Black Sun Productions doesn’t build games from scratch. It has a mission of adapting what CEO Corbin Chase calls “flat” games and bringing them to life in a virtual reality world. The first project that they’re tackling is ambitious in terms of subject matter and scope.
His studio is bringing over “Metamorphosis” to the Meta Quest 2 and Quest 3. It’s a game originally made by Ovid Works and it’s inspired by the famous Franz Kafka novella of the same name. Players take on the role of Gregor Samsa, who is visiting urban Vienna in the early 1900s when he discovers that he has turned into an insect.
In the video game, the transformation isn’t as random or sudden as it is in the novella. “Metamorphosis VR” has a distinct purpose. Gregor is seeing his friend, Josef. He goes to sleep, wakes up and walks through several doors, noticing an environment that’s strange. Pictures of humans transform into insects and each door he opens makes him appear smaller until players see their thin bug legs.
Over the course of the campaign, players will realize that being a bug has advantages. It makes it easier to spy and unravel the mystery behind his friend’s arrest, but the driving goal of the adventure is to save Josef and regain the protagonist’s humanity.
The player and Gregor end up in the same boat initially. They have to figure out how to walk around and interact with others with their new insect abilities. Chase said that Black Sun adapted the locomotion so that players move around the environment by mimicking walking and crawling motions. As a bug, players can skitter across the surface by moving their arms. They can also climb up surfaces by pretending to rock climbing, but they can’t do it forever. There’s limited by the amount of adhesive they have on their legs, and that’s something that runs out with extended use.
They learn that heights are deadly for bugs, but more than that, players discover a bug society. Players will run into insect mobsters who run a club inside a gramophone. They discover a theater troupe. They also sees how Gregor’s friend was arrested but from the perspective a seemingly insignificant insect. It gives players insight into how to help him and manages to advance the story.
In one section, Chase demonstrated the puzzle-solving elements. Gregor is trying to gain access to a certificate his friend needs in a lawyer’s study but needs to access the gramophone to reach it. He’ll have to persuade a bouncer to let him in, and players will have to explore the area full of 60 characters who are fully voiced to figure a way in. Overall, “Metamorphosis VR” has 130 characters, spread through a world from a lilliputian perspective.
Chase said the biggest obstacle to bringing the title to the Meta Quest was optimization. The original was built for machines with graphics cards and the developers on his team had to port the project to a system that wasn’t as powerful while still creating a unique and rich world.
In addition, Black Sun wove two downloadable content missions from the PC game into the overall narrative for a complete experience for those who never played the “flat” game. “Metamorphosis VR” is scheduled to launch Oct. 10 on Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest 3 for $19.99.
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