VR has no shortage of social networks to meet up with friends in, including Facebook itself. Hypatia, however, wants to take services like that and mash it up with something like Minecraft.
Developed by Timefire VR, Hypatia is releasing on HTC Vive later this month on June 15th for $29.99. The 30 man team has been working on the app for the past three years. Over that time we’ve seen apps like AltSpace and vTime make a play for social VR dominance, but Hypatia wants to differentiate itself from those applications by making a playground for the mind. You can see a little of what that might mean in the video below.
To start off with, Hypatia will only feature content created by the developers themselves, but the team wants the app to grow through the ideas of others. Right now citizens will be able to meet up in a picturesque urban environment and paint the city using tools similar to Google’s Tilt Brush. There’s also a virtual museum, an interactive theater, and puzzle solving minigames.
Hypatia seems to have visions of being VR’s Second Life — though Linden Lab has those dreams too — or Sony’s PlayStation Home platform. Some of its more creative features also appear in Facebook Spaces which launched in beta back in April.
Still, Timefire’s mission sounds no less ambitious. Today the developer is launching a competition for Vive owners to win one of 500 keys to get entry into the game. Sign up over at an official website to be in with a chance of qualifying. If you’re interested in checking this one out when we suggest you sign up.
