Gunjack is a quite gorgeous looking turret-shooter for Samsung’s Gear VR headset. The game is set in the EVE universe, that of developer CCP Games’ Eve Online. As an arcade-style shooter, players can collect powerups as they fend off waves of enemies. The game will launch with the consumer version of Samsung’s Gear VR which CCP affirms will come this fall.
Gunjack is the continuation of a concept called Project Nemesis which the company showed off initially as part of its ‘VR Labs’ at Eve Fanfest 2015 back in March, a series of VR experiments on varying hardware.
See Also: CCP Games’ Adam Kraver on How VR Labs are ‘Getting Players into the Game’
Gunjack’s gameplay has players sitting inside of a detailed turret mounted on a space station. Head movement is linked to aiming, making it a ‘look-to-shoot’ game, with waves of enemy squadrons that need fending off. Various powerups affording different weapon types can be gathered, though it isn’t clear if there will be an upgrade structure for the turret that persists through rounds.
As one of the few Gear VR titles built on Unreal Engine 4, it’s clear that the team paid considerable attention to visuals; Gunjack is one of the best looking games that we’ve seen on the headset to date.
Project Nemesis, Gunjack’s predecessor, used only Gear VR’s headtracking and touchpad for input. It isn’t clear at this point if the game will optionally make use of a bluetooth controller as some other games do on the platform.
Update (8/4/15): CCP Games has reached out to confirm that Gunjack will make optional use of bluetooth controllers. Original article continues below.
Ian Hamilton points out on UploadVR that the description of the game’s trailer on YouTube says that GunJack will be “…available this fall with the launch of the Samsung Gear VR.” While the ‘Innovator Edition’ of Gear VR has been available since December 2014, a proper consumer version has yet to be announced by the company. The information from CCP Games affirms what we heard from Oculus CTO John Carmack at GDC 2015 who said that the consumer version of Gear VR would launch alongside Samsung’s next product cycle. Oculus and Samsung partnered on the creation of the mobile headset.
See Also: Developers Start Your Engines – Gear VR Full Launch Next Samsung Product Cycle
In addition to Gunjack and the company’s VR Labs experiments, CCP Games is developing Eve Valkyrie, a space dogfighting VR game built for the Oculus Rift and Sony Morpheus headsets.
“We believe that virtual reality will be a defining element of gaming’s future. It may take some time to get widespread adoption, but we’re going to be there on day one,” said Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP. “We’re making smart investments in VR so we can learn important lessons early and blow people’s minds when they get their hands on their first VR headset.”
