FREDDY FOR THE BIG TIME

I revisit Arizona Sunshine every so often because it’s a great game; it can be enjoyed solo or co-op in ten-minute chunks or as a more satisfying long-form session, and the core conceit of gunning zombies down is still really satisfying. Honestly, there have been so many shooters released in VR since AS, and nearly none of them have nailed the satisfying and substantial feel offered by Arizona Sunshine, still. However, it was never a very good-looking or slick affair and was full of less and less forgivable jank. I was relieved when Arizona Sunshine 2 came along and smoothed out a lot of those rough edges, whilst largely doubling down on everything that made the first game so good to play.

A remake of the original using later tech is a rather great idea, and I’m largely happy to report that Arizona Sunshine Remake does what it promises to. It includes all the DLC for the original release, similarly remastered, and offers tremendous value for money – there’s even a nifty discount if you’ve got the original in your Quest library already. So, before I get into the specifics, just know that if you’ve played and love the original and are looking for a shiny new version to show off your Quest 3 or 3S, then go to it, I recommend it. You won’t be disappointed. But wait – hey – I haven’t fini… Ah sod you. In your impatience to go spend your money you’re missing out on some exemplary videogame criticism and penmanship. Your loss. The rest of you still with me? Ok, let’s get into it.

FRED DEAD REDEMPTION

Players both familiar and new to Arizona Sunshine will find a lot to love. The setting still feels fresh and original, despite the zombie theme having been done to death, resurrected and headshotted more times than can be counted in the past thirty years. Even Resident Evil, whose fault it all is, has been trying to move away from zombies for at least 15 years. However, zombies do provide a gloriously guilt-free way for us all to virtually live out our fantasies of taking our frustrations and loneliness out on the general public with gardening equipment and automatic weaponry.

Arizona Sunshine Remake casts the player as an unnamed, initially slightly dislikable dude who’s been surviving alone in the Arizona wilderness in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. He’s trying to find any living souls to team up with and has been alone for quite a while when the player quantum leaps into his head. He sounds a bit like a bassist, a roadie or a general stoner – in fact, it occurred to me as I played through the remake that my mental image of him is that he’s Neil Fak from The Bear dropped into a zombie survival scenario. This is a Good Thing. His journey in the course of the game is slight, but brilliant and engaging, and as I mentioned in my original review Sky Soleil’s fantastic performance is key to making the whole thing work. A majority of protagonist voiceovers in VR can be grating or off key, making it a chore to literally inhabit their heads as you progress, but here you are completely engrossed in getting the guy where he wants to go and keeping him alive. If you’ve only ever experienced him in Arizona Sunshine 2, then it’ll be an extra frisson to experience him getting to the point where he’s obsessed with keeping his dog alive when the sequel hits the fan. There’s no massive story here, so the narrative sells itself through empathy with its only character, and this has stood the test of time well.

DEAD MAN, FRED MAN

The game offers pretty cool options for customising the feel of the game – from movement and turning to switching between the simple reloading of the original, or the new VR standard of sliding in a clip and cocking the gun. Thankfully you can now hold pistols with two hands. You can calibrate where you’d like your holsters and ammo to sit on your body. All good, as is the improved Half-Life Alyx style wrist inventory and inclusion of tremendously fun bludgeoning melee weapons like crowbars, picks and hammers. These can be balanced on railings or the sides of tables or shelves while you reload or scavenge, and this feels really cool.

FREDDING THE NEEDLE

The level of challenge is pretty good – on the easier difficulties if you’re a reasonable, quick enough shot you’ll be ok. The game has two paces; scavenging for ammo and exploring, popping heads as you go, and then set piece horde rushes where you hope that you’ve stockpiled enough bullets and picked the right weapons to survive. Like the sequel, these horde rushes can be suffocatingly frustrating and stressful chokeholds on progress or exhilarating and rewarding tests of endurance which provide a tremendous rush of relief and accomplishment when you’re through. If this is your first rodeo, I’d advise playing through on lower difficulties first, so you know roughly what to expect, and then have another playthrough where you’ll have to be a lot more sparing with your ammo and inventive with the offered weapons at your disposal. You won’t have to worry about finding crafting ingredients like in the sequel, but supplies get pretty scarce even if you aren’t the sort of person who likes to spray and pray.

This all changes again when playing through in co-op with a friend, which is such a good feature of both the original game and its shiny new incarnation, Arizona Sunshine Remake. Sadly, the same limitations apply, and this is one thing I really hoped would be improved with the new gameplay. There are points where you’d think one player could be running around gung-ho with an automatic amongst the horde whilst the other takes overwatch, but this is often not so. When a player triggers the horde, the co-op partner will be teleported to their side if they’re in a place the game doesn’t want you to be. Sometimes invisible walls will prevent the player from taking a visible path, the game locking off areas of the map that should be accessible just because the designers wanted it that way. It’s pretty lazy and annoying, and it was weak eight years ago. It’s downright unforgivable for such a classy game to be so graceless in its execution, reiterating its mistakes verbatim after eight years of iteration.

LONG AND WASTED YEARS

Whilst we’re on the subject of things that really should have died and stayed dead with the original game, let’s talk about graphics. By and large the graphics in Arizona Sunshine Remake are a remarkable improvement on the original, as one might expect. The bacon wood textures of the original are long gone, thank goodness, but there are still some items of text that are unforgivably pixelated and horrible. The searchable trunks of the police cars, for example, just about say ‘HIGHWAY PATROL’ on them, but I’ve seen better image quality on those Captcha things online when they’re trying to ascertain I’m human. Most egregious of all is the sniper scope section, where distant zombies are rendered with such horrible quality that the graphics don’t match the original release. In fact, in this one instance they don’t even look as good as the original PlayStation. Vertigo Games have done so much to fly the flag for VR as a gaming medium, and all eyes are on this remake to show us all how it’s done. We let some things slide about the original because of the ambition and overall quality of the experience. Don’t let Ed Wood get hold of your Director’s Cut version, because we’re going to mark it down accordingly now.

The same goes for how fiddly things can be. Scavenging is better and drawers and doors have a far more physical interactivity to them, but sometimes picking up stuff can be unnecessarily finicky and sometimes even bugs out. If you’re carrying things when the game loads a new area, these can sometimes disappear.

This is all stuff that absolutely should have been sorted out. Some of it is patchable, some of it ain’t. Let’s see what the next couple of months may bring – but this is a remake of an eight-year-old game, and it should have been slicker. It only takes seven years to train as a doctor or an architect, so I think it’s reasonable to expect Fred to have got his shit together a bit better than this, dead or no.

SUNSHINE DESSERTS

Arizona Sunshine Remake does exactly what it promises to do, and provides great value, great fun and great challenge in one juicily headshottable package. It drips with atmosphere, from the setting and impressive voice acting to the perfectly judged musical score. It still provides the most satisfying gunplay on the Quest and sidesteps the time commitment problem of Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners by being playable in bitesize chunks, and in co-op too. You get the excellent DLC stories as part of the deal, and there’s also the endlessly replayable Horde mode to play with up to 4 friends. It supercedes the original game entirely and provides fans of the original and the sequel plenty of reasons to dive back in, whilst being a very enticing and recommended prospect for new players.

However, be warned that this is a remaster rather than a true remake, and the failings of the original game are often brought along wholesale for the ride.

Arizona Sunshine was originally released in 2016 and quickly became a popular title in the VR gaming community, known for its immersive zombie-slaying action set in a post-apocalyptic version of the southwestern United States. The remake of the game is designed to build on this foundation by offering improved visuals and gameplay experiences for modern VR platforms.

Key features of the remake include a significant upgrade in graphics, described as “GORE-geous,” which aims to enhance the visual experience of battling the undead. The game will also introduce next-gen VR combat and weapons, providing players with a more physically engaging experience. This includes the ability to wield a variety of weapons, from shotguns to machetes, in a more realistic and tactile manner.

The remake will also feature a brand-new mutilation and gore system, allowing players to discover various ways to defeat zombies, referred to in the game as “Fred.” Additionally, the game will include all original downloadable content (DLC) and updates, such as the Dead Man DLC, The Damned DLC, and various location updates like the Old Mine and Trailer Park.

Multiplayer enthusiasts will be pleased to know that Arizona Sunshine® Remake will support co-op gameplay, allowing up to four players to team up in campaign mode or the multiplayer Horde mode. The developers have noted that more players mean more zombies, increasing the challenge and intensity of the game.

For existing fans of the game, Vertigo Games is offering a discounted upgrade path. Players who already own the original Arizona Sunshine® will be able to upgrade to the remake at a reduced price, provided they have the original game installed on their platform.

Key improvements in the update include:

• Enhanced graphics with 4K textures and improved shading for characters, weapons, and hands, making the zombie apocalypse more visually stunning than ever.
• Higher quality models and shading for the undead, along with more impressive blood splatter effects, adding a new layer of terror to the game.
• A bump in the native resolution on Quest 3 devices, offering crisper and clearer visuals for an even more immersive experience.
• Additional fur support for Buddy, making him not just a sidekick but a more lifelike companion in the desolate world.

Beyond visual upgrades, Patch 1.2 introduces gameplay enhancements such as easy reloading, left-handed support, and fine-tuned weapon handling for a smoother experience. The update also adds grenades, providing new tactics for dealing with groups of enemies.

This update is not exclusive to Quest 3; it’s also available for PlayStation VR2, Steam VR, and Pico, ensuring a wide range of VR players can enjoy these improvements. Vertigo Games encourages all players to update their game to experience these enhancements firsthand.

What are your thoughts on the latest update for Arizona Sunshine 2 on Quest 3? Have the enhancements improved your gameplay experience? Share your views and any new strategies you’ve discovered in the comments below.

Our Intrepid Survivor

When Arizona Sunshine 2 begins, you wake up in a dingy trailer, thirsty and looking for a drink. The opened beer bottles around you are variously empty, used as ashtrays, or contain your vomit—a good intro to the game, quickly establishing the pathos of the character you embody for the next 8-12 hours. Soon, a helicopter you hoped might rescue you crashes nearby. You rush to it in desperation, but it’s too late for the pilot. However, you gain a new canine companion from this ordeal. Without knowing his name, you decide to call him Buddy, marking the start of a beautiful friendship and a new quest as you realize the military is trying to locate patient zero, your potential ticket out of hell.

The gameplay in Arizona Sunshine 2 follows a straightforward single-player, narrative-driven campaign. As a fan of such campaigns, I’m all for it. The gunplay, a standout feature of the original game, is wonderful. It’s immensely satisfying to land a good headshot and hear the mushy explosion of a zombie’s head. Along your journey, you’ll find various weapons—pistols, machetes, semi-automatics, Uzis, rifles, machine guns, shotguns, and more. Each feels good to use, has its strengths and weaknesses, and allows you to approach zombie killing in your unique way.

Your holster is adjustable; you can carry two weapons at your waist and another slung over your shoulder. You also have two Half-Life: Alyx-type inventory slots in your wrists for consumables, grenades, mines, Molotovs, or stick grenades. As if that wasn’t enough, Buddy himself has two holsters, allowing him to carry two extra small weapons for convenience. Buddy isn’t just there for company. You can order him to take down zombies and fetch objects. He’s the heart of Arizona Sunshine 2, as in this world, a dog is not only man’s best friend but perhaps his only friend.

The writing in Arizona Sunshine 2 is a standout, with Rob Yescombe’s pitch-perfect writing and Sky Soliel‘s wonderful portrayal of the main character. The character’s range of emotions—frenzied desperation, gallows humor, enthusiasm, tender loving care, and even toilet humor—is all perfectly balanced and appropriate to the story’s context.

And it is a great story. Unless you’re dead inside, you’ll fall in love with Buddy. The last time I felt this emotional about an in-game animal was in The Last Guardian, which had me in tears by the end.

Arizona Sunshine 2 features a fantastic story, with twists and turns, highs and lows, and it will emotionally captivate you.

Oh, Ye Pretty Armageddon

While the first Arizona Sunshine never excelled graphically and relied on its gunplay and wit, the graphics in Arizona Sunshine 2 are atmospheric and superb. They portray a variety of environments and locations and comfortably overwhelm you with on-screen zombies when necessary. The art direction is on point, and the game is frequently just pretty, if your idea of pretty includes rotting corpses and splattered brains.

There are occasional glitches, like zombies’ heads and limbs tearing through doorways and walls, and sometimes Buddy’s body partly tearing through a wall, but it’s hardly a problem.

The graphics on PSVR2 are superior to those on Meta Quest 2 or 3, but they suffer from noticeable reprojection on PSVR2. I hope Sony finds a way to improve this across the platform, as it detracts somewhat from the overall immersion.

Can You Hear Me?

The audio’s standout is Sky Soliel’s beautifully nuanced voice acting, taking you on an emotional journey through the game. The sound design is fantastic, playing a huge part in the feel of the weapons. The guns sound different and satisfying to reload and shoot. The sound effects—from the zombies’ growls to barrel explosions—are great, and the music sets the mood effectively, ranging from suspenseful to action-packed.

Apocalyptic Delights

The story can be played single-player or co-op, taking around 8 hours on normal and closer to 10 on hard. Arizona Sunshine 2 also brings back the horde mode from the original, where up to 4 players can fight off

 increasing waves of zombies in various environments. Your enjoyment will depend on your affinity for replaying story campaigns and wave modes.

Freddy Failures

There’s not much to complain about with Arizona Sunshine 2. It excels in areas where other VR games struggle. Opening cupboards and drawers is easy, climbing works well (though it’s only used in a few areas), and aiming is precise. There are a couple of sections where the difficulty spikes, but remember this tip in times of need: aim for the legs.

There are minor issues, like wonky trolley physics and a potential memory leak causing increased loading times the longer the game runs on your system.

Overall, the positives far outweigh the flaws. You’ll be drawn in by the writing, laugh with the main character, empathize with his loneliness and newfound enthusiasm for Buddy, and appreciate his moments of reflection. Meanwhile, you’ll enjoy action-packed gunplay, varied environments, and well-paced set pieces.

Freddy Thrills

In summary, I had a fantastic time with Arizona Sunshine 2. It’s a sequel that surpasses the original in every conceivable way, setting a new standard for single-player narrative-driven campaigns in VR, especially on Quest and PSVR2. It’s focused on what works, providing a fluid experience from start to end, and is easy to recommend to anyone with a beating heart who hasn’t been bitten by a brain-eater. Stop reading this, get the game, and enjoy it!

To quote Vertigo:

As before, a blog post with tips from the development team on how to survive Undead Valley will be coming to the Oculus blog later today.

And here’s another image of the DLC roadmap so you can keep an eye out if you’re a fan of Arizona Sunshine!

6DOF: Let’s get the simplest question out of the way first! WHY ZOMBIES?

Zombies are great! Relentless, fearless, creatures that just won’t give up. Take one down and there will be another one behind it. The thought of endless waves of zombies is terrifying, and that translates really well to VR.

6DOF: How did you decide what to cut back in order to port Arizona Sunshine to the Quest? Did this involve heated debates? What key elements did you decide could not be sacrificed?

‘Keep it the way it was.’ That was our goal. The main game was well received and we wanted the same experience on the Quest. We knew the Quest is not as powerful as a beefy PC but that did not stop us from trying.

The thing that I fought for the most was to keep the zombie mechanics the same. I wanted to shoot off legs and heads, for me that is the best part of Arizona Sunshine. If that was cut, then why would we even port the game to Quest? In the end, all the gore stayed and I’m proud of that.

6DOF: What was the single biggest compromise that you felt you had to make for the port to work?

I think that has to be the realistic graphics from the original, in exchange for a more stylized version. We had to make big decisions regarding what and where to optimize our game. The large world with lots of interactions was something that made the original game stand out. We made the decision to keep that and that meant reducing the number of complex shaders and big resolution textures, so we could keep so many objects on the screen at the same time.

6DOF: Were any of your decisions influenced by the resulting storage size of the game on Quest? We see that most Quest games are under 2 gigabytes in size, and Arizona Sunshine is around 1.25 gigabytes. Why is this the case? Why aren’t we seeing games that are 5 or even 10 gigabytes in size?

Honestly, we did not consider storage size at all. The size came naturally as we optimized the game. It is a bit of cause and effect: because of the graphics chip and shared memory we had to use less complex models and reduce the size of our textures. This resulted in less data to store and load, and quick loading screens.

6DOF: Do you think the release of Hand Tracking for the Quest is a game-changer? Do you have any plans to incorporate that functionality into any future releases?

The hand tracking is a very well made feature, one of the best I’ve seen so far. I like how robust it already feels and I’m excited to see what we can come up with if we prototype this.

6DOF: Speaking of new functionality, has the release of Oculus Link affected your plans in any way? Some Quest users are concerned that Link might dissuade developers from making Quest-native apps, have you felt this way at all?

Not at all. I think Oculus Link is a great way to enjoy PCVR games without having to buy a PC headset or a powerful PC to play. But the Quest is all about freedom of movement, easily bringing the headset with you to your friends or to a party. Quest native apps will always be necessary for that.

6DOF: How much of your code had to be re-written for the Quest?

Exactly 24.8%. No, in all seriousness, most systems serve the same goal as their original counterparts but we had to rewrite and optimize most. The biggest one was rewriting the systems related to the shooting. The reason we had to rewrite much of this was that all of our content is multiplayer enabled and it caused massive CPU spikes when all players started shooting in a 4 player horde mode for example.

6DOF: How much of the content had to be remodeled for the Quest? Or was it enough to just reduce the polygon count? Did this get done manually or did you have some way to automate it?

 Basically everything has been changed in some form. There wasn’t a single thing we could use straight out of the main game because it was simply too heavy in some way. It was mostly done manually to maintain quality. For example reducing the polycount for models, adjusting texture resolution and repainting textures were done by hand.

Something we could automate was combining geometry together. We created some clever tools that would process entire scenes, sorting objects by type and area, drastically reducing GPU instructions.

6DOF: Any more games coming soon from the Arizona Sunshine team? Can you give us a hint on what we can look forward to?!

We still have a few content drops scheduled for Arizona Sunshine on Oculus Quest, for example, the Old Mine update, adding a new Horde mode map to the game. For a reminder of what else is to come, check out the content roadmap.

That’s it for our DevTalk! Hope you liked it! Are there any other developers you’d like to see us talk to? Give us your ideas and we’ll do our best to follow up on them!

FREDDY OR NOT, HERE I COME

It’s a game about shooting zombies and moving forwards. Not particularly ambitious or original as pitches go, perhaps, but the proof is in the pudding. You play as an unnamed feller who’s making his way through a remote part of Arizona during a zombie apocalypse. At the start of the game, he wakes up in a makeshift camp. A zombie’s head, a victim of one of the traps he’s set to protect himself, rolls in. You assume control, pick up a gun, and away you go.

RETURN OF THE LIVING FRED

The gameplay beats are simple; you explore, scavenge containers and drawers for ammo, and shoot zombies. There are other limited interactions, like finding keys to progress, but nothing that might be construed as a puzzle. Every so often, something will cause a zombie horde to come running, and you’d better pray you’ve found all the bullets you’ll need to survive. 

The simple plot is that the anonymous protagonist is trying to find some other human survivors, slowly making his way to a compound where an automated radio broadcast is claiming there’s an enclave of safety. Sound familiar? That’s because it is. Deliberately so. It’s carefully designed to inhabit many of the tropes of zombie stories we’ve become used to in recent years. 

BOOM! FREDSHOT

Where Arizona Sunshine excels, and why it continues to be popular and well-regarded years after its release, despite other VR titles having surpassed it in many ways – is in its execution. Not in terms of its disparate elements, but the way it coheres. It’s not a graphical showcase, the plot is simple, and there’s a layer of jankiness to the whole thing which betrays its age. But the gunplay is perfect, the feel is sublime. For all the lack of polish in interactions like opening doors and climbing ladders, the headshots feel just right. Reloading is a button press and a quick pull of the gun towards the belt – not Pavlov-style realism, but just enough interaction to feel immersive. There’s always enough ammo if you carefully scavenge; the zombies are a threat en masse, but individually they’re sorrowful things, and taking them out feels like a matter-of-fact, pragmatic gesture.

The overall click and feel of it is crucial; compared to the other zombie shooters on Quest, Death Horizon and Drop Dead: Dual Strike Edition, Arizona has by far a meatier and more convincing shooty-bang. It’s superior to most VR shooters that I’ve played, in fact. 

PRETENDING TO BE FRED

The gameplay in Arizona Sunshine serves the straightforward narrative perfectly, and this is backed up by the pivotal central performance by Sky Soleil as the player. This gives the game its identity. The cheery everyman could be just another generic dudebro, but there’s real depth here. He cheerily refers to the zombies as ‘Freds’ and ‘Freddies’, talking to them as if they’re friends as he guns them down. He’s a guy who’s seen a lot by the time we join him in the game, but he isn’t a standard ex-military grunt. As the game goes on, his cheeriness evaporates, and it’s clear that his joviality has been masking clawing loneliness and despair at his situation. The voice work is excellent in a way that belies the simplicity of the narrative and sells the setting more than any number of contrived plot twists or a vapid supporting cast, could have done.

FRED RECKONING

Arizona Sunshine is not a good-looking game, even in its original Steam incarnation. It’s quite bland and simple, with some less than stellar texture work – I’m looking at you, wooden doors that look like bacon! This is obviously true of the Quest version, too, with other factors like pop-in of scenery and objects factoring in now. The zombies look OK, with a nice variety of models, but the geometry is sometimes so simplistic it all seems a bit early Playstation 2. The upside of this though is that the game runs smoothly on the Quest, and in fact, the loading times are infinitely better than the PC and PSVR versions too.

Where the game comes alive is its brilliant use of audio. The guns all sound great, and there’s good positional audio which means you can hear quite accurately where the Freds are shuffling and moaning from. This, coupled with the lovely untethered freedom of the Quest headset, makes this version by far the best version of Arizona Sunshine you can play.

Jonathan van den Wijngarden‘s score is excellent too, with just the right amount of foreboding and atmosphere. It conveys the loneliness of our hero’s situation and the baking sun, without ever being invasive or overbearing. 

FRED WITH FRIENDS

Online multiplayer is an excellent feature of the game and one which will give the title considerable longevity, above and beyond the roadmap of additional content which is on its way in 2020. The entire campaign can be played co-op with a friend, which works really well as a whole. There are some annoyances. There are a couple of sections where it rubber bands you together in a restrictive way, meaning you can’t entirely have one player sniping overwatch while the other runs among the Freddies. Items crucial to progress are ‘tied to the host’, meaning they can only be picked up or activated by the player hosting the game, which is a bit silly. But it’s great fun otherwise, and quite painless to set up. It’s great fun to play through the campaign with a friend.

VERSUS THE HORDE

Where it really shines though is the Horde mode, which can be played single or multiplayer. You know the drill; you have an arena in which you fight waves of Freddies of increasing numbers, and more ammo and weapons spawn in every so often. It’ll test your accuracy and grace under fire, not to mention your friendships if you’re playing co-op. Enormous fun and the two-handed weapon update that has just dropped is superb, adding rifles and machine guns to the game which are a joy to use.

FREDDY FOR THE BIG TIME

Arizona Sunshine is an early achievement for VR which stands the test of time, despite some technical shortcomings and dated visuals. It’s found its natural home on Quest, with a solid conversion that benefits greatly from being cable-free. It’s maybe a touch expensive, but I’d still recommend it as it’s the most solid and satisfying zombie shooter FPS in VR to date, and unique on the Quest. With quite a bit of content already and more to on the way, there’s certainly enough here to keep you going if you buy into it. 

Play Your Cards Right, Buddy

Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl is a real-time card fighter. It’s an RTS of sorts, albeit not a traditional base-building one. You have a deck full of units and spells. All of which can be activated (if and when you have enough manna) by placing them on the battlefield. While placing your units, you can guide their starting path by tilting your controller. Once placed, however, you cannot control your units, or influence their actions.

Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl is not turn-based, so as soon as the battle begins, you’ll both frantically plop cards down on the battlefield, and watch as they spring to life.

Units can be single fighters, like the Knight, who’s essentially a ‘hero’ unit, or little squads of soldiers. Once placed on the battlefield, your troops will march along, engaging with any enemies in their path or close enough to fight. If you cast a spell, you get to aim it anywhere you want on the battlefield, aiding your units, or hindering your opponents’.

You each have a castle, confusingly referred to as a ‘general’ (an apparent leftover from the original Skyworld in which the battles occurred between generals, and of which you could have several), and two towers. The final aim is to destroy the other general, but the towers act like buffers which most of your units will try to demolish before heading towards the ‘general’. 

Every unit and every building (including your general) has a health bar, so you can always tell how much health it has remaining. Destroy the other general, and you win. It’s one round, and to the victor go the spoils. 

Skyworld’s House of Cards

Your deck is made up of eight slots. Each slot can contain a unit card or a spell card, and each costs a certain amount of manna to activate. Some, like the humble Swordsmen, cost a measly two points of manna, while the dragons (who the hell doesn’t want at least one dragon?) cost six points of manna each. Manna regenerates at a steady pace, but when you’re under attack, you won’t always want to wait for the heavy hitters. There’s a reason wars require cannon fodder, and your Swordsmen are often just that.

You also have access to eight modifiers that you can apply to cards in your deck. These modifiers provide various advantages, but invariably reduce the health of any units to which they’re attached. 

There’s a balance of power, much like you’d find in a regular rock/paper/scissors RTS. Hero units are generally powerful against squads, flying units are powerful against ground targets, and archers are good against flying units. 

The battle arenas (of which there are twenty, but the differences are mostly decorative) also contain control points, placed midway between both generals. When controlled (by having troops march across them) they launch air balloons that target your enemy. These can yield a substantial advantage when appropriately leveraged. 

Buy Me a Kingdom

There are two in-game currencies; Sky points, which you can use to purchase in-game avatars, and gold, which buys you new cards to add to your deck. You earn both types of currency in-game, so you’re not being held hostage by petty microtransactions. Vertigo Games did well here. There’s also a lot of cards to pick from, easily more than thirty, so you really can build a unique deck. 

The game is also relatively easy going on new players, giving you some gold even when you lose a multiplayer game. This generosity means that players of all levels can eventually equip themselves with most cards, effectively levelling out the playing field as long as you’re willing to grind a little.

The Brawl Beneath The Sky

Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl is all about the online battles. I can’t imagine most players fighting the AI much, except to learn the ropes before they feel confident enough to compete online. That’s fine because online is really where it shines. You can join one of two clans and compete in regular online tournaments. As an individual player, you’re rated on the global leaderboard, but you’re also rated within your clan. This system makes it easy to see how much you’ve contributed to your clan’s overall score. These are both great motivators for competitive gamers.

Online battles last five minutes each but can go into overtime if nobody managed to secure a clear victory. If nobody wins during overtime, victory goes to the player with the most health remaining.

Pikemen, Imps, Helljumpers, and Seige Tanks

The graphics in Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl are above average for the Quest, but not mindblowing. Units are not very recognizable at a distance, but you can always move closer to them to take a better look. It’s fun to hurl spells at your enemy’s units and watch them burn, freeze, or get struck by lightning. It’s a blast when you’ve grown familiar enough with the unit types to know precisely how to counter your enemy. Seeing your enemy’s castle (sorry, ‘general’) blow up after your units have pummeled them is also very satisfying.

Unlike games like Racket: NX, both players are silent, and you can only really communicate with your virtual hands. Although this limits online interactions, it also eliminates some of the immaturity often found when playing online. My opponents and I interacted by waving hello to each other at the start of each battle and then giving a ‘thumbs up’ when victorious to signal a game well played. 

There’s not much of a soundtrack, with a predictably medieval theme playing softly at the menu screen, and nothing but sound effects and voice prompts when you’re in a battle.

Marching Orders

Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl is a fun game that has managed to get past its initial troubled release. With great multiplayer, a basic clan system, online tournaments, and global leaderboards, it’ll keep fans engaged for a long time. At the moment, it’s also the only card fighter and the only real-time strategy game available on the Quest and for most RTS fans that alone will be enough. Priced competitively at $10, Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl is great value for money, and a game you should certainly try out if you have any interest in the genre.

A lot of people had been looking forward to the game, including us here at 6DOF Reviews. A card fighter set in the world of Skyworld, the game looked like a lot of fun. However, the release was definitely rushed. When we tried it we found it glitchy, with us and many other people experiencing a ‘draw’ every time they tried to play a multiplayer game. We also couldn’t help but notice the presence of a ‘lorem ipsum‘ text box that was stuck on our displays whenever we were in the main game screen. Lorem Ipsum texts are placeholders often used by graphic designers during development until the actual real game content is put in place. All of this seems to indicate a rushed release of a not-quite-finished game.

A lot of users were unhappy with the game upon release, and many more were surprised to find Skyworld pulled from their libraries a few hours later. We are, however, encouraged by Vertigo Games’ decision to pull the game and are confident that they’ll work hard and fast to fix the game before re-releasing it.

Although Oculus didn’t notify users of these events, Vertigo Games did explain what happened through their Twitter account –

We hope they get it fixed fast, but more importantly, we hope they get it fixed well. We’ll be looking forward to the re-release and will have a review up as soon as the game reaches its final form.

Remember, if you want to check out the full list of upcoming releases for the Quest, check out our Upcoming Quest Releases page, and if you’re on a desktop browser click the little bell in the bottom right corner to get a notification when we publish news or reviews!