DAVIGO is an upcoming indie VR project where two players battle in a duel of scales. One player, wearing a VR headset, takes the form of a lumbering giant while a non-VR player plays as a small, speedy, and equally lethal third-person character.
In development by three former developers from VR studio Archiact, Davigo is an asymmetric game which leverages VR’s unique capabilities of scale and embodiment while also playing to the strengths of traditional PC gaming. In Davigo you’ll get a totally different type of gameplay depending upon whether you’re in the headset or using keyboard and mouse on a PC.
As the VR player you’ll take the form of a lumbering giant in a static playspace and be able to smack your opponent off the map, throw projectiles, and use your body to dodge incoming attacks.
As the non-VR player you’re small & speedy, zooming around the battlefield to dodge incoming attacks, activate traps for the giant, and fire rockets collected from the map in an effort to defeat the giant.
The game is only in a pre-alpha form at this stage, though it’s planned to eventually launch in Early Access for testing and feedback as the developers continue to refine and polish the game. Davigo’s Steam page is available now if you’d like to add it to your wishlist and follow along with development. Ahead of Davigo’s early access release, the developers plan to run an invite-only beta; if you’d like to be considered you can go to the Davigo site and submit your email after checking the ‘sign me up for the closed beta’ box at the bottom of the page.
Developer Erik Roystan tells Road to VR that the giant player doesn’t just look huge, they are actually made to be lumbering by design. To both reinforce the sense of scale and balance the gameplay for the non-VR player, the giant’s motions are artificially slowed down, encouraging the VR player to actually match the slower speed themselves (a good choice for amplifying immersion, as we’ve seen in games like SUPERHOT VR).
While the initial plan for Davigo is to support local multiplayer with the VR and non-VR players on a single PC, Roystan says that the developers feel networked multiplayer is a “must have” so that friends can play remotely without being in the same space.
As a stretch goal, depending upon how successful the game’s Early Access phase is, the developers are also considering support for multiple non-VR players so that more than one player can team up against the giant. The developers also envision possibly having “dozens” of non-VR players battling against the giant, or even multiple giants on one battlefield.
There’s no word yet on an early access release date for Davigo, though Roystan tells Road to VR the developers are targeting Rift, Vive, Index, and WMR headsets for the initial release. While PSVR is a possibility, the group has no firm plans for it at this point. There’s no plans yet for Quest either, which would necessitate a separate mobile client for the non-VR player.
– – — – –
Davigo isn’t the first game to offer asymmetric VR gameplay. We’ve seen impressive work from a handful of titles already like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (2015), Mass Exodus (2017), Carly & the Reaperman (2018), and most recently, Acron: Attack of the Squirrels! (2019).