Interactivity & Scope
While the weapons are certainly a highlight, Bloch says that players can expect to do more than shooting in Arktika.1.
“We have loads of [interactive things]… levers, different computer interfaces… one of the things that we use in between the combat areas are rooms where we might deliver some story, there’s puzzles, there’s different ways to get from one area to the next—you might [need to] open a door and find the key to open that door, or maybe you have to program something to unlock the security system… different things like that.”
As for the scope of the game, Bloch says Arktika.1 is “definitely on a magnitude of hours to get through,” and the team has peppered in reasons for players to go back for another runthrough, including difficulty settings which he says do more than just increase enemy health and damage. There’s also an ‘Objectives’ system which challenges players to complete levels in different ways; doing so will unlock ‘Perks’.
“We tried to build things in that make it so if players do want to play more they can go back through and change their experience and get more and unlock more, and play through differently. Even play through with fun things… some of those Perks are strategic and some of them are almost like fun cheats, and some of them are just straight out silly.”
At $30, Bloch says the game is “aggressively priced.” Arktika.1 launches exclusively on the Oculus store tomorrow, Tuesday October 10th.
It remains to be seen how the game will be received, but Bloch says whether or not the studio will develop another VR isn’t decided just yet, but they would certainly be up for it.
“We definitely wanted to jump into VR, especially from the early days and do something really cool and see what we could do with it. We’ve had a lot of fun doing that with this game. What we do next is up to a lot of different factors. Would we want to do something [in VR] again? Sure, it’s fun.”