Long-time independent VR developer E McNeill successfully funded his latest project on Kickstarter and recently sat down with us in our virtual studio for an interview.
There aren’t many developers with as much experience making VR games as McNeill. He’s built strategy games like Astraeus, Skylight, Tactera, and Darknet for VR. His latest project is a cross-platform sword-fighting project built with design considerations like slow-motion and one-hit swords that force players into a rhythm in multiplayer battles.
“I can’t just make sort of smallish, niche strategy games anymore,” McNeill said. “I want to make something that is a lot more ambitious, that has a better chance of standing out.”
The game is planned for Steam and the Oculus Store (with cross-buy between the Rift and Quest versions) and McNeill says he received tentative approval of the idea for Oculus Quest. The crowdfunding project added more than 500 backers and $21,000 to his development efforts. Ironlights ends its fundraising on Kickstarter at 8:45 am Pacific on Thursday February 13 and a beta release of the game is slated to go out when the campaign ends.
We discussed McNeill’s path from the Oculus Rift Kickstarter project in 2012 to now. He launched his first game on the Gear VR Innovator Editor in December 2014 and that was so early he couldn’t even sell the project since there wasn’t a payment method available. He’s been an independent VR developer for so long, and working mostly on his own for much of that time, that it was great to have him in our studio to discuss the challenges of VR development and his plans for Ironlights.
Watch the interview here:
