ALICE VR Hands-on - Alice in a virtual wonderland
We’ve given a try to ALICE VR – one of more ambitious projects coming to virtual reality. During our visit at Carbon Studio, we’ve lost ourselves in a strange world, inspired both by Alice in The Wonderland, as well as sci-fi literature and movies.
This article was written prior to the game's release.
This text was based on the PC version.
- A game by Carbon Studio, utilizing the VR technology;
- A 2D version will also be available;
- Slow-pace gameplay, inspired by the Myst series and focusing on riddle solving and exploration;
- Loves to mess with your perception by making you smaller, bigger, or move against the laws of physics;
- The background for the game is a derelict alien planet, where the player needs to investigate the mysterious vanishing of its inhabitants;
- Great game world design in Unreal Engine 4.
The Alice created by Lewis Carroll doesn’t have it easy. She signed up for only two books, but ended up employed (or directly referenced) in songs, other literary works, and endless amounts of movies. She also has a pretty solid representation in video games – mainly thanks to McGee’s Alice and Alice: Madness Returns, games that were much more serious and grim than the story on which they were based. Now, this time with a little help from the Polish Carbon Studio, the girl will have to dive into the rabbit hole once again. While visiting the studio’s HQ, we decided to go right after her.
Let’s begin with a short disclaimer: ALICE VR is not a direct adaptation of the Carroll’s novel into a video game; the game only draws many general inspirations. The protagonist has the same name, but she’s not the buoyant girl you might have known. She is a spaceship’s helmswoman. The game is set in a sci-fi universe: Alice lands on an alien planet to replenish her ship’s graphene supplies, but she soon finds out that all the inhabitants had disappeared, and in quite mysterious circumstances. The game will be rather short, and the players will decide whether they want to focus on the main task, or poke around the corners of the bizarre world and learn about the fate of its inhabitants. There definitely is a lot to explore here: the locations are cleverly designed and you can actually feel that Alice is out of place in this world. The visual design of ALIVE VR is pretty impressive. Colorful clouds of dust roll over the horizon; an enormous blue moon hangs in the sky... That may be nothing that we haven’t yet seen in games, but in a virtual reality set it looks really good. Too bad the pixels are obstructing the way to total immersion in this game, but that’s the problem of the first generation of the VR goggles.
Games inspired by Myst aren’t exactly a common occurrence lately, but it doesn’t mean that Carbon Studio are the only ones who want to cater to the fans of the legendary series. Later this year, we will see the release of Obduction – a spiritual heir to the famous franchise, developed by Cyan Worlds. Many parallels could be drawn between this game and ALICE. For instance, the gameplay is virtually the same: we find ourselves in a strange alien world, and both games are designed in Unreal Engine 4. Seems like there’s a serious duel on the horizon.
Things look somewhat worse in terms of gameplay – with its pace, to be precise. That also goes into the account of the new technology. The heroine moves at a snail’s pace because otherwise, the player’s ear labyrinth might go off its rocker. The devs have assured me that the game’s speed can be adjusted according to one’s “VR tolerance”.
In my case, slowly sauntering through the rather big locations was pretty tiring. Apart from this, the game generally resembles Myst a lot. The players roam through the derelict world, and try to solve different riddles while exploring the world, and all the clues regarding the plot will be revealed through conversations with our ship’s AI, audiologs, and elements of the environment. In the long run, this may seem rather boring, but people from Carbon Studio have told me that the game can easily be finished in three to four hours – although if you want to uncover all the secrets of the planet, you will need more than just one run.
The main point of the game are secrets and puzzles of course, but they do not pose any significant challenge. Save for one occasion, when we needed to ask the devs for help, the riddles were rather simple – limited to switching levers, throwing objects at a target, or changing the size of Alice. Despite the low difficulty level, ALICE VR can baffle the player sometimes, since (much like in the novel) not everything in this world is subject to the laws of logic as we know them. Say you enter a room, press a button, and turn around to find out that you’re standing at the end of a long corridor, and that the wall from the opposite side is sliding towards you alarmingly fast. My favorite moment was a level when in a completely dark hall I had to blindly move between platforms which were only alit if I stepped on them.
We’ve tested ALICE VR using Oculus, and so far those are the only goggles which can witness the mysteries of the abandoned planet. However, Carbon Studio are working on a HTC Vive version and they’re planning to release it on Razer OSVR in the future. Apart from that, the devs also want to use Oculus Touch controllers as soon as they hit the market.
Thanks to such sections, ALICE VR seems like a game that really knows how to utilize virtual reality. It doesn’t require looking around every couple of seconds, the pace is not dazzling, because that could make you nauseas in a few minutes – it is entirely up to the players to decide how fast the want to go; if you want, you can stay in one place for a while and throw apples at a target. When Alice is growing or becoming smaller, or when we enter one of the ramps which obviously mock the laws of gravity, the feeling is quite sensational.
I think the game could actually use more of such tricks – the developers serving the players a totally bizarre situation. I was assured, however, that the final game will have things like a hallucination level, and that may look great in virtual reality.
Not everything about this technology is cool, though. I can get over the fact that Oculus doesn’t cover the whole area of sight – it leaves a small crack at the bottom, since, according to specialists in the field, humans get disoriented when they can’t see their nose. ALICE VR also falls victim to the problem of most of VR games. It’s almost impossible to implement sprinting or jumping, for example, because your sense of balance goes totally barmy. When I visited the studio, these were unavailable, but just a couple of weeks earlier, during Digital Dragons, I received a warning from the team that I should take it “slow and easy”; I didn’t listen. After a couple of minutes I felt as if all my internal organs have been turned inside out, and put back in all the wrong places. That’s not the studio’s fault of course – just make sure you don’t make the same mistake.
The main problem with VR hardware is their price. There aren’t many players who would be willing to pay a couple of hundred dollars for a gadget which has very high requirements, and has just entered the market, which means that some time will have to pass until the developers learn to use the VR goggles to their fullest potential. Carbon Studio definitely realize this; although the game looks best on goggles, an alternative, 2D version will be available as well. It doesn’t provide the same kind of fun, but it reduces the expenses a lot – which means that many more players will be able to enter the rabbit hole.
The first visual impression in ALICE VR might be a little bit disappointing, because the graphics are not very sharp, and until you get used to it, brace to see many nasty pixels. This disadvantage will of course be eliminated in the 2D version, which will surely find a group of its own fans.
A pretty enjoyable adventure awaits everyone who’s willing to embrace this bizarre world and start exploring. This surely isn’t a game for those looking for some galloping action – rather for those who can appreciate the surreal mood and the fun the game is having with their perception. If you’re a fan of such games, ALICE VR should stay on your radar even if you don’t own any VR goggles. The devs have to be praised for coming up with a project more ambitious than a typical horror game with pop-up monsters. We only hope that the final build will feature a greater number of challenging riddles.
