hey right it's Norm from tested and welcome back to projections they're a
show about virtual reality and augmented reality and this week I'm gonna be
talking to you about an upcoming game that comes out in just about a week and
a half time no it's not half-life Alex though that does come out on March 23rd
but that same week there's another game for the oculus quests as well as other
VR platforms in fact all of them I'm very excited for and that's the room VR
a dark matter from fireproof games it's the latest in a series of puzzle games
our previously designed for mobile devices iPads and tennis which there is
a PC version as well but it's the first of the room series of puzzle games
that's made for VR headsets and I got a chance to play some of this game two of
the levels the two first levels I believe back at oculus connect and did
an interview with developers back there but wasn't able to show that experience
until recently I was able to get a early build a preview build of the room VR and
capture some footage now it is a puzzle game it's kind of a bit of an escape
room game so I'm gonna try to present the footage in a way that won't spoil
the puzzles you won't exactly know what's going on but I want to get it
give you a sense of how you actually get around the world
so you think escape room style puzzle game and VR these are genres that go
really well hand-in-hand we've seen some great examples of them for VR I expect
you to die is a wonderful kind of escape room game and it's all kind of in one
place you can remember that from a snail games you're kind of sitting at desks
you reach out or in the car the drivers seat and grab objects and manipulate
things here in the room because of its namesake it's actually putting you in
physical environments and these are pretty detailed rooms the environments
are all based on turn-of-the-century period it's very Lovecraftian there's a
lot of great atmosphere pretty creepy at times but the rooms themselves are not
just rooms there are full-fledged environments for
offices to the underbelly of a museum now I want to get something out there it
is teleport based locomotion so while I did
play this on the oculus quest I was able to freely 360 move around there are
nodes that you basically jump to and when I first played this preview back
late last year at OC 6 I really resisted that teleport locomotion what I really
wanted in my head from a VR escape room game was the ability to walk around use
free locomotion and kind of explore it and all the detail that the developers
and level designers have put in look under desks kind of manipulate objects
and behind doors and when I quickly realize is while that might work for a
real-world escape room where there are just discrete objects that you can
physically interact with in our VR space that actually becomes really
overwhelming really fast because the game even as it is when I'm teleporting
between these half dozen or so nodes in a level it's pretty challenging I'm
actually really glad about the ability to really zip between the points and
jump between them so look at the objects in front of me look around and solve
these puzzles and focus on the puzzles that are there as opposed to trying to
find the puzzles in the room themselves I could see myself easily mistaking
something for being a puzzle when it's not the puzzles themselves are
wonderfully designed again trying not to give away any spoilers but the mix of
kind of matching objects whether it's shapes or symbols to dexterity puzzles
we're actually manipulating them with your touch controllers or your motion
controllers although with the manipulation side at least in the first
two levels it's mostly single hand manipulation you're grabbing things and
turning them or lifting them there's not a lot of the two-handed manipulation
that I think would take better make better use of VR hand controllers in
hand presence everything is kind of near field so the depth is really great and
you can kind of look in and move your head and kind of move the objects around
the animations for the puzzles boxes themselves are really lovely they're
really intrigued design mechanical puzzles that I think
would be almost impossible to design the real world that worked really well in a
virtual environment now with every type of escape room or puzzle game you're
bound risks the players getting stuck because they might be missing a clue and
that actually happened to me a couple times I definitely had that moment where
I spent 10 minutes just standing in front of two or three of these locations
and just was scratching my head and it couldn't figure out what I was missing I
felt like I had grabbed items in my inventory and manipulated them or tried
to manipulate them with every single object I could put that was in front of
me until there was the one thing that I miss and there is a pretty good hint
system that you can use and access from the menu to just drag down which you can
turn on and off it's not the type of hint system that automatically lights up
an object or plays a voiceover when you've been stuck for too long you have
to proactively select the hint and say okay give me something to work on and
the way they've written the hints which I've played after a second time through
to read what they were are actually really really good they're little mini
puzzles within themselves so they don't feel like they're making it too easy
some of the tools you are manipulating or handheld objects there is this lens
that you use to kind of see into a kind of ghost-like dream world it's green
tint in and you see objects a little differently it's almost like shining
ultraviolet light into a room into some some symbols that you might not see and
that part's kind of spooky there are no jump scares that I could tell so far but
it is an isolating game it's not multiplayer it's not that type of social
escape room experience where you're working with someone you are just by
yourself oftentimes standing there and I admit I looked over my shoulder a couple
times because I didn't know if something was changing there were in the room
without me actually having activated it and thankfully none of that actually
manifested it is what's in front of you is there and if there is any creepy
moment it's because you activated something in an
Meishan unfurls
I was only able to play again the first two levels and apparently the later
levels gets deeper there are more puzzles it gets hard of course and it
made me want to continue on for sure and it also made me realize of wanting this
game to have complete free locomotion I think it's gonna play great with
teleporting to those nodes and I think the best way to play is probably on
something that will let you do a full 360 turnaround so you're not feeling
constantly tethered I did play on the quest it was wonderful
there and actually made me want to go back to previous versions of the room
and play some of the other puzzle games in that series the wave and told is that
some of the lessons and some of the iterative puzzle design elements that
you see in those past games may actually build on into this game as well it's
called the room VR a dark matter I'm really looking forward to coming out
it's on oculus it's on Steam it's on psvr
as well you'll need the motion controllers and it's out on March 26 and
we back next time with more coverage of yes that game that you're anticipating
on March 23rd half-life Alex and it will be back then and see that thanks for
watching you