The Assembly Assembled, VR Morality Game Out Now
Moral mazes
When I was a child "The Assembly" meant the place where you sat in rows and half-listened to your headmaster reading from a short story about silent fields of beetroot and working out how to communicate with the person in front of you without getting caught. Young people nowadays will think it means a VR morality game set in a secret bunker.
Oh. ALSO The Assembly [official site] is out now. I should probably have led with that. Here's a trailer:
This was my favourite part of the trailer but I think that was because I paused it and thought really hard about a version of Holby City but starring birds and a bird doctor would revive the dead bird and then put on the bird stethoscope and go on his rounds. He would be called Charlie Featherhead.
I'm wary of games/scenarios which bill themselves as revolving around moral choices as that can end up so heavy-handed. The trailer literally has the line "There's no right answer to this is there?" in it. BUT I am very interested to know how a "long-form game designed from the ground up for VR" has actually turned out in terms of movement and menus and things. You can, however, play it in non-VR. Flatscreen? Is that what we're calling that? It's flatscreen-enabled.
It's on the Steam Store or Oculus Home for $29.99 / €24.99 / £19.99. The non-VR option is £14.99, by the way and you can get the VR unlock for £5.