Virtual reality games: Magnetique

Today on reddit, among all other various games videos, one post caught my attention: its header was “The first VR Comic it’s out“… wow, the first comic in virtual reality? Super-cool, I love original things in virtual reality… I’m one of the creators of one of them! So I watched the trailer…

and after watching it, my reaction has been

You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.

How can these guys use a 2D mean like comic in a 3D environment like virtual reality? So I took my GearVR innovator edition and I started playing Magnetique.

The intro showed some flaws to me: with my Note4-powered GearVR, the FPS was terrible… and thanks God that I’m used to motion sickness, otherwise I would have passed some bad moments. The game started and… it has been awesome! The FPS problem was not present during the story and this is the first positive point. Then the visuals are very well drawn… the graphic is all 2D, but with main characters mounted as billboards, so it gives you the illusion of 3D of the comic. And the sound… men, the sound was the overall touch of art of this VR experience… always the right sound at the right place… giving more emotional sensations to the story. Ah yes, the story… very interesting… a bit sad, but surely catchy.

Ok, so, how about the problems of this experience?

• Bad initial FPS for Note4;
• It’s hard to port a comic to VR, so they had to make compromises: the callouts are only in front of you, all the other parts of the 360-degrees-dome are just to give the environment, so they result useless;
• The story in the demo is just a taste… it lasts really few moments. Maybe a longer demo would be appropriate.

But… apart from these details, I can say that the team has made an awesome work to port comics to VR… kudos to them! Magnetique is really an awesome demo that every VR enthusiast has to try! Come on, guys… try it! (but before… please like and share this article!)