The VR Awards’ second annual award show was held last night, and the winners are in. Taking the award for VR Game of the Year was Cloudhead’s room-scale adventure The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone (2017).
As the sequel to The Gallery – Episode 1: Call of the Starseed (2016), episode two picks up where we left off last; you’ve received a magical Gauntlet that gives you a mysterious new power. You travel to Ember, a desiccated and long-forgotten world, where you search for your sister Elsie, uncover the history of Ember, and reveal the true intentions of the dark figure seed in Starseed.
We gave Heart of the Emberstone a very solid [9/10] rating in our spoiler-free review. You can check out it out here.
Although the game was launched in October 2017, the VR Awards’ cutoff date for consideration was in August, with the event taking place on October 9th of last year— leaving it in the running for this year’s VR Awards. Last year’s GOTY was awarded to Raw Data (2017) by Survios, which was still in Steam Early Access at the time of award consideration.
The VR Awards is a London-based ceremony and dinner that saw some 300 delegates attend last year from industry players such as Google, Epic Games, Oculus, HTC, AMD, Universal and Framestore.
Competition to take the show’s GOTY wasn’t light this year either, as the shortlist included games such as Beat Saber, Lone Echo, and both Skyrim VR and Fallout 4 VR.
VR Awards GOTY 2018 Nominees
- Bethesda Softworks – Fallout 4 VR
- Bethesda Softworks – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR
- Beat Games – Beat Saber
- Survios Inc. – Sprint Vector
- Ready At Dawn – Lone Echo / Echo Arena
- Hidden Path Entertainment – Brass Tactics
- Vertical Robot – Red Matter
- VRWERX – Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul
- ARVORE Immersive Experiences – Pixel Ripped 1989
- inXile Entertainment – The Mage’s Tale
- Cloudhead Games Ltd. – The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone
- Electric Hat Games – TO THE TOP
- nDreams – Shooty Fruity
Other award winners included HTC Vive Pro for Best VR Headset, Ultrahaptics for Most Innovative VR Company, Manifest 99 for Best VR Experience, Carne Y Arena for Best VR Film, Coco VR for Best VR Marketing, and Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire for Best Out-of-Home Experience.
Check out the full list on the VR Awards website.