Gunfire Games has more VR games under its belt than most, having worked on two Herobound titles for Gear VR, Oculus launch title Chronos, and Oculus Touch freebie, Dead and Buried. The latest effort, From Other Suns, looks to be its most ambitious yet, but you can find pieces of its past within.
From Other Suns is every sci-fi fans dream come true, letting you and three friends take control of a space ship and explore a procedurally generated galaxy, taking on infinite missions. It’s a full first-person shooter (FPS), that wants to accommodate every Oculus Touch owner, no matter how susceptible they are to VR sim sickness.
To that end, the game has a pretty intriguing optional locomotion solution. When pushing the analogue stick of your left Touch controller forward in comfort mode you won’t see your camera lurch forward like a traditional FPS. Instead, you’ll see your character step out in front of you, entirely under your control. When you stop walking, the camera resets back inside your character’s head. It’s an intriguing solution, but it actually reminds me of the static camera seen in Gunfire’s first Rift game, Chronos.
“When we first talked about Chronos we wanted a safe comfort launch title game,” the developer tells me. “But we wanted a deep immersive game. The games we play, we play for hours on end, we don’t just play 20 minutes or 30 minutes.” The developer wanted to create something that offered all the immersion of first-person VR while not tiring players out then. Comfort mode is one such option for those that get sick.
“We think that this is something that keeps that immersive factor for folks that need that comfort mode, and it enables us to keep everybody together because we’re giving options,” Gunfire said.
While the third-person movement reminded me of Chronos, the rest of From Other Suns is obviously closer to Dead & Buried, the team’s multiplayer shooter for Oculus Touch. Gunfire told me the company was borrowing elements from that game, like attaching guns to your virtual hips, while also trying to balance the gameplay so that players wouldn’t get tired in 20 – 30 minutes like they might in its first Touch title.
Despite these influences, From Other Suns stands out on its own. When I played a 10-minute mission I had an absolute blast running down corridors, trading fire with robots and taking cover behind walls. At one point an ally opens a door and he’s instantly blown up by a rocket, and everyone in the room falls down laughing. Gunfire Games might have been heavily influenced by what’s come before, but something tells me this game’s best stories will come from what’s new.
