Virtually impossible
Developer Growl iNTeracTive • P RICE $ 12 www.growlinteractive.com
Of course, nothing creates queues at PAX quite like the VR games. There’s a certain pleasant dissonance to momentarily escaping a crowded pavilion and disappearing to virtual places, especially if you don’t own a headset yourself. I don’t, so I watched Let’s Plays of Virtually Impossible in the meantime. Combining multiplayer kart racing with platform driven mini-games, it does look enjoyable to play. People also look silly playing it, which is always good for a laugh. Designer Min Tat Tung tells us, “We’d like to show how fun VR can be and that it’s a liberating platform to play on.
“We wanted to explore as many VR gameplay mechanics as possible. We thought about the different mechanics, like gaze and locomotion, then built each minigame based on one. For gaze, which is tracking the players look direction, we designed the Cheat Classroom mini-game, where players have to look at a friend’s exam paper without getting caught. We ended up with ten.” Not all games are so stationary, however. Mini-games include bottle flipping, catching flies with chopsticks, pouring drinks with pirate-hooks for hands and dodging cows falling from a UFO.
But isn’t this a kart racing game? Tung says, “With the karts, the player who has travelled the farthest wins. There are obstacles on the track that will slow your kart down, so even if you’ve beaten the most mini-games but are horrible at driving, you will still score lower. We think that brings more depth to the game instead of just beating the most mini-games to win. Plus it makes it action packed from the moment you press start.” So, if you’ve got the gear, Virtually Impossible is fully released now. If not, PAX is your chance to challenge others to a range of kinaesthetic skills, including racing.