Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 15

Superhot VR’s new update challenges you to beat the game in 10 minutes

In our friends at Versions’ end of the year wrap-up of their favorite virtual reality interactions of 2016, Superhot VR stood out. Superhot VR takes after the bullet-time videogame it spawned from, except with one clear difference—as your actual head and body moved, as did time. This lends itself to a variety of great VR-bound interactions: punching people in the head and watching them shatter ever-slowly, catching a gun in mid-air. Yet one stood out above the rest for our list: ricocheting a minuscule bullet off a pistol. In an update to the Oculus Touch-exclusive game, Superhot VR is going to have even more weird interactions in store.

In the soon-to-be-released update, Superhot VR is adding “Forever,” an update for the core game, adding alleged “hours of gameplay.” That additional gameplay comes in the form of additional play modes and challenges, from a headshot-only mode, completing the game without firing a bullet, to faster enemies with less reaction time. In a feverish addition, the Superhot Team has also implemented a 10-minute challenge, which bids the player to complete the entirety of Superhot VR within 10 minutes. On average, the game will take a player about two hours to finish, making a condensed speed run all the more challenging. But if anything, players have shown that they’re up for the challenge.

Superhot VR’s “Forever” update will arrive sometime next month. In the meantime, you can read more about Superhot VR on Oculus’ blog.

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VERSIONS 2017, Speaker Spotlight: Charlotte Furet

The F_T_R are an interdisciplinary design studio working at the intersection of speculation, imagination, prediction, and realization. On their website, they bid themselves as “Innovation Architects.” And as the creators of projects such as the haptic suit Skinterface and the digital display of bioluminescent bacteria Living Pixels, The F_T_R have lived up to that description.

At our upcoming VERSIONS 2017 conference, Charlotte Furet, a designer at the F_T_R, will be a featured speaker during our “Sensing Stories” panel. Born and raised in Paris, Furet received her BA in Architecture from Barnard College and a dual masters in Innovation Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. Alongside her experimental engagement with new technologies like synthetic biology and virtual reality, Furet has spent extensive time working in developing countries, designing, prototyping, testing, and implementing products, systems, and services aimed at improving people’s lives.

Furet will be an essential part of our panel “Sensing Stories” at VERSIONS 2017. The panel will also feature Chandler Burr (Former scent critic for The New York Times), Dražen Bošnjak (Composer and sound designer at Q Department & Mach1), and Robin McNicholas (Creative Director at Marshmallow Laser Feast), as they discuss all the other opportunities for immersion with our senses, beyond mere the sight and visual fidelity VR, AR, and MR currently provide us.

Missed our last Speaker Spotlight on Jenn Duong? You can read it here! Also, you can apply for tickets to attend our VERSIONS 2017 conference here .

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Serve up coffee to the dead in an upcoming anime-inspired visual novel

A long, long, long, long, long time ago (summer of last year), I was a barista. I was a barista for nearly three years, workin’ away at the same ol’ shop. Brewing tea, chatting with customers, and befriending regulars. When I played VA-11 Hall-A last year, a game that marketed itself as a “cyberpunk bartending action,” I felt the familiarity of working in the beverage-serving industry wash over me. In the upcoming Necrobarista, I imagine it might evoke a similar feeling.

Announced this month at Visual;Conference, the Route 59 Games-developed Necrobarista is a visual novel about a cafe in Melbourne, Australia and the dead patrons that awaken one night to visit. But Necrobarista isn’t a visual novel in the ways you’d expect. Instead of a typically 2D vision, the visual novel takes a cinematic, anime-inspired approach (complete with a Monogatari-esque head tilt), all while retaining the charm of choice-driven dialogue familiar to the genre.

You can watch the official announcement trailer for Necrobarista below. Necrobarista will be released in October 2017, and you can read the site for future updates.

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Explore a dark, sacred world inspired by Finnish folklore

In some beliefs and cultures, the separation of Earth and Heaven isn’t so cut and dry. In some, there’s an odd space that finds itself sandwiched in between: a point of connection between the ground we know and the sky, whether it’s materialized by a tree, a totem, a mountain, a pillar, or anything sculpted by nature or man. In Axis Mundi, a virtual reality game borne of the recent “waves”-themed Global Game Jam, the so-called connection between Earth and Heaven is a grim place.

Designed in Finland by Hu’ng, Kalle, Essi Tommila, Antti Kytö, and Mirka for the Global Game Jam, the VR game sees the land of Axis Mundi as a frightful place full of terrors. The player, donning a HTC Vive, must navigate the pitch black night with only echoing sound waves as their guide. The sound reveals objects in their path—but it also urges you closer to dangerous monsters. The primary goal of the game is to find the glowing gems in the distance and avoid the ghastly creatures that haunt your headphones, all in order to complete the luminous alter.

The game has its roots in actual folklore, as it was developed with the optional ‘Diversifier’ (or, extra requirement) “Local Lore” in mind. According to Finnish folklore, the dome-like sky above is supported by a giant “world-pole,” where the connection of the pole allows the Earth to rotate on its axis. The pole, or sometimes a tree, is often seen as a symbol of the struggle between order and chaos, or alternatively life and death. In Axis Mundi, the monsters are the pull of death, and the light is your beacon of rescue.

See Axis Mundi in action below, or download it here on the Global Game Jam page to try it out for yourself. HTC Vive required.

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A VR short film has been nominated for an Academy Award

While last year the Emmy’s recognized the Oculus Story Studio short film Henry, this year another awards ceremony is taking notice of virtual reality—the Academy Awards. Pearl, a VR short from Google, has been nominated for the 2017 Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film.

Pearl, released in 2016, stands out among the 360-degree, mobile VR, and room-scale VR tales told by Google’s Spotlight Stories. The short is directed by Patrick Osborne, the same of the Oscar-winning short Feast, which screened before the Disney film Big Hero 6 in theaters. But Pearl is a different beast than Feast, because it plops the viewer directly into the same car as its characters and employs them with a 360-degree view of the lived-in, run-down vehicle (though, a theatrical non-360-degree version was screened, according to UploadVR).

Pearl is a somber tale, chronicling the relationship between a father and daughter as they drive across the country. The short constrains the player to the hatchback, where the viewer can gaze all around the car, and even stick their head out the sun roof (if they’re watching from a HTC Vive, at least). The short first premiered at Tribeca Film Festival last year, before its release on the HTC Vive and Youtube later in the year.

You can watch Pearl below from Youtube. The Academy Awards airs on February 26th at 7pm EST. You can view the rest of the nominations here.

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Nothing like a 2-bit beach, 8-bit sounds, and real sand to get in your shoes

I’m not a beach person. I don’t like when sand gets in my shoes. And I don’t like wearing sandals to avoid that very problem either. I live in San Francisco, where the beaches are notoriously windy and cold, not sun-kissed and surf-ready. When I think of beaches, I often wish I were thinking of something else. But Virtua Walker ‘87, a virtual reality game borne from last weekend’s Global Game Jam, imagines a different kind of beach—one that I might even fancy walking along.

The 2-bit color limited Virtua Walker ‘87 was developed by the Scotland-based Robin Sloan, Paul Robertson, Dayna Galloway, Sonia Fizek, Gordon Brown, and Grant Clarke during the latest Global Game Jam, which had an omnipresent theme of “waves.” On the game’s Global Game Jam page, its developers note that the game is a true walking simulator, as it seeks to “emulate the actual distances and walking times on the corresponding beaches.” So, like walking on an actual beach. No environmental storytelling to be found here.

To fully immerse the player, Sloan and the rest of the team constructed a “revolutionary” Arduino-powered box filled with sand for the player to walk in barefoot. Two particular sensors in the box are able to detect when a player is walking on top of it. The game also boasts 8-bit sounds, which was a requirement from “Chipping In,” an optional “diversifier” for the 48-hour game jam requiring the project at-hand to only feature 8-bit style audio, visuals, or even both. Virtua Walker ’87 only features the latter (though with 2-bit visuals to boot).

Virtua Walker ‘87 looks as lo-fi as can be. “[The game was] conceived as an ill-thought out 1980s virtual reality prototype, developed by an ambitious startup that had grand ideas about virtual reality and the creation of a full sensory user experience,” reads the game’s surprisingly lore-filled description. “Neither the technology of the time nor the overall product design matched this ambition. Virtua Walker ‘87 was driven by hype, but in actuality it is an uncomfortable experience to endure.” Be sure to shake all that sand out of your shoes when you’re done.

You can download a build of the project here, compatible with the Android-capable Samsung Gear VR. Sandbox not included.

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Chrome-tinged cats come to life in this colorful VR music video

Most virtual reality music videos feel the same. They’re all impressive on a technical level, rotating 360-degrees so viewers can take in all their surroundings. Yet little of them inject the most integral feature: interactivity. That is, except for Tyler Hurd, an animator known for injecting life into those typically stagnant virtual reality music videos and making them colorful, fun, and most of all—somewhat playable like a game. At the Tribeca Film Festival last year, the animator unleashed “Old Friend,” a zany, psychedelic dance party where the player shimmied alongside a cartoonish conductor. In Hurd’s follow-up, a collaboration with Viacom NEXT, interactivity roots itself elsewhere: alongside shiny kitty cats and chrome everything.

“Chocolate,” the new music video from Hurd, features (and is based on) a track from electronic music producer Giraffage’s 2014 EP No Reason. It recently saw its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival during the 2017 New Frontier showcase. The music video is unlike the projects from Hurd’s past, cementing itself fully as an effervescent exploration of joy, much like the song it grabs its namesake from. “Chocolate” is another experiment with interactivity for Hurd as well, from a speakerphone-like kitten cannon to swaying along with the pulsing beat—the viewer is encouraged to move, not just watch.

While Hurd has made colorful videos in the past, “Chocolate” showcases a change in direction visually, away from his typical character design sensibilities. “Chocolate aims to extract childlike giddy feelings of awe and wonder from the participant,” said Hurd in a press release. “You know, like when you look at sparkly shiny things and cute ‘lil kitties made of reflective metal.”

You can watch a teaser for “Chocolate” below, and the project will release publicly within the first half of 2017.

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Explore Norse mythology in a captivating snow globe-bound puzzle game

From January 20th to the 22nd, the annual Global Game Jam blanketed the entire world as developers from every corner of every country quickly devised games. In total, 7217 games saw completion—which according to Global Game Jam, accounts to about 60 percent of Steam’s entire library. Some games were about knife-wielding crabs, others were calming vignettes, but every project found itself carefully crafted in accordance to a single theme: waves. In Australia-based developers Jennifer Scheurle, Gerard Delaney, and Emri Can Deniz’s entry, waves took shape in a familiar place: Norse mythology.

The Serpent Cycle is a game of vignettes, taking place entirely within a perfectly rounded circle, a window for peeking into its mysterious, monochromatic world. On the game’s Global Game Jam page, its creators describe it as a “snow globe puzzle game about Ragnarok and the end of the world.” The bite-sized narrative tells the story of the Jormungandr, a giant sea serpent from Norse mythology, who by legend begins Ragnarok, also known as the end of the world, by releasing its own tail.

But Deniz has a different description for the project: an interactive poem. It’s easy to see how The Serpent Cycle easily fits both breeds: the game is mythological like the Norse story it depicts, while remaining simple and rhythmic, like a poem. The Serpent Cycle gives the player an abbreviated, aesthetically captivating version of Norse mythology, one that’s only a click-through puzzle away.

You can download Global Gam Jam version of The Serpent Cycle on its entry page . Though, Scheurle noted on Twitter that a more official release may come at a later date as they polish up some blemishes.

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An old, controversial science-fiction film is being reimagined for VR

Who asked for this? We’ll probably never know. But anyways: the “cult classic” science fiction film The Lawnmower Man is coming to virtual reality. Beyond the VR world already in the film, to actual VR.

The 1992 film is being resurrected by the VR distribution company Jaunt, according to an announcement made at the Sundance Film Festival. “The original movie was a film of unsurpassed imagination and creativity with its ground-breaking use of VR back in 1992,” said Jim Howell, a rights holder for the project, in a press release. So far no director, cast, or other information has been announced, other than its impending episodic remake. But there’s one thing we can count on: there’s probably no way that Stephen King is involved.

The Lawnmower Man was a controversial film upon its release. The film’s title spawned from a short story by King, but other than a fleeting scene and sharing a name, the film was otherwise completely unrelated to the story written by the famous horror novelist. Unnerved by the inaccuracy, King sued the filmmakers to have his name removed from the credits, and won. 

In addition to The Lawnmower Man remake, Jaunt is bringing a number of other series to VR. Of the four others include Luna (action-thriller), The Enlightened Ones (political sci-fi), Bad Trip (stoner comedy), and Miss Gloria (sci-fi action-adventure). Yet of all five new episodic series, Lawnmower Man bares the least details.

If any cult classic sci-fi film were to see a bombastic remake in VR, perhaps it’s best that it’s The Lawnmower Man. It’s a film already so tethered to the concept of VR, as its centric tale follows a man driven mad by VR experiments. At its release, the film’s special effects were highly praised – something that might carry over to VR. And after all, the original film was hardly well received, so what’s the worst that could happen?

You can read more about The Lawnmower Man VR-bound remake on Jaunt’s press release.

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Playdead teases new title with mysterious image

Earlier today, the Twitter account of Playdead, creator of Kill Screen’s #1 game of 2016, emerged from its slumber to drop something special on this day of days.

Thanks for your warm reception of INSIDE. Since release, Playdead founder Arnt Jensen and the team have been working on the next adventure. pic.twitter.com/RfejnH39mR

— Playdead (@Playdead) January 20, 2017

And away we go! So short, so sweet. Let the speculation commence. Although one fan has already named it:

@Playdead "Outside"

— Devon Wiersma (@Devon_Wiersma) January 20, 2017

We’ll reach out to Playdead for more info.

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