Cloudborn is a NEW Adventure Climbing VR Game in the Sky

Originally published at www.vudream.com on October 18, 2017.

Do you wanna….

Immerse yourself in a beautiful bright and colored landscape?

Climb jungle vines in the sky like Tarzan?

Cleanse the world from corruption with your bare hands?

If you answered yes to any of the following questions then I recommend the Cloudborn VR game.

I’m all for heavy shooters and gut-wrenching horror games in virtual reality.

Sometimes, I like to take a break and go on an amazing adventure in a cartoon land floating in the sky.

Cloudborn by Logtown Studios, now on Steam early access fulfilled that need for me. Now, I’ve played Crytek’s The Climb several times and it’s an excellent climbing game. Regardless, Cloudborn has the potential to be better with immersive adventure story-telling.

Scaling a cliff is great and all but for me if there’s no plot or aim it can get a little redundant.

One of the best sellers of this game is the super unique majestic landscape throughout the game. The light, colorful art-style, is inspired by Miyazaki movies and watercolors.

I love the arm swinging movement system that Logtown implemented in the game. Games that don’t use a realistic movement system miss the mark of a realistic immersive experience. Above all Cloudborn isn’t another game you download on Steam and play for a couple hours. It’s an experience to get people involved in VR.

Everyone’s played an action-packed VR wave shooter. But, experiencing an intense climb on top of a giant creature in the sky is next level.

Cloudborn is a great beginner game to feature in VR arcades as a first-time experience and get people hooked on the platform.

I sat down with the creators of Cloudborn, Lead Designer, Alberto Amigo and CEO of Logtown Studios, Per Wahlfridsson.

Where did the idea for Cloudborn come from?

It was born out of a few core principles we established from the start. We wanted to make a non-violent game, a bright and colorful stylized art style and wanted movement that wasn’t based on teleportation. After playing around with a few ideas we fell in love with the idea of climbing around on a giant creature in the sky. Very early in prototyping, we realized that arm-swinger movement along with climbing gave the game a physicality that really increased immersion. So it ticked all our boxes and presented an exciting number of challenges to try and make it a comfortable experience no matter the player’s experience level with VR.

What inspired you to jump in the VR industry for your first game?

We started the whole studio around the idea of making VR games. Most of us have worked in the games industry in some capacity before, and we all kind of wanted to get into VR somehow, so when the opportunity presented itself we jumped on it. For me personally, it’s the challenge of working in a new frontier where a lot of the things I know about game design might not work and you have to figure things out. In the end, I want to create meaningful experiences for people and with VR you get so close to being able to completely immerse someone in a reality of your making, it’s a fascinating.

Do you think it’s a risk to jump in VR for your first game?

We see it as an opportunity. VR is the medium of the future even if the market needs some time to mature. But the barrier to entry for developers is pretty low. Hardware companies are very keen to get their dev kits out to people, and engines like Unity and Unreal make it easy to get started. On top of that, you have tools like VRTK that make it easy to start prototyping. VR is still very much looking for its flagship app, and that could really come from anywhere. It’s an exciting time!

What distinguishes Cloudborn from other VR games like The Climb?

Cloudborn is a climbing game in the context of an adventure. There is a story there to explore, although how we’re telling the story is something we’re still polishing in Early Access. As far as the climbing itself goes, we found that current climbing games on the market either tend towards arcade or realism while we try to be somewhere in between.

What future plans do you have for Cloudborn?

It’s out now in Early Access on Steam which is exciting and it’s cool to get some feedback from users. We’ve released a few bug fix updates while we’re working on the next content update, which will focus on making the world feel more alive. We’re updating our physics system to handle interactive props, so, for instance, you’ll be able to pick up a stick and if you throw it in a body of water it’ll behave as you expect. We’re also working on an art update that will improve visuals across the board. Beyond that, we are of course working on new levels and story content for the future. We’ve been going full steam at the studio since releasing so there are exciting things coming!

Conclusion

Check back on this page frequently for updates and additions.

We’ve seen a tremendous amount of disruptive change coming from the Virtual Reality Industry. It is surely certain that this kind of content will accelerate based on trends in the future.

You most likely have some other VR ideas that can change the world! Share them with us on social media!

Originally published at www.vudream.com on October 18, 2017.