By Grit Alone aims to be Dead Space in VR and we interviewed the studio to learn more about this upcoming action horror game.
Revealed at the UploadVR Summer Showcase in June, By Grit Alone is a new narrative-driven VR horror shooter set in the "Bermuda Triangle of space." Taking the anthology approach with different writing talents like Antony Johnston (Dead Space, Resident Evil Village) and Emma Beeby (Judge Dredd, Doctor Who), you'll explore a graveyard of abandoned starships in a fight for survival.
In our recent hands-on preview we got an early look at "the creepy atmosphere aboard the Agapemone, a derelict spaceship that's filled with burned corpses and nasty insectoids."
Before that preview took place, UploadVR also interviewed Crooks Peak's Charlie Cochrane over a video call. After previously making RacetronicVR, Cochrane saw the VR market was growing following Quest 2's launch and believed it was time to return. Following success with Alien Extraction, Crooks Peak looked to its next project roughly two and a half years ago.
"We were like, 'Okay, we've got our legs in the VR market. What do we really want to make?' I'm a massive Dead Space fan, so I was like 'Dead Space in VR.'"
While aiming to deliver a similar type of "frantic combat" to Dead Space, By Grit Alone's story is also a major focus.
"One thing we love about the Dead Space setting and games like Bioshock or SOMA is that you're stuck in this situation, but you're also learning about the world as you go. There's an absolute mountain of lore, but if you're just there to blow things up, you don't need to deep dive into it."
Lore is shared several ways, such as written and audio logs. More prominently, Holographic logs show characters moving around you, offering clues into the ship's environment and its history. Cochrane didn't wish to give too much away, but I'm also told splitting this adventure across separate ships offered the opportunity to tell different stories. For that, they hired different writers.
"This was really good because we could say to the writers, 'It's a spaceship, you're stuck in this horrendous zone with aliens but apart from that, do whatever you want.' From a perspective of getting them on board, they're all excited because they could do whatever they want."
By Grit Alone was designed as an anthology because Crooks Peak sought the variety such an approach offered, so I questioned how the studio kept the overarching storyline cohesive with writers having this much freedom. Cochrane admitted this was a challenge since the team didn't want the game to have a "shopping list" of things to do, so each writer had a "lore bible" to work from.
Your main objective is to understand what's going on and survive, and these mini stories across each ship help you discover what's going on. You don't play as a particular person; the character you embody has no voice lines, and Crooks Peak took this approach to maintain immersion.
"We don't want players to feel like they're doing stuff in the story that they wouldn't want to do because it completely breaks the illusion that they're in this survival situation... we're really trying to make it feel like it's you."
Given how much these ships differ, asking what we can expect from gameplay isn't a particularly straightforward question, but Cochrane explained what to expect when you first jump in.
You're going to encounter these really dark corridors and an important thing for us is these aliens. The player will travel semi-cautiously because you are quite vulnerable, but you might then come into a fantastical environment with these holo logs that you can trigger with a button. It then goes into an almost investigative kind of mode where you're working out what's going on.
There might be a puzzle, maybe some lore... at each point, we're also trying to introduce new aliens as well. You might leave a more narrative area for the next zone, and then something comes out the wall, or you're trying to work out what's going on. It's a mix between this really frantic combat situation and little narrative vignettes.
You won't find any jump scares and beyond its Dead Space influences, By Grit Alone aims more for action horror like Resident Evil 4 VR than hardcore titles like MADiSON VR. Crooks Peak also wanted to embody classic 80s/90s action movies like Terminator 2 and Aliens, where you've been placed in a terrifying situation but the hero keeps pressing forward.
By Grit Alone doesn't use loading screens, and I'm told that the game plays like one continuous scene. Considering many VR games take a more bite-sized approach to campaigns, whether that's a mission-based structure or simply offering regular saves, I asked how Crooks Peak is tackling progression.
"With each individual ship, you're probably spending somewhere between 30 mins to an hour. We want players to be able to say, "Okay, I've reached a good point in the story where I can take a breather." But you could play this thing all the way through and it's really important for us to have no pauses."
It's my belief that one of VR's biggest immersion breakers can be loading screens or fading to black, and Cochrane agreed with this sentiment. He considers that to be especially true with horror games and explained it's something to avoid when you're trying to build up tension with players.
Quest 3 owners can expect "bumped up" visuals compared to Quest 2, but are other VR headsets being considered? Cochrane didn't confirm any plans, though he considers Steam a "natural next fit" after Alien Extraction's PC VR release, and By Grit Alone using OpenXR makes that port "not easy but doable." PSVR 2 is a "wait and see" situation, though he's a fan of Sony's headset.
By Grit Alone reaches the Meta Quest platform this September.
