System: Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift & Windows MR
Price at Time Of Review: £3.00
Comfort Rating: Yellow
Genre: Interactive Experience
Input: Tracked Motion Controllers
Best Playing Position: Sitting
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG
VR Shop Score 1/100: 85
Description: Wakamarina Valley, New Zealand is a short exploration/photography experience set near Queen Charlotte Sound on New Zealand’s South Island. Use the game’s camera to observe and interact with the world around you while exploring and completing photo-related objectives. The game has an important focus on immersion and not holding your hand, your attentiveness and eagerness to explore will be rewarded with access to hidden areas and new features. The game also includes an immersive curated soundtrack, This is definitely one for turning down the lights and wearing headphones.
This project started out as a showcase of my work in environment design, I wanted to create a realistic, densely forested scene using photoscanned 3d assets that could run smoothly in real-time. The environment was created in Unreal Engine 4 with heavy reference to photos taken at the location, You’ll encounter rocky riverbeds, dense forest paths, vast farmland and distant hills, a lot of which resemble the appearance of the real valley in NZ. As I spent more time on this I began to build on some camera mechanics I thought added a unique/personal level of interactivity to the experience. I hope the atmosphere and ambience created by the environment will keep you coming back when you’re stressed
Review: Sometimes you don’t want a shooter, nor an action game, sometimes you just want something to get away from it all and that is what ‘Wakamarina Valley, New Zealand’ offers. It’s a simple walk through a small section of woods on New Zealand’s South Island and it is as beautiful as experiences get. I don’t feel it is too much of s stretch to call this pretty much realistic as things gat. You can walk about, find a few things and take some photos, but that is about it. The idea here is to relax and take in the sights and sounds, nothing more and nothing less. For £3.00 this is well worth a look, I just wish it was a lot bigger in area size for more money.
