The Spawn Room is a gaming, eSports, and virtual reality blog by Sam Shadow.
The Spawn Room is a gaming, eSports, and virtual reality blog by Sam Shadow.
It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything here. Over the past year, I’ve been focused on a new project called D&D Newbie Sessions (Dungeons & Dragons). It’s been an absolute blast and has stolen much of my attention from eSports, gaming, and VR.
D&D Newbie Sessions is kind of like D&D on-demand. New players and experienced players can join and sign-up for games that are happening every week. We mostly run one-shots which are great for introducing D&D to new players, but we also do ongoing campaigns via our Community Campaign series. Both of these offer countless hours of fun for people who want to test out D&D without committing to months of games.
We also train Dungeon Masters (or Game Masters) via our DM Training Program. This 2-3 hour training session provides hands-on experience running a game of D&D. It’s really fun and really effective at training newbie DMs.
If you’ve ever wanted to learn D&D or start playing again after a long hiatus, D&D Newbie Sessions is the group for you. It’s free, open to everyone, and super welcoming. Come join our community and explore some amazing fantasy worlds!
Today I’m reviewing Climbey, an obstacle climbing, semi-puzzle game for VR owners on Steam. I played on the HTC Vive. This is a fun, challenging, and rewarding game. It has some really interesting levels, massive levels, polished movement and controls, an excellent little community, and an active developer.
It’s also one of the few VR games that legitimately gives me sweaty palms, vertigo, and balance issues. This doesn’t really bother me and even makes the game unique among my collection, but, if you’re susceptible to motion sickness, you might want to steer away. It also poses a danger risk to smashing things in your play space or possible injury from falling over. I also routinely get tangled in my VR cable despite it being above me on my VR rig. This setup works really well for almost all games, but Climbey still manages to defy it.
Controls are simple and intuitive, but jumping is hard and inconsistent. It can be really frustrating trying to get around the map because a slight error can throw you backwards for what seems like no reason. I’ve also witnessed many other players trying to learn the game because even jumping a little bit is challenging. Definitely go into the game with some patience and the willingness to experiment with how it works.
The game has free locomotion movement, but be aware that it might fuck you over. It’s one of the rare games where you might actually want to turn free locomotion off because accidentally swiping the trackpad could launch you off an edge and lose a bunch of progress.
Multiplayer is fun and easy to get into. You can play with your friends either cooperatively or competitively. It gives you the freedom to decide. It has a small online community, but people are routinely online, they contribute interesting and fun levels, and my experiences have been really positive. Players actually help each other in multiplayer (reaching down to help pull you passed a challenging climb) which is refreshing to see. The community content also keeps the game fresh and replayable.
Overall, there is an average amount of settings and options (performance, controls, comfort, server options, aesthetics) but it’s not comprehensive. I’m hoping the developer adds more and more options as the game grows. One thing I don’t like is that some menus have no explanations for buttons and acronyms. Other VR games like Beat Saber have tooltips on hover and this game definitely needs that, descriptive text, or a giant poster with explanations in the starting area.
You can check out their SteamDB stats page here. The main items to point out are:
Yes, it’s an excellent VR game and I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s simple, mostly polished, fun, replayable, challenging, and rewarding. There are some negatives like occasional bugs and frustrating learning curve, but overall it’s the sort of VR game and developer we need to see more of.
One of the unexpected benefits of VR is that it’s actually a good workout. You’re standing, moving, bending, and kneeling on a regular basis. Depending on the game, you might be doing these things rapidly which can really get the heart pumping. Now, you might think that there is an upper limit and you’ll never get a gym-worthy workout. That’s where you’re wrong. It took me almost 6 months of owning the Vive to realize there was untapped athletic potential.
It happened after I bought Space Pirate Trainer. I loaded it up, played one round of standard and then immediately switched to hardcore mode (slow motion is for pussies). I started diving, dodging, jumping into furniture, slamming my body against my desk, scraping my knees on the carpet, but overall getting a surprisingly intense workout. Don’t get me wrong, it’s incredibly dangerous, but damn is it fun! The next day it got me thinking, if I was that sore from playing a VR game, could I get a truly kick ass workout FROM PLAYING VIDEO GAMES?!
A few minutes later I was on Amazon and ordering a pair a wrist weights. The lower body workout was pretty solid, but I wasn’t getting anything for my upper body. A few days later I strapped them on, loaded up Space Pirate Trainer, and got my ass handed to me. First off, the Vive controllers are INCREDIBLY light. I never realized it until I had the wrist weights on to compare them to. Second, while it’s only 5 lbs on each wrist, moving with those weights for 30 minutes left me sore for days! Disclaimer: I’m also a total weakling so that might also factor in… Regardless, I found that hardcore mode was more of a full body workout because of the intense dodging while normal slow motion mode required longer holding of the weights in front of you. So despite my pussy jab above, mix in both game modes for a slightly different workout.
Then came Beat Saber. If I thought Space Pirate Trainer was hard, it was nothing compared to playing songs on expert. I found myself audibly grunting and yelling trying to keep up with the blocks that were whizzing by. I could feel my muscles screaming as I danced around the room like some sort of bad ass digital warrior. I literally had to buy new face masks because I was sweating so much (gross, I know). I also cancelled my gym membership shortly after because I finally found a way to workout that wasn’t boring as fuck. I’ve also toyed around with some other games like Gorn. You don’t get nearly as intense of a workout, but fighting with just your fists feels really rewarding. There’s also some free games like Hot Squat that might give you a decent workout with the weights on. Hell, any game with the weights on will slowly build muscle over time, so take your pick.
Note: I have no affiliation with these games or the Amazon product. I’m just sharing my personal experiences because I love VR and want it to flourish.
The Steam Spring VR Sale is going on and I thought it might be useful to provide a quick guide on safely buying VR games on Steam. For normal games, I don’t think a guide like this is necessary, but for VR games we’re still in the wild west and there are some “traps” to look out for.
First off, if you’re not familiar, there is an awesome site called Steam Database that logs information about the games on Steam. This is one of the best places to start because you can quickly and efficiently browse Steam’s massive library. You can also optionally connect your Steam account which removes owned items from the list and highlights wishlist items. Here is a quick filter to get you started.
Next up, I check ratings and, if you’re using the Steam DB Chrome extension, you can see the percentage calculations in the Steam store. (No, I am not affiliated with Steam DB, I just personally use it on every Steam sale when I’m hunting for new games) As a general rule, I try to stay at 80% and above for game ratings, but that’s not always a good idea. Some games below 80% are really good and just received bad ratings for a poor launch, DRM complaints, or whatever else. But as a general rule, it’s a good place to start.
Now that we have a well rated game, check if your headset (aka HMD) is supported. Most VR games on Steam support both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, BUT every once in awhile there is one that only officially supports one. For example, I had DiRT Rally in my cart and was about to purchase it until I realized at the last minute it only officially supports the Oculus Rift. Yes, you can probably use Revive or something to make it work, but there are enough good games out there not to bother.
Good, we now have a well rated game that supports your headset. Next up is critical: read the reviews. Search for keywords like “locomotion” to ensure your favorite option is supported. Check to see what sort of content the game has. I almost bought Rise of the Tomb Raider because the YouTube videos online looked interesting, but what I didn’t know was that there is only one level of VR! That would have been a huge disappointment had I not been alerted (thanks Aaron!). I also glance over the reviews to get a base estimate for how much content you can expect. There will always be some crazy people that log 100 hours on a game most people log 2-3 hours on, but you can safely assume there is probably 2-3 hours of content on average. Then compare it against the cost to determine if it’s worth it. This is also a good time to check the negative reviews to see what people are complaining about. People love to complain, so just because there are negative reviews doesn’t mean the game is bad. Look for actual red flags like: “lots of bugs” “abandoned by the developer” and “multiplayer doesn’t even work!”
Related to above, check the latest news and dev updates. The more recent the updates the better and the more frequent the updates the better. If it’s been ages and people are still complaining about persistent bugs in the reviews, it might be worth skipping that title. Other games like Pavlov VR have very regular updates and you get a sense from reading them that the developer is engaged and cares about the community. That’s a good sign.
If you have the Steam DB extension (sorry to plug it yet again) you can also see current, peak, and all-time users. This is another great metric to determine if the game is popular and is especially important if you’re about to purchase a multiplayer title. There’s a few high rated multiplayer shooters on Steam that look great and pass all the marks except for this one. It would be a huge bummer to launch the game all excited only to realize there are literally NO matches or servers being hosted.
Lastly, before hitting the checkout button, I would watch your game on YouTube or Twitch to get a feel for the actual gameplay. There’s been a number of times where I was about to buy a game and realized after watching it that it really didn’t look that fun or wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. Remember that those fancy trailers and perfectly selected screenshots on Steam are carefully curated by someone who wants to sell you a copy of their game. Gameplay footage on the other hand doesn’t lie!
That’s it! If everything on this list checks out, you can greatly increase the odds of purchasing well made VR games with active communities from reputable developers. Congratulations!
Note: this is an updated version of the original post I created for vanilla Skyrim.
Skyrim is an amazing game, but if you’re like me and have spent hundreds of hours playing the original version (or special edition), then Skyrim VR will be repetitive despite the added immersion of virtual reality. The mods I share below (and in the original post) serve to create a new experience with as minimal effort as possible. The goal being to create disposable and lethal narratives.
Here is the best Reddit article I found covering Skyrim VR mods. If you’re like me, I wasn’t able to get the Nexus Mod Manager to automatically download and install my mods (check the “Manually installing” section). There has also been an update to the article about Vortex, but I haven’t tried that method personally.
Here are a few additional tips to know before installing mods for Skyrim VR:
All the mods recommended below have been personally tested by me and stable on my computer after about 20 hours of play. The only two issues I’ve experienced are noted below on the particular mods (No Essential NPCs and Random Alternate Start). Here are my recommendations to create a new lethal and fresh experience for Skyrim VR:
For those inclined to do the research, you can add some additional immersion by researching “Skyrim VR INI settings” on Google. There are some great tweaks that can’t be made via the in-game settings like removing enemy health bars.
Another problem I had (and saw elsewhere on the net) was reversed audio. For example, NPCs speaking on my left were coming out the right speaker which severely broke immersion. Some people were claiming that our headphones were backwards! This of course is ridiculous because other games work perfectly fine. Instead, completely unplug the VR base station (not just the HMD side), plug everything back in, and restart Steam VR and Skyrim. This should permanently fix the issue.
That’s it, thanks for reading! If you want, check out my YouTube channel where I’m uploading some of my Skyrim VR gameplay.
Last updated: 2018-11-17
This list contains all the VR experiences I’ve played that almost made by best of 2018 list, but had some glaring issue I couldn’t overlook. It contains a mix of free and paid VR experiences, order is not important, and it’s a work-in-progress.
If you’re looking for the best FREE and PAID VR experiences click those links.
Last updated: 2018-06-23
I’m planning on updating this article periodically throughout 2018 with the best paid HTC Vive VR experiences on Steam. I’m sure many of these games work for Oculus Rift and on other platforms, but I only have a HTC Vive and play pretty much exclusively through Steam.
Note: order is not important, I’m just adding them sequentially based on when I played or when I remembered to add them. This also includes games from all time, not just 2018. And lastly, this is a work-in-progress.
If you’re looking for the best FREE HTC Vice VR experiences head over here.
Last updated: 2018-04-24
I’m planning on updating this article periodically throughout 2018 with the best free HTC Vive VR experiences on Steam. I’m sure many of these games work for Oculus Rift and on other platforms, but I only have a HTC Vive and play pretty much exclusively through Steam.
Note: order is not important, I’m just adding them sequentially based on when I played or when I remembered to add them. This also includes games from all time, not just 2018. And lastly, this is a work-in-progress.
If you’re looking for the best PAID HTC Vice VR experiences head over here.
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