The undeniably stylish SUPERHYPERCUBE (2016)—which feels a bit like Tetris reimagined for virtual reality—initially launched as a PlayStation VR exclusive. Now, just over a year later, the game is coming to Steam for the HTC Vive this week. As with most SteamVR games, the title should technically support the Oculus Rift too, but, apparently related to developer KOKOROMI’s 2016 boycott of Oculus, the studio isn’t guaranteeing the game will work with headsets other than the Vive.
SuperHyperCube will launch on Steam this Tuesday, November 7th. It’s also getting a permanent price cut to $15, down from the $30 launch price (the price cut will also come to the PlayStation Store.
The game challenges players’ spatial reasoning by offering up an object made of cubes arranged into arbitrary shapes and a wall with a cut-out that the object must pass through. The object can fit through the cut-out but only in the correct orientation, which players can change by rotating among two axes using a controller. Each time you succeed in fitting the object through the wall, more cubes are added, creating an ever increasing level of difficulty as the shape becomes mo complex.
The PSVR version, which is played with a gamepad, holds a respectable 4 out of 5 star rating on the PlayStation store. It isn’t clear if the Steam version will work with the Vive’s controllers or if players will need to use a traditional gamepad (we’ve reached out for clarification). Even if it does work with the Vive controllers, the game’s gameplay doesn’t appear to be adapted for motion input.
SuperHyperCube isn’t built designed for motion input or room-scale play, and is in fact probably best played as a seated game. Since the Vive is a room-scale system out of the box, it isn’t clear how the title will fare on Steam where VR players are usually seeking experiences that make effective use of the Vive’s controllers and the available tracking space.
And what of Rift support? SteamVR and OpenVR effectively support the Rift by default, but KOKORMI says that “support is not guaranteed or provided for [non-Vive] PC headsets.” It isn’t clear if the studio has done anything to specifically block the Rift from working with the title but it seems unlikely that they’ve spent any time making sure controls work properly on the Rift (though if it’s playable with a gamepad there’s really not much that would need to be done).
KOKOROMI’s disinterest in supporting the Rift (or launching the game on the Oculus platform) likely stems from the studio’s public boycott of Oculus founder emeritus Palmer Luckey whose polarizing political choices sparked backlash from some VR developers back in 2016. The studio stated at the time:
In a political climate as fragile and horrifying as this one, we cannot tacitly endorse these actions by supporting Luckey or his platform.
In light of this, we will not be pursuing Oculus support for our upcoming VR release, SUPERHYPERCUBE.
And though Luckey was eventually ousted from Oculus, it would seem that KOKOROMI is sticking by their decision to boycott the company over his actions. We’ve reached out to the studio to confirm whether or not the boycott is the reason for the stated lack of support for headsets other than the Vive. We’ll have to wait for the game’s launch to see whether or not the Rift will work properly with SuperHyperCube.
Update (11/6/17): A spokesperson for SuperHyperCube configured that the Steam version of the game will work with the Vive controllers, gamepad, and keyboard and mouse. Further it’s said that the studio “only tested [the game] on Vive, which means support for other headsets has not been tested and is not guaranteed,” and confirmed this was a result of the studio’s Oculus boycott.
