Mare is a beautiful Team Ico-esque VR game
Longing-'em-up
"Games a bit like those from Team Ico" is surely a genre by now. Games in which ghostly-pale, solitary and/or mute people wander around large, man-made but abandoned structures, ostensibly solving environment puzzles but mainly creating feelings of loneliness and longing. If Alice were here, she'd add "'em up" at the end of that sentence.
MARE [official site], then, is a loneliness and longing 'em up designed for Oculus VR in which, yeah, all of the above happens as you control a little girl and a mechanical bird. The trailer looks quite lovely.
There are lots of little details I like in there which help establish the tone, just like in Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, such as the way trees and structures shake in the wind and the little girl's trudging animation when making her way across shallow water.
I'm not sure whether there's hand controls involved, but it seems as if you'll partly direct the game based on where you look while wearing the headset. From the game's site:
By the means of your gaze you indirectly guide and manipulate a mechanical creature known as BIRD – which you for yet unknown reasons are attached to. Sailing the winds from vane to vane you explore, traverse and interact with the landscapes of MARE, a serene world lost in time and space, filled with untangled mysteries.
MARE is being made by Visiontrick, developers of the lovely-looking Pavilion, isometric puzzle game which just came out on Steam and which we've covered previously.