Developer Marcelo Oliveira, Kickstarter backer #117, is working on an ‘infinite runner’ game for the Oculus Rift — the genre seems to fit surprisingly well! Oliveira hopes to release the game for free in the near future.
In the ‘infinite runner’ genre, the player runs along a forever long expanse, usually dodging obstacles and collecting coins or powerups. In this particular game, you play a ninja who runs, jumps, rolls, and throwing-stars his way down the course.
Oliveira, lead programmer at Top Free Games in Brazil, told me that he hopes to release this game for free in the future as a promotional tool for the upcoming Android/iOS version which doesn’t currently support the Rift.
Thanks to being already built in Unity, Oliveira says it took him just an hour to get initial third-person gameplay working where the camera floats behind the character and the user can look around the scene as the character runs:
“It looked cool but I knew I had to try a first-person version…” said Oliveira. Another hour and he had a working first-person prototype which he has been working on polishing.
After showing it off to friends he said that “every single one was quite impressed, the most common phrase was ‘I lost the interest in playing games in a normal monitor again’.”
I’m surprised to see how intense first-person running is; I wouldn’t have thought right away that the infinite runner genre would be a good fit for VR. However, it actually looks frightening as you barely dodge obstacles. While keyboard and/or mouse are likely the means of input, having the Razer Hydra to toss the throwing stars would surely be a hoot! For exercise, just add the Virtuix Omni!
I was curious to hear how Oliveira got interested enough in VR to be Kickstarter backer #117:
I was kind of always interested in VR, every conference I went that had any kind of HMD I gave it a try but never had the opportunity to own one, the experience wasn’t what I expected and they were expensive and with limited support. Then I saw the Carmack’s E3 video last year and started to lurk the MTBS forums, as soon as the Kickstarted launched I backed it, early this month I received my kit here in Brazil (had to pay 100% of taxes).