Onward, the first-person mil-sim shooter for PC VR, is heading to Quest at some point—that’s what Downpour Interactive founder Dante Buckley announced back at the ESL VR League Season three championship earlier this month. Now, Buckley says the studio is currently also developing Onward to be cross-play compatible with PC VR headsets too.
In a video spotlight with VR League (linked below), Buckley announced that the full consumer release of Onward will feature custom maps, and map building tools so users can recreate whatever maps they’ve always wanted to play in the team-based shooter.
Buckley further says that Onward will also feature a ranking system, something the Early Access game has lacked in spite of its dedicated fanbase. Onward currently offers support for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Valve Index.
It’s uncertain how Downpour will implement cross-play between Quest and PC VR headsets and whether the custom map builder will be available on all platforms. In contrast to the VR shooter Pavlov, which is also consequently headed to Quest, Onward’s fist-party map builder might help ensure that the entire game is playable for all platforms. Pavlov relies on Steam Workshop for its user-generated content, which would necessarily fragment the maps available to its playerbase.
We’ve asked Downpour for comment on how the map builder will work between Quest and PC VR, and will update this piece when we hear back.