VR Games FAQ

At Resolution Games, we make games for everyone. Not only by consistently extending our games catalog into new exciting game genres, but also by making sure to include certain “special ingredients” in our games. Here’s the Resolution recipe for accessible VR games.

There’s something magical about bridging long distances between friends or strangers with virtual reality. The VR games from Resolution are all about exploring different, innovative and fun ways to play together. From esports-friendly, high-adrenaline physical gameplay in games like Blaston and Ultimechs to the game that brought game night digital, Demeo, to hectic party play in Acron and Cook-Out, you can always look to our VR games for a great social experience!

Into the… Tinyverse?

In Demeo’s Heroes’ Hangout and Blaston’s Ozo Lounge, we have introduced popular and unique virtual spaces in which you can hang out with old and new friends, play mini games, listen to music, plan your next play session, or decompress or debrief after a particularly intense match. We believe in connecting people naturally and organically through a shared interest, and our VR games offer a glimpse into the metaverse future.

To make the player bases for our games as big as possible, almost all our games support cross-platform multiplayer. No matter if you’re on Quest, Steam, Rift - or even non-VR PC (Demeo) or mobile (Acron), you can enjoy friendly collaborative or competitive matches with players everywhere.

Our VR games are enabled for cross-buy for the Meta platforms (Quest and Rift). With Demeo, you even get the 2D PC version included in Quest OR Rift purchases. Demeo is also cross-buy on Steam - you get both VR and 2D versions at one price.

The most popular VR headset today is Meta Quest 2 (named Oculus Quest 2 when it was released in 2020). It’s fully standalone and wireless - you only need the headset and the included controllers to play. It also has a sharp display, a powerful mobile processor, and a large library of VR games, including our titles. For more demanding VR gaming, Quest 2 can connect to your gaming PC if you have one. On top of that, it costs only $399, which is very affordable for the experiences it can provide.

Other standalone VR headsets include Vive Focus 3 and Pico 4. Vive Focus 3 in particular is more focused on professional and enterprise applications rather than games, whereas Pico 4 with its smaller form factor and slightly lower price than Quest 2 is an interesting option in the markets where it’s available.

If you are only interested in VR gaming on your PC, and you don’t mind wires and a higher price, Valve Index and HP Reverb G2 are other alternatives. The strength of Index is its very precise tracking and hand controllers, as well as eye comfort. HP Reverb G2 is appreciated by many simulator players (racing, flight sims, etc) for its sharp display.

Some people experience motion sickness and nausea when first trying VR games. Here are some pointers to avoid or minimize the risk of motion sickness:

• If you start to sweat or get a nauseous feeling, immediately stop and take a rest outside VR. Trying to “power through” can often make it worse.

• The most common factor in VR motion sickness is artificial locomotion. When the game world (according to your eyes) moves around you in a different way than your vestibular system in the inner-ear expects, the body’s natural reaction is nausea. It can hit you fast and strong, so be very careful with games that feature “free locomotion” (you control your avatar with the joystick in your hands).

• In VR games where you NEED to move in a bigger space than your real, physical playspace, look for comfort options in the game settings. They are often turned on by default, but you can look especially for “teleport movement” and “snap turn” options.

• Hardware can also be a factor for comfort, which can affect nausea. Make sure you have the appropriate IPD setting on your VR headset to reduce eye strain, and that you use the strap in a balanced way that moves some weight from the front to the back of your head. Additionally, if using a PC for VR gaming, make sure your PC is powerful enough to drive the necessary framerate without frame loss and latency.

• Playing games that are designed and optimized for player comfort can also help prevent nausea. Games where the gameplay happens in a stationary setting, focusing on interactions with the objects around you should not make you motion sick. (In order to share our games with the most people possible, all games in the Resolution Games catalog are carefully designed with this in mind.)

When you see the real world and virtual objects/elements layered on top of that at the same time, that’s mixed reality. In VR, this is made possible by showing the “pass-through” video feed from the headset cameras to the player. This new feature enables entirely new experiences and types of gameplay, and we at Resolution Games are very excited about the possibilities of mixed reality and augmented reality in extension to VR games. 

In our popular PvP dueling shooter game Blaston, you can try a new way to play with passthrough/mixed reality mode introduced in the Arctic Blast update. It’s a physically active game, so the feature of seeing your real surroundings is extra useful for players with limited play space in their homes. Also, our hit dungeon crawler Demeo has recently received a mixed reality update, making it possible to put the tabletop-sized gameplay comfortably on your living room table. You can even play it in color pass-through if you own a Meta Quest Pro!

VR is unique because it can involve your whole body in the game. This has a big effect on how games need to be designed with many different players in mind. Accessibility in VR is bigger than gaming, since it - along with augmented reality - are becoming tools for general computing and productivity tasks. In addition to comfort options (see “motion sickness” above), accessibility in VR games can be improved with options for text size, one-handed play, adjusting player height (or world size) and many other factors.

For example, in Demeo we allow players to pick up pieces with a pointer instead of having to move physically and pick pieces manually. Players can also tilt the whole game, allowing the player to even play the game lying down.

Absolutely! Though because the VR market is relatively new and inherently smaller compared to gaming in general, developers aren’t yet able to put the same scale of AAA budgets into their production. In addition, the platform with the biggest audience is Meta Quest, which is a mobile console with a lot less processing power than regular consoles or gaming PC’s. But there are still a good number of games that have beautiful, highly detailed graphics in VR. In all the games we make at Resolution Games, we pride ourselves with putting a lot of effort into creating beautiful, vivid art with great animation and dynamic, atmospheric lighting effects.

Still, it’s important to remember that VR games provide a completely new visual experience because of the unique 3D depth and immersion. If you only see a VR game in screenshots or videos you’ll be missing out on a lot. If you haven’t tried VR yet, we hope you’ll give it a chance soon!

VR games are most commonly priced in the range of $10-$40, with some premium titles going up to $60 and many, many games available at lower prices or free. To sum it up, one could describe the price of VR titles on average as higher than mobile games but lower than AAA titles on console/PC.

As a studio, we have games that have an upfront purchase price as well as those that are free to download - including one of our earlier titles, Bait!, that is one of the most downloaded VR games of all time!

There are many ways to make money on free VR games. Some alternatives include paid levels, bonus cosmetics such as skins, and in-game currencies for virtual objects. Free VR games can also be used to create awareness for and promote other games in a studio’s portfolio. In VR, as in games and art in general, there are also many creators who simply want to share their work with as big an audience as possible without a commercial interest.

When considering free-to-play game design, we’re convinced of the importance of always putting the enjoyment of the player before that of maximizing revenue. We see a bright future for both paid as well as free VR games.  

Most categories from non-VR gaming have been tried in VR, with various degrees of success. There are also entirely new VR game genres that weren’t possible before VR. Some genres that have proven especially popular in VR are:

• Rhythm games

• Driving and flight simulators

• Activity simulators - real activities such as climbing, sports, cooking, fishing, etc

• First person shooters (e.g. Blaston)

• Adventures/RPGs (e.g. Demeo)

• Puzzlers

• Escape rooms / environmental puzzlers

  
  

With a dedicated, skilled team, and lots of hard work! At Resolution, we’re always happy to share a peek behind the scenes of the development of our VR and AR games. You can find many informative articles in our blog, specifically highlighting the work and insights of our 2D/3D artists, our game designers and of course our game programmers.