Early in my days in VR, I remember hearing about a title from Survios – Zombies on the Holodeck. The experience used custom hardware to immerse you in a walkable world with tracked guns, which of course you used to shoot Zombies. The demo made use of a system Survios calls ‘Active VR’ which tracks the player’s motion through space – like the Vive’s Lighthouse, but with less precision. It was an experience I am sad I never got, but I think with today’s teaser I will get that relief in spades.
Released this morning, Vertigo Games is teasing their upcoming title for the HTC Vive – Arizona Sunshine. Check out the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEnUIGiPeOU
According to the game’s website, you are a survivor of an apocalyptic event that has resulted in zombies roaming the earth. Thinking you are one of the last survivors you set out on a journey through Arizona – which suddenly a crackling human voice comes over your radio. On your journey to find human contact you will be stuck between fighting off both the swealtering heat and the snapping teeth of zombies coming for your brains.
The game has been optimized for VR “from the ground up” meaning that everything in it was made with VR in mind. It will also, unsurprisingly take advantage of Room Scale VR, meaning that you will be able to walk around in the game’s environments. It remains to be seen how locomotion will work beyond the confines of the environment but we do know the game will be in “bite-sized chunks” (see what they did there?) that will flow together to create a broader narrative; potentially suggesting a fade and transport mechanic. This is likely something we will see with a lot of VR games, especially early on as people become more acclimatized to having a HMD on their face for hours at a time. The game will also take full advantage of the Vive’s motion tracked controllers, which can be seen in the teaser used in tandem – taking the clip and putting it into the gun for example (or even potentially smacking a zombie out of the way).
With Zombie fever still in full swing, this seems like a title that could easily hit big with a major audience. Based on the limited information we have, it seems like it could be incredibly exciting. Vertigo Games, the developers of Arizona Sunshine, were one of the original Vive partners and were the ones behind the fantastic Skyworld demo shown at GDC. They are ahead of the game when it comes to developing for the Vive – and I think we can reasonably expect big things from Arizona Sunshine because of it.
Screenshot Gallery:
UploadVR will continue to follow Vertigo Games and the rest of the Vive partners as they gear up for E3.
