. Amazing, they succeeded since game development on this level is far from trivial. A rating of 7 compared to today is pretty cool considering how far VR has come, however for what this title really is, first in so many ways, my rating is an 11.

  • Jean-Sebastien Perron

    No locomotion No money. Teleportation is for VR Virgins. Rotation is the only real problem maker, so snap turn should always be there as an option. Teleport back to your TV mother fuc…

  • VeaArthur

    This was my favorite title when I got my Vive last year, and honestly, few titles have come close since. I don’t disagree that it is already a little dated, so far as controls and graphics, but The Gallery is worth your time and money. And with episode two coming out soon now is the perfect time to play (or replay) episode one. Scott, if I read this review without ever playing the game I probably wouldn’t bother trying The Gallery and that is a shame. What VR is lacking is truly engaging story driven experiences and that’s exactly what this game is. Locomotion and graphics will continue to improve, with each iteration having its vanguard, but if a game can get you emotionally involved then it creates a lasting memory and that is more important. In my opinion, The Gallery should have been reviewed 18 months ago and given a higher score.

    • David Herrington

      I totally agree about a score increase as anyone could review an old game today like original Super Mario Bros and point out all its flaws, but if you view it in the context that it was one of the first of its time and ground-breaking in so many ways it was amazing.

      I say increase the score or never score it. I mean the ending alone in Call of the Starseed is worth the price of admission for me!!

  • oompah

    I find VR so attractive but cumbersome to use(I have cardboard type).
    Especially for high myopia where lenses dont fit properly , its a problem.
    Nowadays almost everyone has glasses so it is a major problem which needs to e solved by VR cos.

    • Raphael

      Almost everyone has glasses? 70% of all statistics are fictitious.

    • Jean-Sebastien Perron

      There is a company that makes prescription lens specialy for all vr brand. https://vr-lens-lab.com

  • Joe Black

    The devs of this game gets it.

  • Ethan James Trombley

    The first puzzle gripe actually makes sense later. The “professor” talks about how he hired a guy in the lighthouse as his first security measure. If you look to see the boxis conneceted to a chain running all the way to the lighthouse. The guy inside controls it and only let’s it down to people who shoot the three bells.

  • mirak

    The game is well made but Obduction is way way better, longer, better story, better world’s, better enigmas.