Andromedum (Steam VR)

 

System: Valve Index & HTC Vive
Price at Time Of Review: £1.59
Comfort Rating: Green
Genre: Non-Interactive Experience
Input: Tracked Motion Controllers
Best Playing Position: Sitting
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG

 

Description: Andromedum is a VR novel with stereoscopic environments and audio narration. Jack Philips is running, and he can’t even remember why. Hunted through the remnants of a world Once occupied by ancients who left behind nothing but fractured clues to their world, Jack has almost as little information about his identity. Only a sword too fine for any common soldier and flashes of memory telling him things that would get anyone else in the kingdom executed. Jack must decide whether to keep on running, or finally make a stand for the
world as it should be. Either way, the hunters are still coming. He might not remember them, but they definitely remember him.

Review: Have you ever got so into reading a book that your brain started to show you images of what something might look like? Your imagination is a powerful thing, but image what it would be like if you were placed in the same situation that book was describing! That is exactly what Andromedum offers you. It’s a narrated book (or you can read it yourself) and it places you within the actual scenes the book is describing! It’s like reading a normal book in a whole new way and thinking ahead with this idea the possibilities are endless!

But taking the time to read or listen to the story you will soon find yourself imagining the character interacting with the scene and what they are doing. It doesn’t so much entirely replace your imagination, it gives it a little push in the right directions. Control-wise everything is fairly easy. Turn page, choose the page that sort of thing. Nothing complicated, nothing to think about other than the scene in front of you. Even as I was reading through this book I started to think about other books that would work well in this style and I thought of loads. It might not be to everyone’s tastes, but if this is the future of book reading, it’s a very good one.