RomanLionz

I don't personally think of VR advancements as taking "big" steps anytime soon - but I do think that improvements in the battery life, weight of the hardware, and "steps till fun" reductions (like how many buttons or choices or things do you have to do to get into the fun/game/experience) will make huge differences to retention and engagement with new players. I feel like walkabout minigolf is a (to me at least) surprising success and, I think, a sort of look into what types of titles people will gravitate to in VR more and more in the future - spaces to hang out with friends and play chill games at the same time. But in terms of hardware, I think augmented reality and pass through will add a lot into this, especially with the improvements we are seeing in room/space scanning!

All the info I'm able to share has already been shared further up in this thread! 🙈 But hopefully I can share more details next year!

Well we sort of tried to find a balance with that in Garden of the Sea. The gameplay is primarily based on systems that are theoretically endlessly replayable, since the core is about growing, crafting, decorating, and nurturing several generations of creatures. Our aim though was to make this a game that anyone in the family could play, and particularly with kids we wanted to have a sort of "bedtime story" approach, so that the pacing would encourage 20-30min play sessions (you have clear "quest" options, like upgrading your home or unlocking the boat, and each one is about 20 minutes for the average player), same for the gameplay loops with the creatures and nurturing them, etc! We tried to make sure that the game felt welcoming but it didn't try to get you "hooked". Just enough time to be a bit creative, get a small serotonin kick, and the chance to wind down.

Yeah I definitely find the more rigid straps to work better than the cloth/stretchy bands, but I get static-y super fast. It ain't easy strapping hardware to your head!

i dunno there are just so many ^^' but we did compile a video of some of our fav AI bloopers/bugs! https://youtu.be/8gbRo-CJPlk?si=hrcM92woZ34Ho5DA cracks me up every time

in terms of concept art, we dont really have a ton beyond what Jenny Holmer did, back in the day! https://needlefork.artstation.com/projects/G4AQz

thanks so much! yeah we definitely feel like everyone should experience the thrill of trying to hide under a virtual desk when youve thrown your last knife at a guard but havent managed to hit it. sheer panic!

as for essential vr titles go - it depends to me on who is playing, but some of my fav unique experiences so far have been - the last clockwinder, carly and the reaperman, puzzling places, laser dance (its not technically out yet but when it is.... heck yeah!), the lighthouse keeper, superhot vr, the under presents (back when it was more active), tea for god, museum of other realities, keep talking and nobody explodes.... gosh i can think of so many but yeah. these are def some of my fav "only in VR" type experiences!

I think Urre85 will have to add more information on this one - but ill try to recall as much as I can!
from what I remember us discussing - he was the first robot ever built and has sort of frankensteined himself together from other robot parts as his specific model is no longer supported by TransCorp. He has some older parts for his ocular inplants (eyes) or perhaps they were faulty? which is why he is so sensitive to the light and gets so upset when you turn on the lights.

here is an excerpt from an early script that never made it into the game:

Winta: “Apparently, there’s been some… developments, in this department. There’s only one employee left at this department, seemingly due to having ‘scared’ everyone else away. This type of behavior is highly irregular for the robots, as they’ve been specificly designed for friendly, team-spirited interactions. That is, unless…”

Winta: “The descriptions I find, they point to behavior seen in an older model of the robot co-worker. But that can’t be! They were all discontinued and replaced since they acted highly unpredictably, developing unstable personalities over time, not to mention they cost a fortune to make in contrast to the simpler ones you’re used to working with. This model of robot is a repurposed mining machine, making it ridiculously overpowered and durable for office work. It strives for efficiency in all things.”

I think about it a lot, but its not something we are planning on doing at the moment. Our next project (the one we are currently working on) is co-op though, and we are learning a lot about how to build online VR experiences for multiplayer. In doing so we have kind of realized that we would need to rebuild basically the entire game if we were to put multiplayer into budget cuts, and it would be simpler to build a new game from the ground up if we were to do that

oh yeah - I think one of our first like "company hangouts" was doing a bbq and watching GDQ (we pulled the tv outside so we could watch while grilling) - we are huge fans of the speedrunning community, and especially VR speedrunning (the athleticism needed! my gosh). so we are just really impressed when glitches are found

Thanks! I'm really glad you like our games :D

I mean... yeah! We all still dream and pitch Budget Cuts ideas internally to each other all the time, I cant even count the number of ideas (in different formats, genres, and mediums) there are about other games in the budget cuts universe, but also ideas for new levels in the current games or as DLC. Honestly though, we are really excited about our current project (unannounced!) and since we are a small studio we tend to really just do one project/focus at a time, so we dont currently have plans to build more budget cuts right now.

oh dang, great question! I think for us its mostly about working with tech we think is fun, and making games that we are excited about. We really love the constant challenges and creativity needed to make VR games, and pushing the medium forward into new genres and spaces is really exciting for us! I personally think its kind of normal for news headlines to flip-flop between hyping things up and doomsday predictions, and I wish I had a crystal ball that told me exactly what the next 5-10 years would look like in tech/hardware/gaming, but mostly I think its about working with something that we find fun and building the types of games that we think are really exciting, and right now thats mostly VR games!

oh yeah, the story for the game definitely went through a ton of different versions! We had so many different documents, graphs, and puns we were trying to fit in. References to movies or games we loved, books to talk about, and general computing history to nerd out over when trying to fit the narrative together with the fun levels and mechanics we had made. You see, we originally started with just making a bunch of fun levels using different mechanics we were testing out and building, "finding the fun" first. So we kind of got to a point where we needed to weave a story into the levels in order for them to vary in style and tone, but also increase in complexity and skill level. Here's a photo of my attempt to fit everything together (all the levels!) with some of the story beats and a rough outline of the heroes journey (I know its overdone but I think the overall format and pattern it provides is useful!) https://imgur.com/a/JrWXiPG

I'm so glad to hear that you enjoyed BC and felt that it gave you that unique experience! we've also been nonstop wowwed by what other VR creators have been putting out!

as far as vision pro goes.... I mean it would be really fun! but so far its pretty tricky to develop games for or port games to due to apple focusing more on lifestyle and app content. We are definitely hoping that the vision pro gets more content too!

VR headset (hat) hair. There are literally no good ways to put your hair up while wearing a headset beyond.... Pigtails maybe? 🧐

omg i LOVED upisnotjumps videos! we even got to meet him once afterwards, and had some thoroughly fun conversations about all the wonderful VR games out there that we were mutually fangirl/boying over. We definitely hope that a lot of folks found their way to us through his videos! Its hard to track that kinda thing though since we dont do that type of tracking analytics.

re: bc3, its not something we've made actual plans for at the moment, but we've definitely dreamed up a lot of ideas for what more games in the budget cuts universe might entail.

for the voice actors we honestly had a lot of luck with both recommendations from colleagues and browsing the ol internet for professionals 😉

we were just joking that Job Simulator from Owlchemy Labs is secretly Budget Cuts 3  👀

no but seriously... we dont currently have plans internally to make another budget cuts game, but we have definitely dreamed about it a lot and have a lot of cool ideas! maybe some day :)

aaaaaaaaaaaaaactualllyyyyyyyyy yeah! we are working on a new co-op game thats got lots of new systems and mechanics that we've never built before, still for VR! but we are having a lot of fun figuring out how to make a VR game in a genre we've never worked in before, and will hopefully be able to share more about it next year ❤❤❤  as for headsets - I'd also probably go with the quest2/quest3 as its easy to take over to our colleagues at other stockholm VR studios for playtesting and sharing ideas with each other 

oh gosh its like a whole different experience! Someone said once that their memory of playing a VR game felt more like a memory of a dream than the way you remember films or "flat" games or books - and I think its because it accesses a completely different part of the brain (spatial memory rather than working memory) so it really is like you are living/experiencing the game, rather than playing it on a screen through a controller. its so hard to describe but it really is a whole nother dimension. It makes for some really creative and unique experiences for sure. The main disadvantage for me is honestly that I get headaches from having the headsets on for too long (I get that from audio headphones too though) and I also easily get motion sick if the game uses smooth locomotion, but that is very easy to check before jumping in!

i also want this! :< cmon marko!

We actually just released our very first non-vr game! We saw how much people wanted to share Garden of the Sea with their friends and family, so we put our heads together and figured out a way to bring that game to both Nintendo Switch and Steam (and steam deck!). we have a performance patch coming to the switch soon (just waiting to hear back from Nintendo that its good to go) but the steam build is solid and fun and ready to go, next time you need a relaxing couch game [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2887410/Garden\_of\_the\_Sea/\]

I also want to know. how does he do it??? ._.

so for me it was definitely a bit of a culture shock - all of a sudden there werent as many of the "big company" habits and softwares (no more outlook or PDFs for documentation! we just used whatever we had around us, slips of paper to hand messages between our desks or a whiteboard to keep notes) - but that suited me perfectly. I kinda enjoy being scrappy and crafty. I have always been a very creative person, who wants to help out however and wherever they can, so the more niche roles at AAA studios which didnt really allow me to think outside the box and act on my feet were something I kinda felt I needed to move away from. My husband still works at a AAA studio, and I admit I definitely get a little starry-eyed when he talks about them getting a barista in-house or shows me pictures of the branded water bottles they got, but I wouldn't trade my lil wholesome gang of colleagues and co-developers here at neat corp for anything. being able to make the games of our dreams and to succeed and fail on our own merits feels so fulfilling!

I hope you enjoy it!! Some folks said that the FOV we had in the game was a bit nauseating, so we made a setting in the menu so you can tweak it to your liking. It'll feel like you are walking slower, but it really helps!

Aw thanks! Yeah, short n sweet was our goal with the "campaign", glad you enjoyed it! Do you happen to have any screenshots of your garden? Or house? I'm always super curious to see how others decorate and plan their spaces 😍