Today Unello Design launches their latest Oculus Rift experience, Lunadroid 237. The experience puts the player on the surface of the Moon, during the U.S. manned missions, exploring as they find out who, or what, they are.
Launched at a fitting time, just a few days after China landed their first rover on the Moon, Lunadroid 237 is a new Oculus Rift experience that Unello Design is launching for free on Windows and Mac. I don’t want to spoil the experience so I won’t say too much, but if you’re a fan of space like myself, it’s definitely worth a shot.
Unello Design, who is responsible for Waking Man and Eden River Oculus Rift demos, is also including some extras with Lunadroid 237: two psychedelic musical experiences (with standalone music), Lunadroid Suite (OST), and 3 wallpapers. You can get it all right now!
Lunadroid 237 Interview with Aaron Lemke
I spoke with the Founder of Unello Design, Aaron Lemke, to learn more about Lunadroid:
Road to VR: How did you arrive at the idea for Lunadroid 237?
Lemke: Lunadroid 237 started, back in June before I had my dev kit, as a way to learn javascript and to get more familiar with Unity. Slowly as a few other projects came and went it evolved into a full-fledged experience. I love sci-fi films set in space, so going to space was one of the first things I wanted to try with VR. A game called Blue Marble was the first Rift game I tried that really portrayed space and the Earth in a powerful way. Also space is simple. You dont have to model trees or write ocean shaders or subsurface scattering or any of that hard stuff. You really just need stars and planets, and you’ve got space.
Road to VR: Your previous Oculus Rift titles have been of a very relaxing nature, what draws you to peaceful games over games that are hectic and tense?
Lemke: I’ve always been drawn to more relaxing, slower paced games and right now I’d say maybe 70 or 80 percent of the games available for the Rift are what you described as hectic and tense. So it’s definitely harder to stand out in that space. A lot of them are horror games and horror works really well on the Rift because being inside of the Rift puts you in a very vulnerable place. It’s really an intimate experience because you have to trust this technology that’s right in front of your face, and a lot of these horror games have figured out different little tricks to take advantage of this vulnerability and really scare the crap out of people. I’m looking to focus this vulnerability in a different way though, towards awe and mystery rather than fear. At least that’s my hope with Lunadroid.
Road to VR: What kind of opportunities do you think virtual reality opens for developers compared to more typical gaming hardware?
Lemke: AAA console gaming has been pretty stagnant creatively the past few years and what excites me the most about virtual reality is being able to experiment and come up with new types of experiences. This doesn’t mean there are no new experiences to discover in designing console games but VR is truly uncharted territory and that’s super exciting from a developer’s standpoint.
Road to VR: Tell me about the ‘extra’ experiences included with the game.
Lemke: I recently played an excellent game designed for the Rift called Asunder: Earthbound. It is a very well done horror game but it’s also the first game I have seen that includes an “Extras” section. Inside they have all of the environments from the game and a few other short experiences to try. I liked this idea of including extra content along with the game so I decided to make some wallpapers to include with the Lunadroid 237 download package. Also I recently took part in Ludum Dare which is a monthly game jam, and I ended up just experimenting with the Rift all weekend. I came up with some pretty trippy stuff so I decided to throw the two best experiences in with Lunadroid. I’m also including the original music I wrote for Lunadroid 237 and the two game jam experiences.
Road to VR: Do you already have something in mind for your next Oculus Rift project?
Lemke: There’s a psychology lab in Warsaw that I’m designing an experience for, so that’s the immediate next thing. Other than that, I have a few ideas floating around. I would love to make some kind of Fantasia-like experience for the Rift. I’ve also been toying with the idea of multiplayer VR, I think there’s going to be some really compelling games in that space.