Wilson’s Heart, the much anticipated psychological thriller developed by Twisted Pixel and published by Oculus Studios, is due to release exclusively on the Rift on April 25th for $40. In a recent hands-on with the latest build of the game, I got to see how the title’s combat and puzzle mechanics will work.
Set entirely in a black and white color scheme, Wilson’s Heart is a rather unique looking VR game which puts you in the shoes of Robert Wilson, a patient experiencing some serious delusions in a 1940s hospital. Playing as Wilson, you’ll notice that a few screws are loose, especially when you find out that his heart has been replaced by a mechanical device with mysterious powers.
Developer Twisted Pixel says Wilson’s Heart is a full narrative experience that they expect to span 8-10 hours. The game features an impressive cast—including Peter Weller, Rosario Dawson, and Alfred Molina—who will take up characters in the narrative.
The game’s node-base teleporting locomotion system underscores everything, and it’s sure to be a point of contention following the game’s release next month. In order to navigate around the world, you look around for outlines of your character and press a button on the Touch controller to move to that location. When you press the button the screen fades black for a few second and you’ll hear some shuffling before the world eventually fades back into vision.
Generally you’ll be teleported directly in front of a door or some other interactive object, which often means looking behind you to find the next node once you’re finished with the current node. For people with 360 degree Rift setups, this probably won’t be much trouble. For the front-facing folks (likely the majority), it’s a little weird to look almost 180 degrees behind you when you need to keep your feet mostly planted to remain facing forward in the real world.
Early in my time with the game I found a supply room with a spinning number lock, but I didn’t know the combination. Jumping from node-to-node to search the grungy white-tiled halls of the hospital, I eventually made my way to another room where I found a note which had the combination to the lock written on the back of it. I teleported back to the lock and reached out to spin it to enter the numbers and release the lock. Inside I found a pair of rubber gloves. I wasn’t sure what they were for, but they were outlined in such a way that the game was telling me they were important, so I picked them up and stashed them in my inventory (a portal that appears when you pick up something that you can keep for later)
I found my way further down the hall to a bathtub filled with black liquid, which apparently required that I wear the gloves in order to pull out the plug. At this point I’m not really sure why the plug needs pulling, but the game is pushing me to do so, so I attempt to put on the gloves. It took me two tries followed by a hint from someone watching me play (in the real world) before I realized that, rather than intuitively sliding a glove onto each hand, I was to place the two gloves (which stuck together as a single object) essentially into one of my arms, at which point the gloves suddenly appeared on each hand.
Then I went to reach into the tub to pull the plug but found the world blurred out as I reached for it; this was the game’s way of telling me that I had exited the approved playspace. I stepped back and the world came back into focus. I tried again to reach the plug but again the world went blurry. Someone standing nearby told me to take a step backward (in real life), which I did, and reached for the plug again. The world blurred once more, but this time the plug came out and the liquid quickly drained.
After the liquid was gone I saw a piece of paper (yes, under the liquid) and a key near the drain. I don’t know why I wanted these items, but they were outlined (the game once again telling me I was allowed to grab them) so I reached down to pick them up, at which point the drain sprouted tentacles and a giant squid monster emerged from the tub. Looking down at my hands, I could see its tentacles around my wrists, at which point my inventory presented a chisel (indicating it was time to use it) which I had picked up earlier. I grabbed the chisel and stabbed at the tentacles, eventually freeing each arm.
Now, I wanted to hang onto this weapon that I had just used to hurt the monster in front of me, but I wasn’t allowed to keep it in my inventory now that it had served its scripted use. Mind you, the monster was still writhing in the tub in front of me with its mouth agape. Although I was free and could now teleport away from the monster with no apparent threat, it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to proceed until I got rid of it. Personally, I would have used the chisel from earlier to finish stabbing it to death (though I had been forced to discard it), but the helpful tipster from earlier told me that I should teleport far down the hallway to another room to pick up some electricity-generating box… thing… which I had seen earlier. I picked it up and then teleported back to the monster and threw the box into its mouth which dispatched it. Without the hint, I can only imagine how long it would have taken me to figure out what I needed to do to progress past the monster.
Although there was a monster present, there didn’t seem to be any real threat, so I take it that this portion of the game was meant to fall into the puzzle category.
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