Survios, one of the earliest companies to spin up in this new era of VR, is today debuting gameplay from a new VR title that’s coming to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Inside, players battle robots in an “environment rich with interactive and destructible objects.”
Having been in stealth for some time now following a $4 million investment back in 2014, Survios is finally breaking cover to show action-packed gameplay built on VR motion input.
The company says that the unnamed titled is heading to Oculus Rift/Touch and the HTC Vive, and includes “full-body positional tracking, avatar embodiment and cooperative multiplayer.” Players will have access to weapons like a pistol, katana, compound bow, pump-action shotgun, plasma grenades and more.
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Upgrades to be unlocked span slow-motion (shown impressively in the gameplay footage), and stealth camouflage.
Survios says that the new title will be on display at the VRLA Winter Expo on January 23rd, 2016 and attendees will have an opportunity to play the co-op experience.
The company got their start way back in 2012, at the time working on a student project called Project Holodeck out of USC. Even back then, long before anyone had heard of Oculus Touch and the HTC Vive, the group was exploring untethered motion-input based multiplayer VR gaming using DIY virtual reality systems.
Three years down the road and the company’s experience with motion input controls shines through in this new gameplay teaser. It’s clear to see that they’ve spent a lot of time thinking about natural motion input.
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This teaser represents so much about what I love about VR and natural input. I wrote previously about Survios and their approach to this type of gameplay after checking out an older tech demo from the company, Zombies on the Holodeck, back in 2014.
Natural motion interactions add to VR immersion greatly. Instead of learning new button combinations for every game, such motion input allows you to be immediately familiar with how to interact in a game world because it’s based on what we already know about interacting with the real world. Want to pick something up? Just grab it. Want to throw a grenade? Just throw it.
At one point while playing, I was wielding the shotgun with two hands, with the table of weapons on my right side. Several zombies were approaching and I needed a bit more fire power. I dropped the shotgun, reached over with my right hand to grab the tommy gun off the table, then virtually tossed it from my right hand to my left hand (because I’m a lefty), then pulled my pistol out of the holster with my right hand and continued to shoot both weapons. I didn’t even know if the game supported a complex interaction like that, but I just did it anyway because that’s what felt natural to do in the given situation—and it worked. No button combos, no abstract dual wielding control scheme. This is the promise of natural VR input.
I’m looking forward to experiencing a full game built around these concepts, and it looks like Survios’ new title will deliver just that.