The Line is a wonderful and short immersive experience available on Oculus Quest that sees a charming love story play out as you look down and interact with a table of beautiful miniature models. Even better, the whole experience supports controller-free hand tracking, and it’s an absolute perfect fit.
Produced by ARVORE, the same Brazilian VR studio behind the Pixel Ripped series, The Line is a fantastic piece of immersive short cinema, now available on the Quest. It won “Best VR Experience” at the 76th Venice International Film Festival last year, but the Quest release is the first time it will be available to the general public. Plus, this release is one of only four apps on the Quest store that officially supports controller-free hand tracking.
The story is only around 15 minutes long, but packs a lot of charm and detail into a small package. It’s set within a scale model of 1940s São Paulo and follows Pedro, a miniature doll and newspaper delivery man, who runs the same route around the model every day, leaving a flower outside the house of Rosa, the girl he loves, each time.
I won’t get too much into the narrative here — given its short length and simple nature, it’s something you’re better off going through blind. That being said, it’s a charming and simple narrative matched with sublime narration from Rodrigo Santoro (who you may know from HBO’s Westworld) and absolutely superb animation. It’s got a Pixar short vibe to it, and almost feels like it takes cues from Toy Story and Coco, melding them into a story presented in Moss-esque dioramas.
The Line offers support for roomscale and seated experiences, with the option to use controllers or hand tracking. I tried out The Line with both options — controllers work as expected, but the hand tracking option is a perfect fit for this type of experience. You can view a short clip embedded above, but the bottom line is that all of the actions you perform are very basic and therefore easy for the Quest to track reliably, making it one of the more enjoyable hand tracking experiences I’ve had so far.
If you’ve got a spare 15 minutes this week, I would highly recommend checking out The Line on Oculus Quest. There’s a reason it won at the Venice Film Festival and why the title screen is splashed with various accolades — it ticks all the right boxes. There’s an endearing narrative, fantastic animation and brilliant integration of new technology with Quest’s hand tracking.
The Line is available now on Oculus Quest for $4.99. It’s also available in a new ‘Cinematic Narrative Set’ for Quest at $12.98, alongside Gloomy Eyes, which also launched recently and supports hand tracking.
