Impulse Gear very recently released its second title, a 6v6 VR hero-shooter game for VR titled Larcenauts, which features quite a diverse cast of characters with tons of possible loadouts and combinations. The VR part of Larcenauts is a predominant impact on how the game is played and what players can or can't do, and essentially it is a very different environment to grow accustomed to compared to games for consoles and PC. Game Rant spoke to Greg Koreman and Seth Luisi from Impulse Gear, the developers of Farpoint and Larcenauts, about what the game has to offer and how the community's feedback has been a very positive influence on the studio's work.
It's not very common for video game studios to be extremely responsive to any kind of feedback from players to the point that it becomes a priority to work on and implement. Yet, this is what Impulse Gear has been doing since Larcenauts released just about one week ago, be it working on things to implement shortly or be it trying to fix the Steam VR issues that are currently preventing some Steam users to actually play the game. This proactive attitude from Impulse Gear further shows how much love the studio has poured into this game up to now, while also creating a very healthy environment for Larcenauts' community.
Larcenauts is currently playable on Oculus, with its proper launch on Steam VR being delayed until a movement issue related to VR mechanics is finally solved. This is something the developers are very sorry about, and they couldn't do anything to fix it prior to release because it was a last-minute issue that impacts most of the Steam VR headsets currently available. Koreman and Luisi are optimistic for a fix to come very soon, though, as the engineering team has been working on the issue since day one, and they plan to have an announcement up shortly.
The community for Larcenauts is growing in numbers quite fast, and especially so on the official Discord channel, where players have been sharing thoughts, impressions, ideas, team compositions, and more. What makes VR a special environment to build new features is how unique some triggers can be to activate specific in-game commands and perform even actions that would be considered to be basic in terms of gameplay. This includes how sprinting works in Larcenauts, and the community was very vocal about Impulse Gear including alternative ways to do this while standing up.
Impulse Gear prepared a patch for this and added to the game what players had asked in very little time, which led to great enthusiasm among fans and joy for the developers. Now, other players asked Impulse Gear to add a manual reload system for each character's guns simply because that's part of the beauty of VR games, that they feel more tactile in a way, and because it matters to them to learn how each gun works. Again, Impulse Gear is ready to deliver in an upcoming patch soon, much to the excitement of many players. This is what Koreman said about it:
When people get into the game right away they feel like they would need a different way to play the game, but the more they play it they like that. However, on our side, we do think there's a huge opportunity here to do a manual reload system, and that's something we have in our very short-term roadmap to add to the game. I think people will enjoy the possibility to do either one.
With Larcenauts' community being so honest about what they want from the game, be it recurring to sharing ideas or criticism, and with Impulse Gear's approach, the game can further change in time and become a better version of itself. Hero-shooter fans should keep an eye on Larcenauts to see how this game changes to take advantage of VR to its fullest.
Larcenauts is available on Oculus and Steam VR.