Remember the glory days of the beat ’em up? Taking to the streets and delivering justice with your fists? Indie developer Line Above wants to bring them to VR with its debut game, Bionic Mayhem.
This is a third-person brawler heavily inspired by the likes of Streets of Rage and Final Fight. Developer Krisztian Nagy tells UploadVR that the idea came from a desire to play those favorites in VR.
“Honestly I was skeptical if this type of locomotion will work in VR at first, but decided to spend a few days to give it a proper shot,” Nagy says. “I was genuinely surprised how natural and good it felt to play my favourite genre in VR, so after then I started planning out the full game and after an initial MVP, I collected a few other members to the team to help me with the development process.”
As you can see in the trailer above, Bionic Mayhem looks like a fairly traditional beat ’em up on a mechanical level. You walk from one side of the screen to the other punching monsters in the face. But that isn’t the whole story; Nagy says there will be first-person shooter (FPS) segments too. And, yes, you can expect multiple playable characters as seen in the trailer. Local co-op, with one player in the headset and another on the screen, is also on the cards though not confirmed yet.
“We have 6 main levels planned with 4 sublevels on each, so a total of 24 sublevels, at an average of 7-8 minutes each, so a basic playthrough on normal will take about 2.5-3 hours,” Nagy adds, noting that extra modes will expand the length.
This isn’t the first VR beat ’em up we’ve seen. Back in 2017 Paw Print Games took a respectable jab at the genre with Bloody Zombies. We’re hoping for something a bit more VR-specific with Bionic Mayhem, though.
For now, line above is looking at a Q3/Q4 2019 release for Bionic Mayhem on Vive and Rift. A PSVR port could come after launch, too. For now, you can sign up to a mailing list here.
