Plenty of great VR games fly under the radar, but Neverout is one you definitely shouldn’t miss. This was one of the best Gear VR games of 2016, and soon it will be available on Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
I know so, because I’ve played the Rift version of SETAPP’s first-person puzzler this week. It’s the same game as it was on mobile VR, with a core mechanic that lets players walk on any surface in a square room, with that surface then becoming the floor and gravity shifting accordingly. You move one step at a time on a square grid and have to locate the exit to each room, shifting the space about so that you can fall through it.
The Gear version held tons of brilliant levels in which SETAPP teased player’s brains with moving crates, teleportation portals, and electrical fields, and all of that is intact here, complete with a visual tune-up thanks to the power of the PCs running Rift and Vive. Neverout isn’t the hardest puzzle game out there, but there’s a genuine sense of invention to it that gives working through each challenge a rewarding and sometimes dizzying sense of progression.
On that point, the developer also now gives players a choice between two movement modes: Immersive and Comfort. The former is the standard way to play the game; you’ll see walls shift around you as you step onto new surfaces.
With Comfort mode, however, you’ll have a blue line pointing you towards where you’ll step next, while moving onto another surface will be done by travelling through a portal. You can mix these features together to find what suits you, and they’ll also appear in the Gear VR version.
Neverout might not use the latest VR technology like the Touch controllers or Roomscale locomotion, but it’s a fitting reminder of just how good VR can still be without them. It will be coming to PC-based VR in the next few weeks, and I’d really recommend you check it out. Going forward, SETAPP is planning a new pack of levels for the game after Rift and Vive launch, as well as another port, this time to PlayStation VR.
