Please note this article was created with a demo for a game that is still in really early development, and is yet to launch to its Kickstarter campaign.
The team over at CBILAB Studios have been kind enough to provide me a very early look at a demo of their upcoming VR title ManMade. What are my impressions after the first look?
The game is a third person, story-driven adventure game, and from the demo I got a feeling of espionage mixed in. I know some people are not a fan of third person in VR, but I personally think they work well if done correctly.
In the demo I was placed inside a server room as Kaan, one of the two characters in the game. Kaan is trying to find the perpetrators of an incident that marked his future. He has found out from a call from an unknown number, that the people responsible work within the company he works for. He decides to visit this server room as this is where the message points to, and get into the servers. But if he thinks this will go smoothly… he is mistaken.
This is where you start the demo as you enter into the sever room. You need to use your abilities to scan and pick up details in order to locate the correct server to hack. You are going to use the right touch pad to move, the right trigger to interact with objects/clues and the left trigger to scan the environment for ideas of where to look. After you locate the correct server, it starts of the quick time event as you try to hide from a guard as the alarm sounds. I am a fan of quick time events in games, so it was really nice seeing one make it into the VR medium. With the hacking and hiding this is where the aforementioned feeling of espionage came in, and I hope there is more involved in the final product.
Now, with the game being in this very early state of development there was some issues I found with the game. The main one being the automatic camera angles the game uses, which caused me to lose where Kaan was on my first few playthroughs of the demo. The other issue I found was with the quick time events, not that they don’t work in the game, they are a bit to quick and easy to miss.
As part of the demo experience I had discussions with one of the team members Ahmet Dayanikli over Discord about the above issues, and the response was a positive one;
Hey thanks for the inputs. We will make QTE slower. We got complaints about it. We knew that we have some problems with the camera and trying to solve it.
As I mentioned earlier the game is going to have two playable characters, the second character is called Anika. Having the two characters is going to allow players to experience the world from two different backgrounds, cultures and beliefs.
Also, Ahmet has provided some further details about the what the gameplay will entail;
As a detective-like experience, you’ll need to keep your eye out for clues along the way. Exploring the scenes will provide more information to use later in the game for overcoming tough situations, unraveling the truth, and persuading people. Every detail matters, every interaction shapes the future, every decision could ruin everything.
From this short first look at the game I am excited to see how ManMade develops over time, as the demo for me shows a lot promise, and from the talk with the Ahmet on Discord they have a lot passion about their project.
Get more information and keep up to date with ManMade over at their website: http://www.cbilabvr.com
Also, keep an eye out for their Kickstarter launching in May, and show your support.
Also due for release on Oculus Rfit and Playstation VR
