This one is one I have tried to avoid playing. It just looked so experimental and half-arsed. But those are actually pretty fun! They are all in the realm of the weird and psychedelic.
4L1: Very hard to explain! You’re in a tiny, constrained space, with silver walls slowly drifting upwards. Gallery-r: A wünderkammer of strange, moving fractal sculptures. (When reading the description, I read “race toys” instead of “ray trace toys” so I got rather confused) jRoom: Wow. A psychedelic alien underwater panorama which reacts and plays music when you touch it. LizRoomBug: You’re in a tiny enclave of sparkly, floaty satin which reacts to your touch. McScene2: You’re in a desert landscape with psychedelic tentacles reacting to your touch. Nearby is a sparkly, floaty liquid. PlayRoom: A floaty psychedelic alien landscape where you make sounds by touching stuff. Pressing the trigger makes you suck stuff in.
pTairy2 — Even knowing how a theremin works, I couldn’t figure out this thing! RingF3: Very much like THE IMPOSSIBLE TRAVEL AGENCY, this is a weird alien landscape which moves to the beat of a groovy soundtrack. You can change between three sizes with a floating gadget, but I much prefer chillin’ at the default size. sp7: Another psychedelic, floaty thing, but this one didn’t really speak to me. Strange how some games just get into you, while others, quite similar, don’t. teepCabeepsV1: A weird creature which mirrors your movement.
“marginalized heritage as blazing celestial bodies - a VR experience”
The most artsy and weird VR experience so far. The Portogueise testimonies — which of course I cannot understand — adds to the strangeness. I understand that it is about “something”, but can’t figure out what.
Only having teleport movement made this a bit of a bother to play.
Like many other VR experiences, LUNA aims at a sincere and artsy story. The small panorama gives you the impression of stepping right into a childrens’ picture book. It is all very physical, with a lot of things reacting to your touch. Each scene culminates in a sequence where you get to redesign the panorama, like in Quiet as a Stone. Since that game made me think that it would be perfect for VR, it was interesting to see it implemented here.
Not exactly as crisp and detailed as I would have liked, but a rather big environment.
This game puts you inside a procedurally generated popsicle landscape, with music generated by the colors. You fly around, and if you dislike the landscape, you can capture a ball to generate a new one.
A downside is that everything is so massively big. Each of the popsicles bobbing up and down are about 25 meters wide. This doesn’t fit well with the sense of depth. Also, procedurally generated music seldom sounds very interesting.
Despite those shortcomings, this pastel-colored abstract landscape quickly drew me in. There are a lot of similar experiences in VR with abstract, colorful surroundings. Those modern screensaver-like things simply work very well in VR. But despite the competition, A Lullaby of Colors manages to carve its own niche.
Looked like it would be fun, but the hands are grossly offset from my own. Tried it on Oculus CV1.
Loaded up with the box outside my playspace. The settings menu was unuseable.
This is an airsport simulator which, despite its almost-finished state, was abandoned by the developers.
It is a pretty serious sim which requires a fair bit of commitment. But even without understanding “the complex interplay between your body, the wind and gravity”, you can navigate fairly well by pressing the left thumbstick gently. It is simply fun floating around. A nice touch is that the landscape changes depending on the date and the time of the day, and you can change the speed.
The big negative is that the drums don’t react to how hard you hit them. But the environment is pleasant, and drumming is just plain fun. Compared to other kinds of music, I realize that drumming is just much more physical. Instead of pressing down keys or blowing with your mouth, you’re making sounds by hitting stuff, repeatedly.
I quickly got into it, and forgot myself. When I took off my HMD, I had that “returning to reality” feeling.
This is one of those VR experiences where it is close enough to the real thing to give you the feeling. A drum set costs something like $300 and takes up space. So it is a bit of an investment, and not something you want just to try it out.
Wave shooter at nanoscale where you’re inside someone's body fighting off infections. Interesting idea, but just didn’t feel very engaging.
Yikes! Unplayable, I say! Totally unplayable!
This basically is a homage to the old LUNAR LANDER arcade game from 1979. It shares the same extremely uncontrollable physics, combined with a fragile spaceship which blows up if you slam into the ground a little too harshly. For an extra challenge, the Hard Mode lets you adjust four different thrusters individually.
This is an old game from the VR pioneering days of 2014. I actually bought it on Steam in 2016, but never really got into it. But despite its age, it is actually real fun, provided you got your VR legs. Good production value too. Each of the 25 levels has its own unique hand-crafted design. I haven't tried the advanced mode yet, which uses the keyboards to control four different thrusters.
A simple demo to show Gameboy graphic in VR.
Wave shooter inspired by the old Defenders arcade classic. The action takes place all around you, but you have a map get an overview of the most critical threats.
