Soviet Retrofuture Adventure ‘Red Matter’ to Launch This Month on Rift

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When we saw Red Matter at a Oculus Connect 4 last year, we were immediately taken in by the adventure puzzle’s wonderfully weird, retrofuturistic vibe. Now, Madrid-based studio Vertical Robot tells us pre-orders are open today for Red Matter, with launch coming later this month on Rift.

Launching on May 24th exclusively on Rift, Red Matter places you in the role of an astronaut from the Atlantic Union who’s tasked with investigating one of a Volgravian top-secret research project located on a distant planet.

From what we’ve played in demos, the game looks to be a highly-polished experience with some pretty strong narrative elements, and a heavy emphasis on object interaction.

Image courtesy Vertical Robot

The design of the game is clearly hearkening to some pseduo-soviet republic, replete with Cyrillic-style script thanks that’s decipherable thanks to your handy translator unit.

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Hands-on: 'Red Matter' is an Adventure Puzzle Set in a Wonderfully Weird Pseudo-Soviet Dystopia

As seen in the our OC4 demo, locomotion is fairly unique, offering a point-and-fly style movement scheme that lets you select a place and then jetpack over on-rails at a variable speed—functionally making it a sort of teleportation movement scheme. It’s uncertain if more locomotion options will be available at launch.

image courtesy Vertical Robot

“For this game we wanted to create a distinct, out-of-the-ordinary sci-fi world,” says Tatiana Delgado, Vertical Robot co-founder. “We found inspiration in Soviet space race visual propaganda, because of how bold and iconic those images are. However, we wanted to distance ourselves from reality by creating a dystopian fantasy in which the Cold War is waged between two made-up nations: the Atlantic Union and the People’s Republic of Volgravia.”

Image courtesy Vertical Robot

Vertical Robot is an indie studio ​comprised of four industry veterans who have worked at studios such as Tequila Works, Mercury Steam, Pyro Studios and Yager. After working on games such as the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow ​saga, Deadlight ​and SpecOps: The Line​, they decided to transition to VR development and create their own independent studio.

Check out Red Matter on the Oculus Store here.

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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.
  • MarquisDeSang

    Made by the Dev who made the best VR game ever : Daedalus on Oculus Go. I am buying this.

    • Raphael

      Calm down flappy. There is no ONE best VR game ever unless: 1: you’ve had limited exposure to VR games.. 2: you were involved in the development of the game. 3: you’re slightly retarded.

  • Ombra Alberto

    Quando avrà il supporto lingua italiana lo acquisterò.

  • Peter Hansen

    Decent graphics, looks great! If I were to choose, I would like it to go even a bit further into the direction of “Prey”. Some (but not all) of the shown textures look very palpable, “materialistic” (like actual material you can touch, don’t know how to put it any better). I will watch this one closely!

  • Some russian

    Why the fuck did dev used greek alphabet instead of… i dont even know how to call it. Just WTF?
    Greek F instad of O in chem formulas? Fuck you dude. Its a fucking insult. 5 minute googling was enough to find latin-to-cyr translit services if you lazy enough to google captions you wanted to place in your game.
    >Cyrillic-style script
    No. It’s shit, definately not cyrillic.