In Orbit

[h1]Experienced on the Oculus Rift with Touch Controllers[/h1] The whole experience took me about 5 minutes. I'm afraid that I didn't get it. What is the purpose exactly? You see all these tiny dots around you and you can use your motion controllers to move them and reshape them. Meanwhile, there's this narrator telling you that these are data points taken from satellites about our land, air, and water. Unfortunately, these data sets mean nothing to me. You could have just put random dots all around me and I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. Worse than that, the 3D visuals just don't really pop, they look muted and bland. The narrator repeats the same thing before the air, land, and water presentations. I know it's free, but I just didn't see either the educational value or the entertainment value here. And because the subject is about carbon monoxide and I assume, global climate change, I will say this: it's pretty sad this couldn't have been done better. I know the devs meant well, so it does sadden me to put a no recommendation. Rate 3.5/10.

"In Orbit" isn't a game, it's an art exhibition that's been dumped on Steam, presumably because the local art galleries took out a restraining order on the "artists" who had no other choice but to pay Valve $100 to dump this on Steam. This art exhibition has the player view a bunch of particles in a VR space, and they can wave their controllers around to disturb the particles. That's it. No game, just particles. I'm not even sure this qualifies as "art"... it certainly isn't a game. For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game. Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, increases the players score if any rows were completed, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, the computer rewards the player if they win, and then if the player survives, they repeat that loop. There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played". This seems to have been made a VR exclusive to prevent any comparison with non-VR 3D games, a comparison that this non-game would fail very badly at. Developers must learn that while VR is great, if the only thing that makes the game (or non-game art exhibition) great is the VR, then the game isn't great at all. This is free on Steam, but it's free because it's not really a game, it's an art exhibition, that was so poor in quality it could never be seen in a public gallery. There's plenty of great local galleries in every city that would offer a far better experience than this. And because it's not a game, it's impossible to recommend.