VR Gaming

50 Days Of PS VR #33: 'Classroom Aquatic' Is A Test Cheating Winner

, & Jamie Feltham

10 September 2016

50 Days Of PS VR #33: 'Classroom Aquatic' Is A Test Cheating Winner

Only 33 days left before the launch of the PS VR! We’re counting down to the release of Sony’s VR headset on October 13th by highlighting one game a day for its anticipated release. Today we’re stealing looks at our friendly dolphin classmate’s tests with Classroom Aquatic.

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VR makes a lot of the experiences we already know and love much, much better. But it’s also being used to create weird and wonderful experiments that are unlike anything else seen in today’s gaming landscape. One great example of this is Classroom Aquatic from indie developer Sunken Places. It’s been a long time coming for this wacky little project, but it’s finally shaping up for launch on PlayStation VR, and it’s one of the most intriguing and hilarious experiences set to be available on the platform.

Classroom Aquatic passed a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign all the way back in 2014, but it’s one of those projects that’s been kicking around while VR headsets have taken their sweet time to actually release.

Picture the scene: you’re sitting in a finals exam and it’s not going well. It’s not that you haven’t studied hard it’s just that, well, you’re not a dolphin. But you are an exchange student at a school of dolphins, and you are expected to pass this test, flippers or no flippers. So what does any self-respecting student do when faced with potentially life-changing exams with no confidence in their ability to pass? They cheat.

Classroom Aquatic is all about cheating and getting away with it. You’ve got a certain amount of time to ace a test that’s filled with questions you won’t know and to find the right answer you have to look at your classmate’s papers. It’s a pretty ingenious use of VR’s head-tracking, making it a bigger part of the game than anything else we’ve seen in VR thus far.

Of course, cheating isn’t legal, and the teacher – also a dolphin – will be on the lookout for anyone looking at somebody else’s test. You’ll have to perfectly time your sideways glances in order to steal answers, but you can also cause distractions by throwing erasers at items in the room. The trailer above, for example, sees the player breaking a skeleton in the classroom, causing a ruckus that then gives you plenty of chances to get some answers in.

We’re hoping that Classroom Aquatic will capture a strange sort of tension as you try to steal glances from others. It plays on an art that all of us (yes, all of us, just admit it), have tried to master at one point throughout our educational careers. In the process, it could stumble upon a winning formula for one of PS VR’s most unique and fun titles.

We’re not yet sure when Classroom Aquatic will hit PS VR, which itself is coming on October 13th.