Proton Pulse, the instant classic VR demo harkening back to the Rift DK1 days is coming to the HTC Vive and Oculus Touch with brand new mechanics. We’ve got the first look at how it’ll play.
Proton Pulse is most easily described as a VR brick breaker game, but more than that, it was one of the early demos that felt uniquely designed for VR from the ground up to be both comfortable and fun in a time when developers were learning that the usual tropes of first-person locomotion could be quite nauseating in VR. Proton Pulse took a stationary approach and integrated the Rift DK1 headset as the input method, making it a great first-time VR demo, especially for those not familiar with controlling games with a controller or keyboard & mouse.
Developer ZeroTransform has continued development since those early days on the DK1, and Proton Pulse is available as a DK2 demo on Oculus Share, a full game on Samsung Gear VR, and there’s even a version for Google Cardboard. And now it’s coming to the HTC Vive and consumer Rift with Oculus Touch.
As a standing experience in the Vive and Oculus Touch, the game’s pulsating arena takes on a new scale, feeling like a walkable room that really extends into space before you. New gameplay mechanics have been added since previous versions, like slow motion and side spin. While the paddle is still predominantly controlled by the player’s head, the game introduces a holographic racquet in the Vive and Touch version, allowing for some satisfying slams.
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ZeroTransform founder Justin Moravetz says that the game is designed to work across all VR modalities, whether that be sitting, standing, or room-scale play, with or without motion input controllers.