A new shooter, Dead Second, is releasing soon for Quest via App Lab and PC VR, inspired by classic arcade games like Time Crisis.
Update: A few hours after publication, Dead Second was granted App Lab approval and is now available for Oculus Quest here. Original story follows.
Developed by Australian studio Spunge Games, Dead Second is bringing a mixture of arcade cover shoot and bullet time slow-mo to your VR headset. The Time Crisis inspiration is evident in the latest trailer, embedded below, along with hints of similarly-inspired VR titles like Crisis VRigade.
As you can see in the trailer, you’ll take on a bunch of enemies using different weapons, jumping between cover to strategically take down your opponents. According to Spunge Games, the AI system is built to follow and track you according your last known position (via sight) or where shots were last fired. This can be taken advantage of to mislead and redirect the enemy, allowing you to pull off flanks before anyone realizes you’ve changed positions.
The guns are a combination of hitscan and projectile-based weapons, with no aim assist and the latter allowing for rebound shots as well. Each level will be short and sweet, targeting easy replayability with leaderboards for each combination of guns, levels and difficulty.
On Quest 2, the target is 90fps with 1.25x render scale and 4X MSAA, but the developers will also give the option to run at 120fps with 1x render scale if the Experimental Mode switch is turned on in the Quest settings.
The game is currently undergoing App Lab approval, which Spunge Games hopes will be approved this month. It’s an initial $9.99 ‘Early Access’ release for Quest via App Lab and PC VR, with a plan to build
The plan is to build the game out even more over 2022, adding new features and levels as well as potentially new gameplay elements and cosmetics. Spunge says that it’s planning for all new content to be available for free as an update, and the hope is to eventually move from an App Lab release to a full Quest release on the Oculus Store.
Dead Second is available now for Quest via App Lab, with a PC VR release to follow soon.
