There is a rather interesting effort to create a multiplayer 3D version of Pixel Dungeon that reminds me of a mix between Shattered and Gauntlet. It isn’t ready just yet and because it will be on Steam it is guarenteed to be massively bloated, so hopefully it will get ported to Android.
Just got a laptop capable of doing newer things, and I’m actively telling myself not to get vr for a year or two.
But then you go and a stunt like this
Your money and interests are your own. But a nice VR setup like the Valve Index is about $1k.
This game is in Early Access. It may never be completed. If it is completed, we do not know what the final product will look like (or what, if any, post-release updates it will get; Pixel Dungeon has seen continued development for a number of years). And this has been a hard year or so for game developers, with a number closing their doors or seeing layoffs.
This game is not marked as “VR Only” on Steam, so my expectation is that one will be able to play it reasonably well on traditional hardware; even without a VR headset, it should be playable.
The game is not presently in a downloadable or purchaseable state – it consists of one promotional video and five promotional static images.
This developer, Suplife Games, has a number of VR ports. All of them either do not have enough review data on Steam to score or have a Mixed rating.
It’s not clear to me if the translation from a turn-based game to what appears to be, from the promotional video, a real-time game, will work well.
My own personal feeling – and I am sure that not everyone will agree – is that VR adds most of its value when it’s used in a game where a wide field of vision or an extra input axis to control vision is really important to the game. Flight sims, especially combat flight sims where visually-tracking the world is important, for example – people have been building terribly expensive hardware setups with many monitors, eyetracking systems, stuff like that, for many years. They’ve been hitting both problems, and VR headsets address those problems. Obviously, I cannot know what changes the developer will make from the base game, but the base game doesn’t really make much use of that, I think. Pixel Dungeon benefits from a larger screen, to be able to see more of the map at once, but from the promotional images, this is primarily or only aimed at a first-person, character level view. It’s not aimed at providing a large virtual screen and playing the game in a traditional sense. I don’t know if VR support will provide much.
This isn’t a game that I personally would spend $1k on VR hardware over in its present state. Maybe keep an eye on, see where it goes, if you really want a VR Pixel Dungeon.
If you have other games that you specifically want to use VR hardware with and you’re looking for a reason to just get it, hey, maybe you do want to get the hardware to play those.
But speaking at least personally, I would not get a VR set to play this game, not in its present state. It may be that the game will be finished, that the translation to a real-time game is good, that the game itself is quite good, and that VR adds significant value to the experience, and all that. But at least to me – and I am not you – there is enough question in my mind around a number of those points to warrant not spending $1k over it.
Thanks!!