Witching Tower VR

The Witching Tower begins with what seems like an interesting Narrative, and once you have beaten the game ends with a scene that makes it seem like there is alot of lore behind it. During the gameplay however not much of this is apparent. There are what feel like some disjointed voice over portions with some apparitions that you free and then some written pages you can pick up and read. The game is very short taking me approx 2 hours (i took a break to eat dinner in the middle). This included collecting all the cards as well that it says upgrades your sword (didnt notice much difference after collected besides a color change). Once all the cards are collected I don't see any replayability to the title. Combat is...well...bad. The bow is near useless unless you miracle manage a headshot. Good luck aiming though as the controls for it feel un-natural and at the same time, un-gamelike. Melee is almost worse but will actually get you through the game by flailing wildly about. Out of combat systems do tend to work well. I enjoyed the concept of the wrist grappel mechanic and the other wrists item pouch. One issue i do have however is your item belt that only ever holds your bow or your melee weapon. It doesnt appear to fit your body and this causes 2 major issues. When shooting the bow your waist belt will sometimes count as the arrow hitting something causing the arrow to fire and immediately stop like you just shot belly fat. Issue number two is when trying to access your wrist item pouch it can be an issue as i would pick up my sword constantly while trying to access my items or replace the item pouch on my wrist. This waist belt also felt like it sat to high in my vision as well, compared to games like Arizona Sunshine, or Pavlov. Like Pavlov though the turning on it does seem locked to ~ 15degree intervals which can make it a little unpredictable where you need to grab at points of action The AI....oh boy. on the first level especially I would always hear the bats and not be able to find them. they would get stuck on terrain and not be able to get around to me. It appears they are programmed for the most part to move straight to you without pathing. Skeletons and nights and dogs however dont seem to share the same behaviour. Just the bats that are capable of flight. It may also be how its meant to play, but the best tactic for many of the shieldbearers is to teleport behind them and get your hits in. __________________ __________________ Bugs Encountered: 1: Once you get to the engineers place and he "hides" you while the queen comes in and speaks to him. Once you control the skeleton to open the door for you I lost the ability to teleport and had to save and reload the game to get it back. was strange but the only time this happened. I was holding a weapon (the morningstar) the entire time while hiding in the little room when this occured. 2: The room that has a window looking into the torture chamber with the dead lady in the chair and the big executioner guy that you explode. On this puzzle, after doing the first part where you link the chain, the lever to lower the cage worked. then i tried to figure out what to do next. I found the rope that will rip the plank off the door by attaching it to the cage and raising it back up but of course to start with there is no lever to rais it. I put my controller through where the lever should be and pressed and raised and the cage raised anyway. 3: Im pretty sure the bow getting caught on the waistbelt is not meant to happen but does. the collider on the player character needs to be disabled or something for player arrows it seems to fix this, or to have the waistebelt/ collider moved lower and closer to the player body __________________ __________________ Puzzles: Relatively easy throughout. Not much else to say here. I wish there would have been more done like the acid creation portion. This is personal taste though as I loved the old Myst games where you would go from one end of a level, find a clue in a book, and go to the other end to find the puzzle the clue went to. I dont think the acid puzzle will let you unknowingly fail though unfortunately. the talking skull kinda holds your hand through it __________________ __________________ Combat: Bow: Eeek. Dont use the bow...unless you have to which is maybe in one spot of the game. the aim does not seem natural as the hand you hold the bow with becomes instantly rigid and does not move the way you would expect it to. It does quite low damage as well unless you achieve a headshot. Look out for the waistbelt when firing as mentioned above. Just imagine the lady you are playing as has been over eating by a hefty amount when firing your bow. _____________ Melee: There are a few different melee weapons in the game. from what i can recall you can pick up a total of 5 different melee weapons (Torch, Rusted sword, Legendary Sword from the trailer, Large morning star, and a ....torture rod? there are two of these rods and thats really all i can tell they would be). One of which once you get (the sword in the trailer) Is perma locked in your belt once it is recieved and to hold another one you must literally hold it...with the trigger using one of your hands. Not a problem you say? Well each hand is actually assigned abilities as well. By default your left hand is your movement (teleportation) and later in the game also gains the ability to control undead (will expand on this later). Each melee weapon works the same, and here is the big bummer. Flail...not the weapon, the action. Every enemy in the game can be beaten this way besides the final boss. For that you flail...move...wait, and flail again. It appeared in my playthrough as well that some (what i will call) "non-power" enemy weapon swings can be parried if your weapon is moving in a counter arc to theirs, which is nice. Timing parries in Dark Souls is easier though. *note you can throw torches into the little wrist pouch you get, but i think they are only on a few levels and get removed in load screens. _____________ Shields: Yep there are two kinds off of enemies that you can pick up. Again....you must constantly hold them in your hand. I attempted to put it behind my back just in case this was a programmed "hitch point" but no luck. Shields can cause the same parry effect much easier than trying to do it with your weapon. ____________ Power/Magic: Once unlocked you will have the ability to control undead. What this really means is you can control skeletons that dont have shields and thats it. Dont try to take over dogs or the undead knights or bats. I assume the nights are undead based on looks but they could just be very upset with thier Hot Topic purchases. Once you aim and wave at a skeleton it will glow golden and you can control its movement and ask it to attack things or activate levers/buttons for you. There is an entire game level devoted to requiring you to do this. You also are not limited to one skeleton at a time. All in all its fun but i really wish there was more to any type of magic system that that. Even controlling the bat to get a key up high or a dog to crawl underneath some of the traps or something. _______________ _______________ Summary: Wait for a sale. I cant imagine how hard it would be to make a VR game with Melee combat that feels good. Some do it ok, but to make it feel good in VR, where your controller has negligable weight in your hand compared to the weapon your wielding in game must be a struggle. I think Gorn has been my best experience here but that game is going for a cartoony, floaty over the top combat instead of what I would expect to see in a fantasy setting. Bow has definately been done better in many games. Magick could use some other powers or controls. Needs stronger puzzles.

***UPDATE: I have changed my recommendation after today's patch. This game went from being a chore to play to being a joy to play. They seem to have fixed the performance issue I speak of in my review literally within 24hrs. I said this patch needed to "happen tomorrow" and the devs have legit brought us a fix within 24hrs. Impressive, responsive, customer for life. Given I was able to continue without the crazniess of the performance, I can say that I want to see more of this game. It is not in Early access, so I expect that what we get is the alpha and omega of the story. I am looking forward to more chapters in this story if they decide to continue it with DLC. Yes it is short, but this is still not a deal breaker for the experience. I hope more is added as they sell more units. I can recommend this game as a purchase. It is a ton of fun, aside from the janky bow mechanics. If they fix the Bow, man... that is a bar being set. As for the bow, I withheld judgement due to the performance issue. The Bow is jacked, you are better off in melee. I love the dark "Legend of Zelda" feeling from this game. It feels as I would expect Zelda to feel. You have hidden objects, explodable walls (most of those quintessential "Zelda" things are only seen once or twice so far though, unfortunately), sword and board, room crawling/discovery and a good story. Among other things I would like to see improved, Shield storage. This should be able to be slung over your back. The belt, it really is too high and I do seem to hit it with arrows every now and then. It would be nice to be able to choose which side you store the weapons on but this is not a deal breaker in any way. They would be more quality of life oriented, nice to have type of stuff. I am really glad they fixed the performance issue. I was anticipating this game and was excited to livestream it on opening day. It was disheartening to get it and have most of my commentary during the stream being about the poor performance. I cannot wait to restream it with this patch and let everyone know the speed of resolution to this problem. Fun game, needs more gameplay hours. The puzzles were simple enough to solve quickly but good enough to extend gameplay somewhat. Definitely needs more story, but this is because what you gave us is good and we want more. Needs better bow mechanics, movement feels fine teleporting and trackpad. Needs shield storage. Minor bugs such as dialogue repeating over and over again, getting stuck on doorways with free loco, hitting the belt are just that... minor. Hopefully they will get fixed but it is not enough to NOT recommend this game. Buy it! *** OLD REVIEW: OK, so I played for about 2.8 hours, and the performance issue is NOT just on Rift. I have a Vive and exceed the recommended requirements. GTX 1070 card, 24gb ram, i7 7700k @ 4.2ghz. This is what I have noticed. Turning creates what looks like compression artifacts and environment animations not particle based causes massive graphic lag/degradation. For example, when the floors move up as you are searching for the engineer's room. Standing completely still, the graphics would just go to a pixelated mess until the animation completed. This seemed to be the case any time a significant piece of the environment is moving. The game deaulted to High graphics, I moved them to Low and the issue persisted but was not as bad. Overall, I enjoyed what I played, but the performance made it difficult to want to continue. I am NOT refunding as I do like the game and I hope some bug fixes come... like tomorrow. LOL. Fix the performance issue and you got a winner. I cannot currently recommend it to people NOT willing to deal with a performance issue but those people are far and few between. Until there is a patch that fixes this performance issue, I cannot recommend it, in spite of how much fun I did have. I will change my review once there is a performance patch.

[h1] Experienced on the Oculus Rift with Touch Controllers. Spoiler-free Review. [/h1] Game took me a little over 3 hours to complete. This is an action adventure narrative driven game in a dark yet light-hearted fantasy setting with combat and puzzles geared towards casual players. All the puzzles make logical sense and the combat is mostly about learning easy to see enemy attack patterns. Most enemies are zero threat as long as you're not brain dead. You have several tools at your disposal to use. You have a magical rope that you will use to solve puzzles or to dispatch enemies. You have a bow & arrow to shoot at enemies (it's not the best bow mechanic but you get the hang of it). You can use a torch, bombs, and later on a sword which you can upgrade if you collect all the cards. You have this magical ability to see clues around the environment. Towards the end of the game, you will be able to mind control some skeletons. There are very generous checkpoints so you don't lose much progress if you die. You can choose from free locomotion with snap turning or teleportation. I used free locomotion but had to switch to teleportation at the very end because of pathing issues. Pathing issues exist throughout the game and I found that looking down usually enabled you to get unstuck (although not at the end). I had fun. There is a fun, epic adventure that you are on and the pacing and atmosphere are done just right for what the game is. However, this game does not have AAA production values. So the sounds are not the best and the animations are not the best. The graphics are just okay, but the game does run smoothly. There are some interesting characters, but there is little depth to them. Rate 7/10. [i]p.s. Game did have a bug at the end of the credits when game was trying to reload. It showed up on my desktop screen, but wouldn't on my headset. I had to manually close the game from desktop.[/i]

This is definitely a fun game, the graphics are quite good, there are a few interesting gameplay concepts that make it a bit different than many similar games out there, and the developers seem pretty responsive and passionate about the game, so I don't hesitate to recommend it--but possibly wait for a sale, since there are a few dings in the armor that make the full price a little steep in my opinion: Pros: - Great graphics with fine-grained control over settings. - The gameplay elements introduced via the whip/grappling gauntlet you receive early in the game are interesting and unique (In fact, I would have liked to see this utilized more than it actually was). - The voice acting for the skull companion is very well done (though I did find the skull a bit annoying at times; still, even when he was annoying, he was very believable as a character, and I ended up liking him even when he irritated me. I *may* have grabbed him out of the air and thrown him into a wall a few times though :-P ). - The story and lore presented were interesting and hinted at a much deeper story I that really wanted more details about. - There's a good balance of light combat vs. puzzle elements, so for players who enjoy both, you get a good mix in this game. ----- Cons: - Combat is weak. There's not really any AI to speak of, and the enemies used canned animations for attacks--which, in the case of some of the bigger, slower enemies, makes fighting them super easy: just wait for the big guy to start swinging his mace, casually step aside, and take several swings with your sword while he slowly brings his mace down in the spot you were standing in several seconds ago. The enemies should adapt to player movement and at least abort an attack animation if the player has moved well out of the attack zone, but with these enemies, once they've started a movement, they're committed to finishing it. - The game makes a big deal about your character's inborn ability to control the dead--the evil queen has even shackled you with a magical gauntlet to block the mark on your hand because this ability is such a major threat to her power. But once you're finally able to cut yourself free of this restraint, the ability it unlocks is...underwhelming. I was definitely expecting something much bigger than what I actually got, given the importance this ability has in the story. - And speaking of the story, while I enjoyed the bits of lore and the story that's presented, it felt very scant and incomplete. Honestly, the whole game felt as if it were only the opening acts of a much bigger game that ends much too soon. The story as it's presented seems very underdeveloped, and the bits of lore found in the game hint at a larger story that begged to be told--but never was. - And Similarly to the underdeveloped story, I also felt like the gameplay itself was underdeveloped as well. There were several features that were hardly used past one puzzle (the player character's "ghost vision" sense, for example) or very much underused (the whip/grappling gauntlet, which was something new and different from other games and could have been used in a lot of interesting ways, but seemed to get totally forgotten about for the entire latter half of the game). ----- I realize I went into more detail on the cons than the pros, but I'm actually mainly hoping that my feedback can help the devs further improve the game, because I genuinely enjoyed it and I'd love to see it more fully fleshed out. You know how a lot of really cool movies started out as short films that ended up getting fleshed out and further developed into full-length features later on? This game sort of feels like the short film that could turn into something much bigger and more deeply developed at some point in the future. I don't know if the devs have any plans to add any more to the game or flesh out the story with DLC, but I really hope they do, because I want to know more about Anna, Elenwen, the mark of the dead, the Undead War, the two kingdoms and their history, the gate, the sword, and so many other things I was only given tiny glimpses of. More, please! :-)

特殊な力を持つ刻印に目覚めた主人公は、それを奪おうとする女王によって高い塔に幽閉されてしまった。逃亡者を阻む数々の罠や通路を閉ざす仕掛け、徘徊する骸骨兵などの妨害を掻い潜って塔を降り、自由を手に入れようっていうファンタジー世界のVR-FPS。クリアまでは2時間半ほど。 ぼくは遊ぶ順番を間違えたけど例えばVR機器の購入直後とか、こんなんでも楽しいと思えるタイミングがおそらくあったはずなので念の為サムズダウンは止めておこう、位のサムズアップ。 暴力ないし流血表現があるのでお子様にはオススメできませんって注意書きついてるけど、ビジュアル的には中身のわからん全身鎧と血肉のない骸骨しかいないし、戦闘やパズルの難易度的にもハードモードが選べるわけでなし、全体的にゆる～くて、なんか子供向けコンテンツ感がある。 好意的に解釈しても、VRという新カテゴリの登場によって得られるかもしれない、あまりビデオゲームを遊んだことのない大人っていう顧客層を想定したのかもしれない仕上がり。つまりヌルい。 戦闘では剣と弓が使えるが、剣はどこをどう振り回そうが相手が盾を掲げている間は絶対にノーダメージ。要するにモーションコントローラを振ったら攻撃ボタンを押したのと同じ命中判定が行われて、相手が攻撃を空振った後の無防備状態であればダメージが通りますっていう処理。 盾でカバーしきれてない部分を殴ればちゃんと当たるVRゲーを一度でも体験しちゃってると見劣りしまくる。もっと面白いVRゲーの存在にまだ気がついていないVR初心者になら薦められる。

I got this game during a sale and it was definitely worth it. The Good: - Great graphics that were visually interesting - I loved the large cathedral like level design - Puzzles were decent (not challenging, but that's 100% okay - they were still interesting enough) The Bad: - Melee combat is indeed a wiggle fest with no weight to the blows or workable blocking/striking mechanics. - The bow is hard to aim and doesn't feel good to use. - The game is short (complete play-through took about 3 hours) Verdict: If you can get this game on sale, it's totally worth it. At full price, it's a bit too short and the combat too wiggly. Wait for a sale.

Meh... I was hoping for a Vanishing Realms plus puzzles. What I got was a bit of a bore. Combat is atrocious and I found that in a few key places you could just cheat your way though puzzles by walking through your play area. If I was to give it a price tag I would pay $5 not four times that! 5/10 for meh.

Fun and beautiful game with some simple puzzles here and there and easy combat. I have to say - game looks really cool, I enjoied just walking around with a torch and looking at things c: I believe it's a good game for beginners like me!

At the end of the day I give it a thumbs up. 👍 it’s not the best VR game you will play, it’s not even the best dungeon crawler type vr game out there. But the graphics are good the puzzles are interesting, and the mechanics work. Pick up on sale or when your back log is low.

Device; Lenovo Explorers with WMR. This was initially quite promising, but unfortunately, refunded after 20 mins purely based on the control scheme. You can't use the thumbsticks for movement, and must use the trackpads. The trackpad (on your left hand at least) is then also used for other stuff... it just didn't work for me at all - wanted to shoot and ended up turning etc and I find it really boring looking up how to fix controls that should just work off the bat, so its a thumbs down from me.