Shooting Baskets at the Arcade- ‘Just Hoops’ VR Review

Just Hoops is one of the best sports games I’ve played since owning the Quest. Its mastery over the feeling of holding and then throwing the ball is true immersion. Add this to a chill arcade atmosphere, and its immersion at its best. This game is all about shooting baskets at the arcade while upping the difficulty in a series of different challenges and themes.

Advice for new players: Please spend as much time on the easier levels as necessary. Personally, I had a lot of trouble initially just trying to understand how to properly hold the ball with my Oculus Quest controllers. I had even more issues when it came to throwing the dang thing with any accuracy. However, I’m glad I stuck with Just Hoops, because once I grokked the game’s core concept, I really was able to enjoy and appreciate it.

Just Hoops feels like it has a lot of potential to grow – the developer has added several updates since launch. Most recently they added dozens of new challenges and plenty of new cosmetic designs to change things up for players. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next from this team – whether it’s a Just Hoops port natively on Quest, or a new project, I am positive they are going to be a slam dunk.

Hello, I’m IndieSam! I write reviews for this blog and my Steam Curator page. A copy of Just Hoops was provided for review by the Steam Curator program.

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Solve the Case in ‘Madrid Noir VR’

Madrid Noir is an interactive VR experience telling the story of a young girl named Lola as she pretends be a detective around the city of Madrid, during the summer she lives with her weird uncle. As the story unfolds and clues reveal themselves, the stakes are raised dramatically and there is a great on-foot chase sequence. The story is super cute, with a lot of very nice animation to match the excellent voice acting.

 For those that haven’t engaged in a VR experience film before, they’re pretty straightforward. They will almost always be less than an hour’s worth of narrative content where players engaging in the story through minor interactions. These often are things like pushing buttons or pointing items at the action. Sometimes these are optional, but I find they help add to the sense of presence of the films. Madrid Noir, for example, had a scene where we had to aim a flashlight in the dark to help Lola find her way before it would proceed to the next scene.

It’s worth noting that this particular experience did require players stand for the duration. This was so that we could turn in the directions the experience wanted, like to see the characters after a dramatic scene change. I find this kind of setup to be demanding and rude towards its audience- Snap rotation is a standard across almost all of the VR industry, so I don’t know why a developer would choose to exclude the feature when it means the difference between a seated or standing game. Accessibility matters, even in VR, people!

I really did adore the experience, however. Lola and her uncle were great, and I love the animation style so very much. This wasn’t the studio’s first VR experience, as they have previously produced Battlescar and Gloomy Eyes. I can tell Madrid Noir was made by a team of professionals, and I am hoping for more along these lines of quality. Recommended.

I’m IndieSam and you can follow me on my Steam Curator page for more VR indie games, experiences and more.

Break everything! ‘Smashing Time’ Review

Playing through Smashing Time’s half dozen levels was a great time as I got to experiment with lots of the tools and weapons that we’ve been provided. My favorite moment was drawing swearwords with chalk on blackboards in the classroom before smashing all the things. This was in the new School Update which apparently released two whole months after launch.

As for the comfort settings of the game, it was actually fairly easy for me – player locomotion worked mostly pretty well, though there is a need for a clearly reachable comfort settings menu. I did have a small issue with being disoriented when I first loaded into the game, mostly because the load screen looked so bizarre to me.

Smashing Time plays great, even on my 1060 graphics card. Flipping tables, smashing glass bottles, shooting wall art, spray-painting all over the place, it felt really fun. This game is truly unique, as a product only the magic of VR and indie VR developers could bring us. I’m hoping to see more from this developer, whether its continued optimization and new levels of Smashing Time, or their next project – I’m sure it’ll be great!

Played using a copy of the game sent by the developer through the Curator Connect platform. Follow me on Steam Curator for more under-appreciated indie game gems!

‘Time Hacker’ VR Game Review

Time Hacker by Joy Way is an enjoyable VR puzzle game that seems designed for those of us with short attention spans. Time Hacker is about a secret agent who can freeze time, and hijack the minds of his enemies – so he can force them to kill their co-conspirators. It’s a silly concept, but it works really well, especially in VR.

Swinging my arms wide to freeze time, then waving a hand to hack a badguy and aim his arm to shoot his buddy; this was all done in one smooth motion, and felt entirely badass. Of course, as the game progresses more quirks are thrown onto enemies and players are given additional options for takedowns.

The game’s developer, Joy Way, has created this quickly paced game with puzzles that can be finished in seconds. That is, assuming the player is familiar with the level, its enemies, and its hidden traps. With the benefit of time hacking (And the game’s excellently optimized performance) we can quickly reload and retry levels, or even edit them with the game’s Sandbox mode.

 I did find that many of the game’s puzzles could be easily solved with little effort – though there were a few exciting exceptions. I’m still stuck thinking back to this one level I didn’t solve that involved a crashing jet, a pile of explosive barrels, and several distressed civilians.

One thing Time Hacker does right, is its presentation. While yes, the game looks lower budget in its interface and cartoony style, I think that was an excellent decision. It gives the game an overall B-movie feel, which I think is perfect – we need more B movie games in VR, especially puzzle games. So, thank you for that Joy Way!

I do recommend Time Hacker, especially to lighter puzzle game fans. If you’re looking for something super hard and complicated to solve, this probably won’t do it for ya. Interested readers can download Time Hacker from Viveport Infinity or through Steam.

Note: Time Hacker is still in Early Access, and this review could change down the line. If my opinion on the game changes massively I’ll be sure to update this post.

Follow the IndieSamAdonis Reviews Steam Curator page for all sorts of interesting VR experiences and adventures.

‘Curious Alice – ViveARTS VR’ Review

Curious Alice is a very nice little VR adventure, created by ViveArts for its showing in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s “Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser” exhibition. While I might not be able to make it to London to see the incredible looking museum, I can certainly afford a Viveport Infinity subscription for my Oculus Quest 2 to play the Curious Alice experience.

The art of each level of Curious Alice is hand-painted with a whimsical and psychedelic look that just smells perfectly on-key of the trademark Alice in Wonderland absurdity we’ve grown accustomed to over its portrayal over the years. The game’s music was perfect as well, though, I can’t give full credit to its sound design – there was an issue where in one scene a voice line kept playing on loop if I didn’t press a button right away. I do suspect this issue was to blame on the consideration of running an actual-world showcase alongside it, but it doesn’t remove the frustration.

I really enjoyed Curious Alice, and will definitely recommend it. Interested readers can download it from Viveport or Steam for Vive or Oculus headsets.

Dance and Shoot in VR as an Agent of Biodiversity in ‘Star Shaman’

Star Shaman is an indie VR first person shooter roguelike from Ikimasho that offers its players a lot of unique style and energy. In the trailer the developer released at launch, we see a woman dancing some crazy moves as she plays through a level in ways that really inspire me – Will I have as good a time as her? Probably not, but I’m going to damn well try!

At its core, Star Shaman plays fairly similar to something like Space Pirate Trainer. For the uninitiated, this means you stand in one spot and are dodging incoming fireballs and missiles and using an arsenal of weapons to shoot down a variety of enemies that come in waves.

There are some pretty big differences here though. In Star Shaman, you’re actually moving between levels – though all start out looking the same at the beginning of the game for reasons that suit the story. The most major mechanical difference in the actual fights is that we have to summon our weapons to use them against enemies while dodging their attacks. This actually added a lot to the gameplay, as the motion of summoning my gun became part of my groove with dodging. I really felt in tune with the music in a way most typical rhythm games don’t give me.

There are more weapons and upgrades that are unlocked by continuing to play the game. You see, Star Shaman is roguelike in the style of FTL where players progress through tiers of battles at set difficulties with some story mixed in, until the next tier unlocks. The game advises us to be careful about going too far, but I’m still a little confused about how the progression works. There are multiple weapons to unlock, but they require us to grind huge amounts of attempts through the game.

It is implied with the fact you are drastically changing the worlds you’ve beat, by growing flowers and rebirthing life, that there will be a wide variety of enemies later down the road in gameplay than I personally reached. At least, I can’t imagine the developer would add all these beautiful effects, levels and creature designs and then not use them for a good fight?

I really do feel enamored with Star Shaman. I feel selfish about this, but I love the mystery of it – it’s not often I find a truly great game that none of my friends are talking about, and it’s up to me(!) to find the answers to the riddles. I should also mention somewhere here that the soundtrack is very much my jam, and I love it.

Sam played Star Shaman on Viveport Infinity, but it’s also available Steam and Oculus Quest! If you want to talk to Sam about the indie game that’s been on your mind, give him a shout on Twitter!

‘The Room VR: A Dark Matter’ Review

The Room VR A Dark Matter from Fireproof Games is one of the top virtual reality games available. That isn’t me being controversial, it’s a fact – A Dark Matter is one of the only VR games on Steam rated Overwhelmingly Positive by users. There is good reason for this widespread approval of the game, because dangitall this game was great.

‘Necro Mutex’ Combines B-Movies with Old Arcade Classics into VR Awesomeness

Necro Mutex by game developer Denormalizer feels like it has been unfairly overlooked by just about everyone. As of writing, the game only has twenty-one reviews on Steam. I’ve seen overpriced lootbox micro-DLCs with more happy players than that! It’s a shame, because Necro Mutex is something truly special when it builds itself up.

‘Fujii’ VR Review

I just played Fujii for Oculus Rift S and my goodness I loved it. Funktronic Labs have created this beautiful adventure through a series of different islands with totally different ecosystems. It’s musically brilliant as well, everything reacts to what we touch or move near, creating a beautiful organic feeling soundtrack – like a walk through some very musically inclined forest. It doesn’t take long to realize how dang attractive the game is either, with levels starting off practically in darkness, with light rippling from the player character, giving glimpses of the levels ahead. We make your way through each island by playing with the plants and animals on the paths forward, unlocking more nonlinear paths as we progress. Some will lead back to the start point, some will lead to the seeds we are supposed to collect. It will always be a very pretty trip.

‘Psychonauts: Rhombus of Ruin’ VR Review

Homies let me tell you, the original Psychonauts was my jam. It was vibrantly colorful with its artstyle and unique characters and always had a fun twist on That Cliche You Were Expecting. So when I heard about Psychonauts: Rhombus of Ruin, I was hella excited for the eventual day I’d get a VR system. Well that day finally came, and BOY I’ve got some thoughts.