Late last month we reported that popular two-man studio Kite & Lightning had raised $2.5 million, hinting at a bright future for the company. A first glimpse of that future has been revealed today.
The developer has confirmed that it will be updating and rereleasing arguably its most popular VR experience, Senza Peso, for the consumer version of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. The experience originally debuted on the Rift’s second development kit (DK2) and wowed the VR community at the time, serving as a companion piece to a mini opera. A port to current VR headsets has long been requested and now the studio is fulfilling those wishes.
The developer, Cory Strassburger, confirmed that the piece will be on display at the Toronto Film Festival’s POP Exhibit today. He described this version as “Senza Peso 1.5″ while the version that will release in full will be “Senza Peso 2.0″. It now runs with the latest version of Epic Game’s Unreal Engine 4 and has rebuilt assets and textures, making it look “a lot cooler” in the developer’s words. A possible Gear VR version was also teased.
On top of that, Kite & Lightning is also rereleasing its GE Neuro experience, which was revealed at E3 last year in partnership with GE and AMD. It’s an imaginative, fun exploration of the human mind that’s filled with wonder and spritely visuals. It should also be available on Rift and Vive in “the next few weeks”.
All of this is just a taste of what’s to come; Kite & Lightning is currently working on its first full VR title in Bebylon: Battle Royale, which should be coming to just about all major VR headsets. It’s a frantic multiplayer game in which you compete for dominance on a world inhabited by overgrown babies. We’re looking forward to seeing much more of the title in the near future, but for now you can expect it to be unlike anything else we’ve seen from the studio.
