Lately I've been playing a Multiplayer VR Survival game called A Township Tale. On PC you can play this for absolutely free, but on Oculus it'll cost you $10 (or cheaper if you buy it on sale like I did).
The main difference between the versions is that on the Oculus version, you get the ability to make a server of your own. On the PC version, you'll have to become a supporter (subscription based) in order to make your own servers. The other really important note here is that currently as of this writing, cross platform servers aren't a thing, so I can't have my PC friends come join me in my Oculus games and vice versa.
The interesting thing about this game to me is that for a VR title, it actually has a surprisingly robust community. It has 82k followers in its official Discord channel and a really deep wiki to back the game up, which is needed btw. The game NEEDS a wiki, which by its very nature shows you how intricate (or confusing, based on how you view it) this survival game is. You don't find that often in a VR game.
The game itself is pretty light on tutorials, but it does have a tutorial server that walks you through the basics of gathering stuff, exploring, making tools, and crafting your first backpack. The tutorial server is a public server, however, so I found it . . . interesting. There were a couple kids in the voice chat being obnoxious, and I get plenty of that at home. No thanks. Finding the mute voice chat button while in the tutorial server was my number one priority.
Once making it out of the tutorial server, I made my own server and wandered into the wonderful blank slate of a brand new game. I figured I'd invite people from my work to play this with me if they're interested, and so far the only person I've got onboard is my boss. hehe.
The main objective for the game is to find your run-down, vacated ghost town and build it into a thriving city. There are boxes all over the world that ask for various ingredients, and you throw those into boxes to unlock repairs and new features. Outside of this, exploration, hunting, and crafting are your main goals . . . find new things, hunt new beasts, and craft awesome weapons and tools. That's the game.
I'm highly impressed with the embodied actions for this game. That's what you want from a VR game: to feel like you're really chopping down trees or crafting something. Unfortunately that also means that the easy actions of resource collecting and chopping down trees definitely isn't easy (at least here at the beginning of the game when my tools are a bit primitive). You'll break a sweat!
Things were even harder at first because I didn't know any of the controls, which is something the tutorial attempts to teach you, but doesn't do a great job with. I didn't know at first that you can lower your body close to the ground to pick things up. Instead I was bending over again and again and got completely worn out just from harvesting a few sticks and grass.
If you're interested in playing a Township Tale, I'd highly recommend watching Mr. Whitty's How to Get Started video series on YouTube. It's an excellent set of tutorial videos for Township Tale. He's got a ton of time saving and helpful tricks that will get you going in game.
My work is going to be having a "fun day" the last half of work today, and I've been prepping for me and the boss to start building out our town during that time. I've chopped down several trees, gathered stones, gathered sticks, found a couple hunting grounds . . . I'm ready for fun! We're going to build out the blacksmith and hopefully hit the mines today so we can start crafting some good weapons and tools. I've also cooked up 24 pieces of meat, so we should be totally set for the play session.
I'll have to report back on our progress. Can't wait!
Happy Dueling!
2 comments:
Sounds really interesting. This is a weird question but, how much looking down do you do? I was playing a Quest game called Racoon Lagoon which in some superficial ways seems similar in that you gather and harvest items and chuck those items in buckets to 'build' things and I found after a while my neck hurt from looking down at the grown so much. The front-loaded visor feels even heavier to me once I tilt my face down. Though maybe that's just me.
I eventually drifted away from Racoon Lagoon mostly because it just felt like nothing but gathering and crafting. There are animal critters but they don't talk beyond thought-balloons that tell you they want wood, or rocks, or a fish or whatever.
Heya Nim!
I'll have to check out Racoon Lagoon! Sounds interesting.
yeah . . . you do a fair bit of looking down, I guess if there's a silver lining, it's that the Up and down motion controls they give you are pretty good and helping you get more on the level of the action, but it's not perfect by any means.
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