Not to sound like a suburban parent, but there's a lot of potential behind the crowd funded record breaking peripheral, the Oculus Rift, and while it could just be my maritime fascination talking here, World of Diving shows that potential. The boys behind the deep-sea diving simulator at Vertigo have a pre-alpha gameplay trailer out, showing off the game's multiplayer.
"Being Greenlit by the Steam community in September showed us that there is definitely a market for World of Diving, and development has really leapt forward since then," says Tristan Lambert, Lead Programmer on the project, in a recent press release. "We've recently added multiplayer co-op missions, and our internal testers were so enthusiastic that we decided to show it early."
Alongside the trailer, the game is in pre-alpha, meaning Scuba Steves and Samanthas have the option to start customizing and building their character early over at the game's official website.
As the release noted, "players have their own Diving level, which come with increasingly exciting perks, including early access to World of Diving and exclusive in-game rewards. Players can upgrade their level with Diving XP that they gain from completing missions, participating in community activities, and offering feedback and ideas for development. In the future, it will also be possible to purchase upgrades right away."
"With this online platform that allows for much more sophisticated feedback and rewarding thereof, we're hoping to take engagement with our modest, but enthusiastic and growing community to the next level," said Richard Stitselaar, Creative Director at Vertigo Games. Thank God it's online. Imagine a bunch of people in one room with Rifts strapped to their head, fake swimming, bumping into each other. Sounds like a pitch for a reality TV show. Actually, I should probably get the Discovery Channel on the line about that...
In case you missed it, World of Diving is basically what you'd expect from the title - strap on the rift, load up the game, and you're set to explore 70% of what makes up this third rock from the sun. Players start out in the clear blue waters of the Caribbean, scoping sea life, salvage shipwrecks, and complete missions, alone or with a friend.
The game began a crowd-funding campaign on IndieGoGo over the summer, where I proudly forked over a tidy sum to help it along, simply because it looked so damn cool. Sadly, the team fell short of its funding goal on IndieGoGo, but development continued, and the crowd-funding campaign was rebooted at the game's site. Eventually, there was enough interest that the game got the green-light from Steam this past September.
You might ask, "why not actually scuba dive?" Well, as pricey as the Oculus Rift will likely be once it hits retail (rumored to be around $300), it's considerably more costly and time consuming to hop on a plane, fly through a few time zones, get certified, get the gear, before I can finally check things out for myself. Popping on a Rift is easily the next best choice. It also has the added benefit of featuring real world diving spots, without any of the possible dangers that come with them, like unpredictable currents, decompression sickness, surfacing too quickly, running into the great white beast that took Robert Shaw quicker than the third train in the original "Taking of Pelham One Two Three," and whatever else that keeps me relegated as a landlubber.
Enough of my babbling and run on sentences, check out the trailer below, and keep your eyes peeled for this game. It's set to arrive on PC, Mac, and Linux in the second half of 2014.
