We reported recently that the creator of the smash hit animated series Adventure Time, Pendleton Ward, had seemingly gone a little crazy over virtual reality. Well, it looks like that craziness has taken shape, in the form of a new Gear VR title called Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games.
Pendleton Ward’s twitter account recently metamorphosed into a spoof VR media feed and was flooded with Ward’s scribblings and doodles on the subject. It seemed pretty clear though that Ward knew his subject matter and we did wonder if there’d soon be some manifestation of this minor obsession.
Well, seems we didn’t have to wait too long as a new VR title featuring everyone’s favourite Cartoon Network based adventuring kid-and-stretchy-dog combo team has hit Samsung’s Gear VR and it’s called Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games and if you’re in the US or Canada, it should be in the Oculus Store as I write this.
The game casts you as ‘Tiny’, who’s been transformed into a balloon by the mischievous (and as fans of the shows will know, somewhat sadistic) Magic Man. The game follows Finn and Jake on their quest to free Tiny from the spell.
Casting the player as a floating character is a very clever gameplay conceit, allowing the creators to explain why it is you’re gazing malevolently down on Finn and Jake as they traverse the land of Ooo in search of a cure for Tiny. Gameplay is pure platformer, but with some neat nods to Jake’s stretchy abilities. The Adventure Time‘s simplistic cel-shaded original production design seems perfect for VR and in particular a the necessarily low-fi visuals required to run smoothly on such a platform.
The title is developed by Turbo Button, a Los Angeles based virtual reality development studio founded this year and who also produced SMS Racing, one of the more ingenious entries in the recent Oculus Mobile Jam event.
The title is available for free and should offer around 30 mins of gameplay and really does look great, especially for those into their Adventure Time (if you’re not, what’s wrong with you dude?!). It seems though access to the title may be region restricted, although we’re trying to confirm this now.
