We’re all so busy looking at our smartphones and vying for likes on social media that we didn’t bother to check whether we were invaded by a hostile alien species or not; that’s at least the basic premise behind Viral Invasion, a game still in concept phase from Stockholm-based studio Hatrabbit Entertainment.
The object of the game, Hatrabbit says, will be to gather as many human followers as possible with the eventual goal of controlling Earth. As you progress, you unlock new missions, world cities and gadgets with achievements available in various places.
Hatrabbit describes it as a cross between Job Simulator (2016) and Tim Burton’s delectably bad film Mars Attacks! (1996), but with social elements. The studio says you’ll be able to play Viral Invasion solo, in co-op, or in PvP mode.
The poor egg-shaped humans are designed to make great objects for vacuuming, golfing, swatting with a tennis racket, and shooting at targets—whatever causes the most havoc while gaining followers. Watch out for cats though, because they’ll instantly steal your followers when they’re around.
The studio hasn’t made any firm commitments regarding specific headset support, only saying that they aim to build support for VR-platforms with six degrees of freedom (6DoF) positional movement, although there’s the possibility they’ll expand further into other platforms.
The studio released their first VR game, Merry Snowballs (2017), last December on Vive and Rift. The room-scale game proved to be a highly polished experience among users.
Because it’s still a concept, there’s no release date as such – although Hatrabbit has a sign-up form for prospective beta testers, which they say will help them gauge interest in the game. Sign up for beta testing here.