Silent North
Wanadev Studio continues to flex its creative muscles with Vestiges: Fallen Tribes, a new take on the interactive board game concept. It’s set in a unique sci-fi universe that blends the tribal desert style of Dune with the card-battling minifigure concepts in Demeo. After Ragnarock and the Propagation series, it’s hard to think of a more different type of game for the team to tackle.
Like Demeo, Vestiges: Fallen Tribes is playable in VR and on a desktop PC via Steam, giving its gameplay a wide range of players and styles. Unlike Demeo, you control several units at a time, powering your army with a stack of cards that give them powers.
In addition to a seriously fantastic art style and fascinating universe, the game supports both PvP and PvE modes. That solo campaign features “dozens of missions, diverse objectives, and three playable tribes with distinct playstyles, offering players countless hours of strategy-based gameplay.”
Expect the game to launch on April 24 on the Meta Quest platform.
Exer Gale
Pilotwings is a series that’s seriously underappreciated by Nintendo. Developer Chark is making up for that by giving us a game that lets us fly freely and land softly in VR, all with a simple control scheme that makes flying easy for anyone. Just spread your wings (arms), and you’ll naturally glide through the skies, racing other players or challenging yourself to top the leaderboards.
Like many of the most popular Meta Quest games, Exer Gale aims to be a social landing point that eschews complicated controls for pure fun. The developers said the game has been in development for years, primarily targeted as a single-player release with multiplayer to follow, but changes in the VR landscape have them reworking things to be multiplayer-centric on release.
Early access begins in June, so wishlist the game now on Meta Quest or Steam platforms to get notified when it’s available.
Disembodied
As a fan of the weirdest games available — Katamari Damacy is among my all-time favorites, for example — Disembodied immediately caught my attention. You use your hands to control a disembodied pair of hands with the goal of hopping and grabbing your way through this mixed reality 3D platformer.
Seeing your hands tethered together and walking on their own is a crazy enough experience, but that feeling gets even weirder when you start grabbing objects and tossing them across the level. It’s an incredible bit of innovation that I’d love to see more of, and it’s easily one of my most anticipated upcoming VR games.
Disembodied is coming to Meta Quest 3 and 3S headsets “at some point,” hopefully this year.
Loop One Done
I’ve never really been interested in games like Factorio because they require a lot of calculation and far more time sitting in front of a screen than I want to do, but Loop One Done’s physical interactions make this concept a lot more appealing to me.
You’ll start by sending a drone to mine materials, guided entirely by your hand. That loop is then recorded and repeated forever, allowing you to focus on the next piece of the puzzle.
Directly interacting with your factory pieces and drones evokes a very “toy-like” quality that immediately gets me interested. This isn’t just sorting through a visual spreadsheet of machines; it’s actually placing the machines down, physically moving them, and even recording manual drone movements to make things happen.
The developer says he’s been making the game for the last four years as it’s evolved from a drone delivery game to a massive mixed reality factory automation game. It supports controllers and hand tracking, plus there’s a miniature mode that makes it easy for players of any height to enjoy. Look for it to launch on the Meta Quest platform in early access on May 2.
The Phoenix Gene
Many years ago, Sega promised us a Panzer Dragoon VR game. While that never materialized, The Phoenix Gene seems to have risen from the ashes and thrown a little bit of Rez in for good measure. As a huge fan of the Panzer Dragoon series, I’m always excited whenever I can play a new release, and the VR motion controls for The Phoenix Gene look like the perfect way to take the concept into the 2020s.
The developers describe controlling your phoenix as “like holding a paper plane.” You’ll move it around with your controllers, ducking, diving, and shooting your way through the game’s colorful levels.
What particularly intrigues me is the ability to shoot 360 degrees around you at any time just by moving. The Panzer Dragoon games allowed you to swivel the camera in 90-degree segments but it was always a bit harrowing trying to multitask between different directions. This seems to solve that problem entirely, thanks to natural hand and head movement. You can wishlist the game now on Meta Quest with a release date of some time this year.
Pedal Rebel VR
VR exercise games are a dime a dozen these days, and while some games are hidden workout gems, Pedal Rebel VR aims to turn that dusty exercise bike in your closet into a sweat-covered machine in no time. Strap a controller to either of your legs and get pedaling in this neon-soaked, 80s-flavored, fast-paced racer with a twist!
Instead of biking the serene countryside, as some other VR biking games have you doing, Pedal Rebel VR gets you rip-roaring down a highway at breakneck speeds, weaving through and dodging traffic to get high scores. It’s a great twist on the concept of exercising at home, and it does something unlike we’ve seen before in VR.
Hit up the official website and join the Discord for a demo!
