Like a lot of VR enthusiasts, Fire-Point Interactive is bored of using guns, so it’s turning to something a little different for its new VR game, Tooth and Claw.
Announced earlier this week, Tooth and Claw is a first-person online combat game in which you don’t wield pistols or machine guns but instead scurry around the wilderness as a sabre-tooth tiger. You can see the first exclusive screenshots for the game in this article.
“The idea came from a couple of directions,” the developer’s Joe Bonar tells me over emails. “The first is that we wanted a product to showcase our networking tech, so we wanted to make a PvP game. The second is that we wanted to make a PvP game that didn’t use guns because there’s quite a few out there already, so we went for animal combat. Which turned out (after several hilarious attempts) to be super fun!”
In Tooth and Claw, your position tracked controllers turn into the paws of the tigger, and players use them to walk or run. Bonar notes that the game’s camera will measure player height to make it feel like they’re walking on all-fours when really they’re standing. You can extend and retract claws with the pull of a trigger and, when you meet and enemy, you’ll swipe your paws at them to finish them off.
You’ll also be able to hunt over players by standing still for a few seconds to see where their footprints are, though the developer notes that this in turn leaves you open for attack.
“We’re constantly fine-tuning movement and attacks,” Bonar says, “and we’ll be watching players carefully as they enjoy our Alpha build at CVR over the weekend, so we can make the experience as fun and wonderful as possible. And it’s already tons of fun – the office has been a riot for the last week or so as we’ve been testing.”
Tooth and Claw will be coming to the HTC Vive and PlayStation VR (PSVR) headsets later this year though, as Bonar says, it will be on display at CVR 2017 in Vancouver this weekend.
