This app was mentioned in 36 comments, with an average of 4.36 upvotes
You can check out my game, Gravity Pull VR, which I would consider a full (and fun) game. It does use a novel movement technique (walking in place) to move around, but it's a fully-featured puzzle game along the lines of Portal or The Talos Principle.
I'm planning on a small update to it sometime in the coming weeks. There is 1 bug where if you try to pull the first box you see into the very first room, you won't be able to walk into the 2nd room, so don't do that =).
You can try out my game, Gravity Pull VR. It's a portal-like puzzle game. (edit: links: Google Play, iOS)
It's older, but try out my game, Gravity Pull VR. It's a bit short, but it's free, no ads, and has a unique movement mechanic (with other options as well). I'm hoping to put out some more stuff soon, but real life keeps getting in the way.
Shameless plug for my own (free) game: Gravity pull
I also like Proton Pulse, the Cardboard Design Lab, and Chair in a room.
Well I'll plug my own game, Gravity Pull VR. It's a puzzle game similar to Portal. It will hopefully get some more levels when I get time.
Daydream is Google's "step up" from Cardboard. It's a a headset + controller, and it's also a spec ("Daydream ready") that sets a standard for virtual reality on phones. The controller is pretty basic and is used for mostly pointing/selecting things, but it works well.
I don't think it's fair to say that Cardboard is dead - there is still some good stuff out there.
I'll plug my game, Gravity Pull VR, if you want to check it out.
I don't think it's the best, but you can check out my free game Gravity Pull VR. It has a unique movement mechanic, and I'm working on a much higher quality follow up right now.
Our upcoming "Portal-like" Puzzle game as this allows you to navigate by walking without positional tracking or additional controller: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.VRMersive.GravityDrop&hl=en https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gravity-pull-vr-puzzle-game/id1091428717?mt=8
</shamelessselfpromotion>
This possibly isn't what you're looking for, but in terms of movement mechanics, check out Gravity Pull VR - it uses the phone's sensors to tell when the user is actually taking steps (on the spot) and that controls the movement - meaning that to run from DC the player would actually have to do the running for real and get tired for real.
Keep Fit With Coop, anyone?
EDIT - Also, this method of moving within the game means no controller is required, so people who just use Cardboard (like me) can play too :-)
I'd recommend my game, Gravity Pull. It's a puzzle game along the lines of Portal, but uses walking-in-place to move around. Some people really enjoy the walking, some people do not.
It works best with a Cardboard that has the capacitive touch button, NOT the magnet. The magnet is technically supported (and I have played through the entire game with it) but it really doesn't work well. I also added support for a bluetooth controller button for interaction in the options, but just keep in mind that it doesn't work for movement.
I'm a developer working on a walking-in-place plugin for Google Cardboard called VR-Step. I made a pretty popular game that uses it called Gravity Pull.
Not everyone will want to actually walk, but it does work really well, even on "low quality" virtual reality like Google Cardboard headsets. It also helps mitigate the simulator sickness that some people feel, since you ARE actually moving.
Honestly, the treadmills aren't ever going to catch on to a large degree, so until we can interface with the brain directly, we have to solve it through half solutions.
Hey man, I actually made a portal-like puzzle game for Cardboard! Check it out if you have time (it's free). Gravity Pull VR.
Do you just mean indie games by small teams / individuals?
Homebrew usually is a term reserved for consoles which have closed software ecosystems, where games need certification and approval from the console's manufacturer to have the game published. It's not really a term on phone/PC hardware since you can install any apps you want without explicit permission from Google.
My game, Gravity Pull VR, I guess would meet your requirements. It's a puzzle game with a unique movement mechanic. It's kinda old now but I'm hoping to find time for a sequel in early-mid 2018.
Personally, I don't mind the headset bouncing, but I'm sure others feel differently. You can check out Gravity Pull VR for my other game which first introduced the walking-in-place stuff, if you have an Android phone with a headset, if you want to try out the walking-in-place.
I have actually done user studies with that and found empirically that walking-in-place reduces cybersickness. If you want to try it yourself download our free Gravity Pull game on Android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.VRMersive.GravityDrop&hl=en
It does work great! I actually developed my own WIP implementation for Google Cardboard (probably a year before the RIPMotion guy posted his video...). My game on Android/IOS for Google Cardboard uses it (Gravity Pull VR) and people seem to like it. We have a plugin called VR-Step for Unity that lets you implement it on Cardboard. I actually already modified it a bit to work with teh Vive, but I know that it could be improved a lot.
It's definitely easier to do this sort of movement with the Vive. With Cardboard all I had to work with were the gyro and accelerometer, with the Vive you can perfectly track the position of the head, so doing low-latency movement tracking should be easier.
I'm a developer working on a walking-in-place plugin for Google Cardboard called VR-Step. I made a pretty popular (free, no ads) game that uses it called Gravity Pull. Even in this "low-quality" VR space of Cardboard, I've had people get really immersed in my crappy programmer art.
Not everyone will want to actually walk all the time, but it does work really well, even on "low quality" virtual reality like Google Cardboard headsets. It also helps mitigate the simulator sickness that some people feel, since you ARE actually moving.
For Gravity Pull, I specifically tried to make the game NOT force the player to move too much, since people would probably get tired quickly. It's essentially a first person puzzler (think Portal) where you have a gravity gun to pick up and throw boxes instead of having to move to them to pick them up. I also tried to make it so each room only had a few "action points" where you would need to do something, so moving constantly isn't required. However, you still have complete freedom to move wherever in the world, which is really powerful.
I made a small game for Google Cardboard called Gravity Pull VR. Most of the game was made in the span of about a week to make the deadline for a student game competition, which it actually won. I then spent another week or two making more levels/a proper UI, and then spent another week on porting to Daydream, so overall I spent about a month on the development.
The game features a unique (and some may call gimmicky) walking-in-place mechanic that I developed in a class during my Master's degree. I wanted to make a game that showcased the locomotion without tiring people out too much.
The game has done pretty well over the past 2 years - about 250,000 downloads - with no marketing beyond just posting it here on Reddit and Twitter. It's a free game, so I don't think that it's some crazy number, but I'm proud of it and I've gotten some very encouraging e-mails as a result of it.
A few random things about it:
When I ported the game to iOS, it skyrocketed to ~40k downloads VERY quickly, then sort of leveled off. I'm not sure if this is because of an actual, unfulfilled desire for VR apps on iOS, or if something else was going on.
Porting the game to Daydream barely made a dent in downloads. I got it featured by Google eventually, which also seemed to basically do nothing. Google's support for Daydream is pretty lackluster, and trying to discover new games through their app is terrible.
I created my walking-in-place mechanic as a Unity plugin, which did very well overall for the amount of time that was put into it. Making tools for developers still seems to be a good way to make money in VR.
Thanks! For now, I'm focusing on pure movement mechanics, and I'm not hoping to make this a puzzle game. You can check out Gravity Pull VR, which is my other game that is a bit more puzzle-oriented (and free), for Google Cardboard/Daydream.
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for your reply. I somehow was under the impression that I had to throw the artifact onto the gravity well while standing on the plate but it kept going to the wall (thanks for the clarification). I have those issues that you describe with the jetpack (difficult to go straight up) which I think are largely due to the design of the daydream controller. It is hard to gauge whether your thumb is in the middle of the track pad, and having some tactile marker on the middle would have been better.
I noticed you do use some field-of-view reduction to reduce optical flow to reduce cybersickness. However, there is some recent evidence that FOV reduction significantly impedes spatial navigation ability for females who largely rely on observation of landmarks. FOV reduction might be unnecessary for people that don't get VR sick like myself.
Have you considered using walking-in-place for locomotion? WIP generates proprioceptive feedback that also minimizes cybersickness and you don't have to use FOV reduction. WIP also offers a higher presence than controller input. For Eclipse you map locomotion, artifact use and jetpack to a single controller, which seems to overload it a bit. If you want to try WIP, check out our Daydream/Cardboard game Gravity Pull (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.VRMersive.GravityDrop&hl=en). Give the success of your game I'd be happy to send you a free copy of our VR-step Unity Plugin (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/60450) if you just want to try it out. Let me know.
My friend made a Portal-esque game called Gravity Pull - VR Puzzle Game that uses the same locomotion mechanics for cardboard. It's free on and on both iphone and android. You should check it out.
You don't really need sensors on your ankles, though I'll admit that it would be the most accurate you could get. I've done a full walking-in-place implementation with just the accelerometer/gyro in a smartphone for my Cardboard game Gravity Pull, and for the Unity Asset VR-Step. I've got it working pretty easily with the Vive.
It's a bit tricky, since some people bounce their head a lot when they walk, and some people seem to keep their head surprisingly level. My implementation definitely needs up-and-down head motion to accurately detect steps, so for some people it doesn't feel very natural, while for others, they pick it up right away.
I do have it working with the Vive, but there's a lot of tweaking and changes to the algorithm that need to be done to make it a more polished experience. Once I finish up my thesis I plan on working on that a bit more.
I've barely experimented with it on the Vive, but I did release a game back in March for Google Cardboard that uses it, Gravity Pull (it's on IOS too). It won a student game award at CHI (a big HCI conference). The step detection on the Vive would be much easier/more accurate.
I think it works really well, but people DO need to design games in a way that doesn't make you run constantly. I think it would work perfectly as a supplement to roomscale for larger-scale movements.
This is really similar to my approach with VR-Step, which works with mobile VR. We implemented it in the free game (no ads) on Android/IOS, Gravity Pull.
This implementation does look really nice though. I think having the sensor on your hip makes it a lot easier to detect low-latency speed and stopping. It's hard to do a similar thing with mobile VR since the intertial sensors on the phone are used for both head tracking and the step detection. When you have the sensor for running on your hip, you can be a lot more liberal with your sensing of motion techniques. I was really impressed at how quickly he was able to stop.
The problem with this, and where I think mobile VR has a bit of an advantage, is that you are tethered with a cable. I think the cable is a bigger problem when you are walking/running in place. It's easy to forget the cable when you're running in an action-like sequence. I'm pretty curious how the developer will move forward with this.
I've developed a game for Google Cardboard, Gravity Pull VR, that does just that! I'm releasing a plugin soon called VR-Step that should make it available for Cardboard, and then when I get some time I will make it for Vive/Oculus as well. The walking works really well - better than you would expect.
There was another guy who made something he called "RIPMotion" which was also very impressive.
I made a game that uses basic pedometry for movement. It works pretty well! I've thought about arm swinging, but you'd need another sensor, like a wiimote.
Check out Gravity Pull
Mobile VR (Cardboard, Daydream, Gear) has a much lower barrier to entry. Most people have a smartphone already, so if you can enable VR on most modern smartphones, you can enable a lot of people to have a taste of VR. If you already have a phone with a gyroscope/accelerometer, you can drop $5 on a Cardboard and have access to a ton of really cool VR experiences.
Nobody thinks that this is as immersive as the Vive, or even the Rift, but it's an entry point. It's a way to get people talking about VR. It's a way to get VR experienced by literally millions (or billions) of people, instead of just a few hundred thousand. By making the barrier to VR so low, they create a much more attractive environment for developers to create 360 videos and VR experiences.
The fact that it's mobile is also a HUGE factor. You can give yourself a huge movie theater cinema screen to watch a movie while you're on a 20 hour flight. You can ignore cords and not have to worry about people tripping. You also make it extremely easy to show VR experiences anywhere. You can whip out your Cardboard and your phone anywhere and show people your project. You can give anybody a glimpse of the inside of the house that they are considering buying, even though they're in another state. Slipping on a lightweight headset like Daydream is 100x easier than having them try out the Rift or Vive.
There are a LOT of shitty Cardboard experiences, and I know a lot of people aren't blown away by 360 video, but there are also some awesome apps out there. I'll plug my own puzzle game, Gravity Pull VR (Android, iOS), which actually features a walking-in-place locomotion system on mobile VR.
I think mobile VR is a lot more awesome than people think. Yes, the Vive is currently the best and most immersive VR experience around, but the biggest market and the most accessible is mobile VR.
To be honest, I don't think that WIP will be a "mainstream" method for controlling games. Some people may like it enough to use it though.
Some background: I created Gravity Pull, which is a WIP game for Cardboard/Daydream (about to be released on Go/GearVR), and I have a few publications on walking-in-place that I did while getting my masters. My focus was mostly using the IMU sensors in phones to do WIP with mobile VR. It actually works much better than you would expect, though it still relies on detecting the motion of the head (since there's where the phone is with mobile VR), which causes problems for people who try to "march" in place and don't move their head at all.
Obviously, with extra trackers on the feet, you could much more reliably detect steps and do locomotion than I was able to in a mobile VR setup. Also, with the extra positional tracking on the Vive's headset, the overall head movements would be much more "one-to-one", which might make things even better for VR sickness (hard evidence that WIP reduces VR sickness has not really been found, but results do hint towards it a bit).
That said, anything that requires extra trackers (and also extra setup time for the user) is going to be a barrier for mainstream VR usage. Right now, sometimes it feels like a "whole thing" to clear out my space, start SteamVR, get the controllers, turn them on, put on the headset, and then pick up the controllers. If I also have to affix trackers to my feet, that's just going to make me even less likely to play a game that would require them.
Also, I think most people want to "relax" to some extent while gaming. Most people don't want to actually walk as far as they walk in video games (seriously, if you had to WIP in World of Warcraft, you would be going thousands of miles).
So I don't know, it's fun as a novelty and for short periods of time, but for longer sessions, it has some barriers that many people won't want to deal with. This is mostly my "general feeling" about things, not something that's backed up with evidence, but I would be very surprised if a mainstream game used WIP exclusively.
Try out my Portal-like puzzle game, Gravity Pull VR ! Free, no ads.
TLDW:
No. 5 - Gravity Pull
Best Free Daydream Games - No. 5: Gravity Pull is an immersive VR puzzle game that was inspired by the legendary 3D puzzler 'Portal'. Solve 16 mind-bending physical puzzles by strategically placing cubes on switches to open doors. You'll need to carefully explore each room and view things from multiple angles to make it to the end! On top of that Gravity Pull uses an innovative input technique that lets you navigate each room using walking-in-place - it works great and you have to check it out!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.VRMersive.GravityDrop
No. 4 - LEGO BrickHeadz Builder
Best Free Daydream Games - No. 4: LEGO on Daydream is fantastic and it's free! You gotta try this out! Have fun discovering new characters and objects by solving the play formulas in the magic book. Explore building virtual LEGO models and toying with playful and crazy LEGO BrickHeadz characters, changing their looks and behaviors. Wanna just enjoy some free building in VR? That works as well!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lego.brickheadz.dreambuilder
No. 3 - AltspaceVR
Best Free Daydream Games - No. 3: But isn't AltspaceVR a social app you might wonder? Yes indeed it is and you can use it to meet your friends in VR or make new friends! Why it still made it to the top 5 free games is the fact that within AltspaceVR you can play a lot of awesome free games that are actually fantastic! What directly comes to mind is the incredible card game Holograms Against Humanity or the wonderful Disc Golf. If you have not done so yet, you should absolutely add AltspaceVR to your Daydream collection!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.altvr.AltspaceVR
No. 2 - Twilight Pioneers
Best Free Daydream Games - No. 2: Twilight Pioneers is a visually stunning first-person Action RPG in VR. Players find themselves in an Eastern-inspired fantasy world - a world that is under attack by mighty demons. Use the Daydream motion controller to cast magic spells and wield your powerful sword in order to save this breathtaking world. Twilight Pioneers is one of the best-looking games on Daydream and it simply must be experienced. And at a $0 price tag, it's an absolute no-brainer.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.netease.vr
No. 1 - Wonderglade
Best Free Daydream Games - No. 1: Wonderglade magically teleports you to an ever-growing theme park where you can enjoy carnival-themed classic games and totally new experiences with friends and family like never before. The game taps into the Daydream motion controller to add some hilariously entertaining moments for you and those witnessing as you putt, tilt, spray, spin and laugh your way through all the levels. Once inside Wonderglade, you can play five mini-games and earn tickets to redeem at the Wonder Wheel. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.resolutiongames.wonderglade
Have you tried Gravity Pull? Not quite portal, but similar I feel.
First, Derek Yu, creator of Aquaria and Spelunky, wrote an awesome article on finishing games, and it was really helpful for me.
After I read that article, I got inspired me to actually push through and fully finish a game, including sound, menus, and actually publishing it. It's really not the greatest game... there are a lot of problems with it, and I would change a ton about it, but I created all the art minus the music from scratch, and I'm pretty proud of it. I had a really simple concept (procedurally generated precision platformer) and pushed it through to completion.
Since then, I've also done a few Ludum Dares, published another game to the Android app store, and honestly feel more prepared to finish games in the future.
I think you just need to sit down, choose a SIMPLE concept that interests you, and make THAT GAME to completion. Make yourself. Choose a set of minimal features that would make your concept "complete". Do it. If it takes a month or you do it over a year, it doesn't matter, just really commit yourself to finishing it.
You can see my two games above in the links... they are not perfect, they're not exactly how I envisioned them when I started working on them, but they're pretty complete and they're out there for the world to see. They're also both relatively simple concepts that didn't take long to prototype. I think that's a big factor if you are a person who struggles with motivation.
Not to make it seem undoable, but there is a ridiculous amount of work in the "final finishing touches and polish" phase. Making menus, icons, making certain things look more smooth, adding music and sound... it all sounds easy, but it is easily double the work of just making the game in the first place. You get much, much better at it when you actually do those steps though. If you are never finishing projects, you never actually have to practice and learn the essential skills to finishing projects!
Good luck!
Check out Gravity Pull https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.VRMersive.GravityDrop
You can check for yourself (still at a very early stage) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.VRMersive.GravityDrop