So Virtual Novel has another update. This one fairly large compared to the others.
I'll go ahead and link to their post on it I've downloaded and played through it and will be leaving a few impressions.
First some official screenshots
Please keep in mind that what I'm showing/discussing here is still very early in development. They have plans to expand upon and fix interaction methods, locomotion, and content in general. If you're interested I managed to record my playthrough here. As mentioned before several areas are unfinished and many things are in a primitive state that will be expanded upon as development progresses. I experienced several oddities and glitches in my playthrough but I would like to focus on the positives here. Particularly interaction has been mentioned as an area of improvement and I have left thorough feedback on it with the dev.
Alright so here we go
Virtual Novel has expanded on their previous demo build by making most the school explorable, adding some new characters, and allowing much more freedom of interaction. There are 3 characters in total this time all featuring actual dialogue. (the old demo was just explaining the controls and asking the player to interact with the environment).
I spawned in and was greeted by a character sitting at a desk. Glancing nervously at me as she fiddled around with some kind of remote contraption on her desk. This probably sounds fairly normal but doing this in VR once again solidified everything. The character was THERE in front of me. I could walk around here she had depth she had presence. Her nervous glances were at ME I could *feel* her eyes on me much like you do when a person actually looks at you. I walked over and jumped into a dialogue box. I was given a few choices of dialogue and had a somewhat odd conversation as she asked me to collect some things for her invention. Definitely an eccentric individual.
After that I just explored I stopped frequently to just gaze out the windows. Something about that environment in VR the sunrays shooting in on what appeared to be a warm summer I felt like I was standing in front of a real window and was warming up from the sunlight (despite it being somewhat cold in my apartment). I would liken it to a VR version of the effect you get seeing a video of a fire.
I tried the stairs and well it wasn't nauseating but it wasn't comfortable either. Luckily the dev had the foresight to include an elevator. *note not me*
I just walked up to the elevator. Hit the button and waited. Walked in and was on my way down to the first floor.
I eventually found my way to the library where I met the class president. Several things here really struck me. One i managed to fluster her with the dialogue choices (her face turning bright red and she started avoiding eye contact with me). Once again maybe in a normal game that isn't much but in VR having a solid character in front of you looking like that is well just insane. Despite the fairly flat dialogue (remember early build mainly meant for performance testing) she felt so incredibly real I could see her personality reflected in her actions I was able to empathize with her as if there was a real person in front of me. That to me is mindwblowing Second I found out how to open the cellphone. I even managed to snap an in game photo with it. (I'm not in a place where I can get to the screenshot but I will upload it later). The cellphone while currently an experimental feature has so much incredible potential for natural interaction in VR using the Vive touchpad as the touchscreen of the phone I was able to open the camera and take a screenshot in a way that is incredibly intuitive and natural to anyone who owns a smartphone. In the future they also plan to have you receive text messages from characters, a GPS to help navigation, and other features like adjusting in game settings.
I went on to do a bit more but this stuff really stood out to me the most. A few glitches/issues aside I felt immersed. I felt like I was IN Takayama High and most importantly I felt like the characters there were real. VR has the potential to make you empathize with characters on a level I don't think was previously possible in any medium and that has me incredibly excited for the future of Visual Novels and like games.
I'll go ahead and link to their post on it I've downloaded and played through it and will be leaving a few impressions.
First some official screenshots
Please keep in mind that what I'm showing/discussing here is still very early in development. They have plans to expand upon and fix interaction methods, locomotion, and content in general. If you're interested I managed to record my playthrough here. As mentioned before several areas are unfinished and many things are in a primitive state that will be expanded upon as development progresses. I experienced several oddities and glitches in my playthrough but I would like to focus on the positives here. Particularly interaction has been mentioned as an area of improvement and I have left thorough feedback on it with the dev.
Alright so here we go
Virtual Novel has expanded on their previous demo build by making most the school explorable, adding some new characters, and allowing much more freedom of interaction. There are 3 characters in total this time all featuring actual dialogue. (the old demo was just explaining the controls and asking the player to interact with the environment).
I spawned in and was greeted by a character sitting at a desk. Glancing nervously at me as she fiddled around with some kind of remote contraption on her desk. This probably sounds fairly normal but doing this in VR once again solidified everything. The character was THERE in front of me. I could walk around here she had depth she had presence. Her nervous glances were at ME I could *feel* her eyes on me much like you do when a person actually looks at you. I walked over and jumped into a dialogue box. I was given a few choices of dialogue and had a somewhat odd conversation as she asked me to collect some things for her invention. Definitely an eccentric individual.
After that I just explored I stopped frequently to just gaze out the windows. Something about that environment in VR the sunrays shooting in on what appeared to be a warm summer I felt like I was standing in front of a real window and was warming up from the sunlight (despite it being somewhat cold in my apartment). I would liken it to a VR version of the effect you get seeing a video of a fire.
I tried the stairs and well it wasn't nauseating but it wasn't comfortable either. Luckily the dev had the foresight to include an elevator. *note not me*
I just walked up to the elevator. Hit the button and waited. Walked in and was on my way down to the first floor.
I eventually found my way to the library where I met the class president. Several things here really struck me. One i managed to fluster her with the dialogue choices (her face turning bright red and she started avoiding eye contact with me). Once again maybe in a normal game that isn't much but in VR having a solid character in front of you looking like that is well just insane. Despite the fairly flat dialogue (remember early build mainly meant for performance testing) she felt so incredibly real I could see her personality reflected in her actions I was able to empathize with her as if there was a real person in front of me. That to me is mindwblowing Second I found out how to open the cellphone. I even managed to snap an in game photo with it. (I'm not in a place where I can get to the screenshot but I will upload it later). The cellphone while currently an experimental feature has so much incredible potential for natural interaction in VR using the Vive touchpad as the touchscreen of the phone I was able to open the camera and take a screenshot in a way that is incredibly intuitive and natural to anyone who owns a smartphone. In the future they also plan to have you receive text messages from characters, a GPS to help navigation, and other features like adjusting in game settings.
I went on to do a bit more but this stuff really stood out to me the most. A few glitches/issues aside I felt immersed. I felt like I was IN Takayama High and most importantly I felt like the characters there were real. VR has the potential to make you empathize with characters on a level I don't think was previously possible in any medium and that has me incredibly excited for the future of Visual Novels and like games.
