Back in September, we reported on Epic Games and NVIDIA’s team-up for a VR Funhouse Game Jam and it’s now time to reap the rewards. We’d previously got our hands on the stock of mini-games and were drawn into quite an uncanny valley with its immersive interactions. At the jam, experienced developers were unleashed within a controlled environment to see what they came up with.
The game jam brought select groups from Europe together for 48 hours of creativity on a ship docked in the Hamburg Harbor and now the mods from that jam are being brought to Steam. Seven dev groups participated and created their individual Funhouse VR mods, but also helped each other out during the process.
- Waiter Wars – Dreampunks (Netherlands)
- Power Tower – Daedalic (Germany)
- Wizard’s Funhouse – Carbon Team
- Kid In A Candy Store – Team Broad Strokes
- The Secret Ingredient – Team Grumpy
- Happy Clowns – Pantumaca Barcelona (Spain)
- Beer, Beer, Beer & Sausages – Aesir (Germany)
If you follow VR development closely, a few of the names here may seem familiar. Carbon Team recently released their long awaited game Alice VR, which we reviewed just last month, and one of Daedalic’s games was featured on a previous HTC Vive new release round-up. All of the invited groups have a degree of experience so they produced some interesting work in a short window.
Each of the games takes the VR Funhouse setting and turns it on its head in unique ways. For example, Waiter Wars employs you as a waiter amid all of the chaos and equips you with a pistol to defend yourself as you maneuver through the environment and keep your tray upright. The Power Tower mod even throws players into a rollercoaster where you dodge projectiles and defend yourself with a canon.
Waiter Wars and Beer, Beer, Beer & Sausages are both available right now on the Steam workshop page and the other mods will hopefully be available in the near future.
