DownStream: VR Whitewater Kayaking

Great Fun! Tie your controllers to a broomstick and feel like kayaking in real life! Add wrist weights for a workout and ask your children to spray you with water while you are playing this. This is one of the most enjoyable VR games. Probably not for those who get VR sick easily, though...

The paddle is broken in to two halves. So you're paddling with 2 paddles. When kayaking you have one solid paddle. To make this happen in this game you'll need to build a bracket to hold the controllers in the correct position. I suggest the Devs play "Journey of Elysium" to understand the mechanics of a Kayak Paddle. You have one paddle that its angle is controlled by the position of both hands. This allows for proper body movement & control when paddling. In "Journey of Elysium" you stand or sit in a boat with a long Kayak paddle going on your quest & it feels very real. I was so excited that I looked up kayaking games & purchased this game. But to paddle with 2 separate halves of a paddle is not life like & bummed me out.

OMG I just got done playing this VR kayaking game ... let me tell you, I've been to Hawaii kayaking for quite a journey and the last 1/4 of the trip I felt my arms were going to die. Well ... this game does it justice, it's like the real thing. If you are as weak your arms will feel like they want to fall off by the end, paddling, struggling, until you get the hang of it. It feels like the real thing folks, I just need to get my spray bottle and a fan and we'll be ready to go. It helps that I have the butt kicker since I can feel the white water rapids in my seat. In the beginning levels i was skeptical and then the later levels came and ohh man it's fast, it's wild, and if you don't paddle right you end backwards crashing into everything whining like a little baby that a monkey ripped your arms off. Two thumbs way up. For the price ... since this is the only game like this pretty much, (I got it 35% off today) it was well worth my 100+ game inventory and i'm a hard critic of VR games.

When I first tried Downstream, I was so bad at it, I thought it sucked. Just kept going backwards and losing control. But I could tell there was something there, so I kept coming back to try again. Turns out there's just a bit of a learning curve, cause now I love it! The feel of the flow of the river and it's changes. how it feels when you're really doing things right, the environments, but... My favorite course is the sunset course and there's only one of those. I wish there were more courses and locations, especially additional sunset and night ones. Keep at it, gain some skill and you'll feel the flow.

DownStream is one of the most underrated games on Steam! It's whitewater kayaking with powerups. The game is a blast and a good workout. Some VR legs required. [b]Modes[/b] Tutorial - Learn the basics of how to control the kayak. Freestyle - Endless powerups, no health damage, no leaderboards. This mode is good for learning the powerups and not having to worry about the health of your kayak. Time Trial - Powerups need to be picked up, the kayak is damaged by collisions and you leave your mark on the leaderboards. This is where the real competition is and where I now spend most of my time. [b]Paddles[/b] The paddles are split so they’re not necessarily aligned like a real kayak paddle. I like my paddles aligned and strive for immersion so I play with my controllers attached to a stick, but since I can’t press the triggers on the controllers I have a dance mat to activate the power ups with my feet. There’s no orientation calibration for a stick setup so you need to get the orientation right or fix the orientation and offset with Driver4VR. [b]Motion sickness[/b] I used to get motion sickness in this game but not anymore. I got used to motion in VR and since I got better at controlling the kayak I can anticipate where the kayak is going and don't hit rocks or go backwards often. Some rivers have more drops than others. If you want to ease into the game, start with the easy rivers without a lot of drops or narrow corners. [b]Performance[/b] I sometimes got stuttering but i think it improved after I shrunk the window on the monitor. Need to test some more to see if the stutter is gone. There are graphics settings to help improve performance if needed. [b]Verdict[/b] One of my top VR hidden gems. I've started to use it to get a workout and have fun. I have a gold time on all rivers and now I want to climb to the top of the leaderboards. [h1]Feedback for a DownStream 2[/h1] [b]Pure racing mode[/b] I'm missing a pure racing mode without powerups with a separate leaderboard. This mode would be purely skill based as the randomness of which powerups you get would be gone. Also, this is where most stick users would play since figuring out a way to activate the powerups if you're not holding the controller in your hand can be tricky. [b]Paddles always aligned[/b] I would've liked the paddles to always be aligned. I fixed that for myself by using a real stick but the ghosts of most other players I compete with don't have the paddles aligned which breaks the immersion a bit. [b]Stick orientation/offset calibration for stick setups.[/b] As it is now you need to align them yourself or use Driver4VR to fix the alignment/offset

This is a very good game and feels really great in VR, the feeling you get on the water feels so much better than what I got from Kayak VR: Mirage which I refunded because it was so boring no matter how good the graphics were... the graphics in this game are fine though, they are simple but I think they still look good ingame and good water physics too, will probably have to wait for Whitewater VR: Extreme Kayaking Adventure for a similar game to this but with more realistic graphics though, but this game will definitely do until then.

An outstanding niche title, which show cases how immersive VR can be! Movement: First off, yes it's true you have two paddles instead of one. At first it looks a bit odd, but they did it for physics reasons which fully show. The river feels alive and flowing, can reach your paddle out more or less for different variations of control. Speaking of controls. They do take a bit of time to get used to even if you have kayak'd before. I found with enough practice, I can control without needing to think about it anymore, just like with a real kayak. You don't turn on a dime, you need to go with the flow of the river and pre-plan your movements. There are 3 control difficulties, each step up gives you more speed at the cost of handling. So it could be a good way to step up into how to control your kayak, advanced feels like it is the way it's meant to be played. Downside: As of now my biggest issue would be the pickups, while super fun to use a parasail or grappling hook for speed. The game is time trial based but the pickups are random, so I find myself restarting when I am getting health or armor over and over instead of something for a speed boost. (My suggestion would be for a no-pick up time trial mode, maybe just start with one parasail and one grapple, or nothing) With that said, you can also just cruise down the river at your own pace if you are not into racing and still have a fun immersive experience. Some racing games are not really that fun if you are not going fast, but this truely is one that is still fun to just relax down the river in. Immersion: Some might find the graphics kill the immersion but to me the physics and feeling of it are so good that it get's me fully immersed. The game has you center your view which just doing that has been fine for me, but can also adjust your sitting height on top of that if it's doesn't quiet feel right to you. The flow of the current is very well done, where I was able to tell if the current would help slow and turn me before smashing into a rock, or if I needed to jam my paddles down to lose some of my speed and drift a turn. Even though the paddles/controllers are separate you can always attach your controllers to a broom stick or pvc pipe whatever you can find. - One caution with doing that, is it will be harder to use your pickups, but the dev stated looking into ways to trigger them like that, but still questionable if they will find a good way to make it work, for example hitting you paddle up to activate might work for some things, but the parasail you hold and can reserve it's use, so that method wouldn't work so well, so it's tricky. Gameplay and Content: Time Trial type game play is the focus with ghosts to race against and leaderboards. There is no active multiplayer. Your own ghost is one of the ghost you will always race against, so you always have something to strive to beat even if you can't yet beat the others or dominated them. There is also freeplay if you just want to relax or still trying to learn and tired of breaking your kayak or want to learn to use the speed boost pickups better. As of now there are 12 rivers set across 3 environments, with a varying degree of width and difficulty. If you are familiar with time trials and like to try to push your self then for the price it's well worth it. The Rivers are 2-3mins or under if done with a decent amount of speed, longer obviously if relaxing. which might not sound like much, but with restarting and trying to beat your time, I feel they are a nice length and for the price provide enough content and replayability to recommend the game especially if you have an itch to scratch for this type of game like I did.

What can I say, it's much better than I expected. I'd even call this a hidden VR gem. It takes a bit of getting used to as someone who has never actually done whitewater kayaking, but now I want to. Nice work Devs! Hopefully more is added over time, but what's here is great.

This game is amazing with very realistic kayak and water physics! The only serious problem I thought I had with Downstream was the split paddles! These split paddles seemed very unrealistic to me as I used to sport around in kayaks years back. I was going to ask the developer to take a look at 'Phantom Covert Ops' as a good example of how a kayak paddle should work/ implemented correctly in a VR game. ( I Still think a normal kayak paddle should be included in Downstream like in phantom covert ops). However just before I wrote this review i decided to google single handed kayak paddles, and found on youtube that there is such a thing as a kayak 'hand paddle' (it doesn't look like a split kayak paddle implemented in Downstream though) It looks rather like an 'enlarged hand' strapped on to the persons arm. Nevertheless it makes it easier for me to tolerate the split paddles in Downstream, however I would ask the developer to include in a future update a proper set of kayak paddles implemented just like in Phantom Covert Ops please, and to offer more avatars options please. With the above corrected I believe game will be near perfect!

Der Preis von 16€ ist leider etwas grenzwertig. Dennoch macht das Spiel wirklich Laune, vor allem wenn man die "Geister-Freunde" besiegen will, ist es durchaus motivierend. Grafik nur zweckmäßig. Meine Kuratorseite: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/30155555 Meine Steamgruppe: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/voodoode https://youtu.be/zk2v87NcWuk