Red Matter is a 2018 sci-fivirtual reality game developed and published by Spanish studio Vertical Robot. The player plays as Agent Epsilon, who crash lands on one of Saturn's moons, Rhea, and goes to explore a nearby military base belonging to the fictional People's Republic of Volgravia. The game received positive reviews from critics, who praised the atmosphere of the environments, but criticized some of the puzzles as being confusing. Red Matter released on May 24, 2018 for Oculus Rift, with versions for the HTC Vive, Oculus Quest, and PlayStation VR launching in November 2018, December 2018, and August 2019, respectively. A sequel, Red Matter 2, was released for Steam VR and Meta Quest 2 on 18 August 2022 and for Playstation VR2 on 18 May 2023.
Agent Epsilon of the Atlantic Union is dispatched to the top secret Volgravian-controlled research facility, Strelka N3, on Saturn’s moon, Rhea. The facility appears abandoned, save for unusual anomalies preceded by an unknown figure observing Epsilon in a Volgravian cosmonaut suit. Epsilon is directed by their commander via radio to download the station’s data to determine what happened. As Epsilon moves further into the facility, they experience hallucinations warning someone named Sasha not to trust “them”.
Epsilon learns that the personnel on the station were infected by an alien mold-like substance discovered on the moon’s surface. One of the scientists, Irina, became disillusioned after an accidental exposure to the “red matter” consumed a fellow researcher and the lack of concern by the Volgravian leadership. Unfortunately, the station’s security head, Nikolai, was informed of Irina’s concerns and decided to poison her and cover it up as an accident.
As Epsilon pieces together the events, they learn they are actually Sasha Reis, a scientist assigned to Strelka N3, whose escape pod was intercepted by the Atlantic Union. The mission commander is, in truth, observing Sasha using a virtual environment being fed into his brain and the mysterious astronaut is actually Sasha’s subconsciousness warning him he is being used to uncover Volgravia’s research into quantum teleportation. Shortly, Sasha’s interrogator sends himself into the virtual environment to forcibly retrieve the information from Sasha despite the danger of having two minds connected.
However, Sasha seizes control from the interrogator and destroys the virtual environment with the latter still inside. Sasha wakes up in the Atlantic Union facility, his mind been transferred into the interrogator’s body while he sees his original body has died from the trauma.
Shortly, another Atlantic Union agent that has been observing the interrogation from afar asks if the mission has succeeded. Once Sasha acknowledges in his new body the agent is revealed to be an undercover spy from Volgravia and congratulates Sasha for a job well done.
Gameplay
The player using the game’s translation tool
The game is set in an alternate sci-fi Cold War universe, where the war was fought between the fictional nations of the Atlantic Union and Volgravia. The player plays as Agent Epsilon, an agent for the Atlantic Union. After crash landing onto the moon Rhea, the player begins to explore the base. Players receive information from the "commander", an AI in the player's space suit. Red Matter also has a translation device which can be used to translate writing found around the base into English. The game has different types of puzzles, such as using symbols to activate lasers and finding codes to progress. Players use motion controllers to interact with objects, and to use tools. Traversal options include movement smoothly with an analog stick, by teleporting, or the player can "space hop", boosting upwards with the game's jetpack, then using braking and acceleration to control where they land.[1][2]
Development
Art created to commemorate the 1978 Soviet-Czechoslovak Space Flight
Red Matter was planned by the studio to be their first game, but due to its scope the game needed financial support. To avoid wasting time while finding a backer, the team created various demos, one of them, a locomotion demo for Red Matter ended up becoming Vertical Robot's first title, Daedalus. The title helped Vertical Robot test Unreal Engine's potential for VR games and gain insight into the VR market. After the completion of Daedalus, development resumed on the project. The developers said that the reason they made a world inspired by the Cold War was that "There is some basis on the real Cold War but we really wanted to distance ourselves from actual history and invent a dystopian fantasy with two completely make-believe factions. This would allow us to manipulate and create characters and plots that will surprise players".[3]
Vertical Robot considered using Russian text for the game but decided against it, as they didn't want to make the translation tool useless for Russian players. The developers wanted to make a sci-fi game but said they were aware "that it's a genre that's been done to death" so they used posters from the Soviet space program as an inspiration for the setting, alongside various Cold War stories. On the subject of locomotion the team stated: "We decided to offer players as broad a range of options as possible within our technical capabilities being such a small team. We’re lucky enough to have a variety of preferences within our own team, ranging from people who are highly resilient to motion sickness to others that become dizzy almost immediately, so we understand the importance of offering as many options as possible". The developers focused on making the controls intuitive by modeling the touch controllers in game, and making each of the game's tools simple to use.[3][4] For the Oculus Quest version, Vertical Robot simplified meshes and precompiled shaders in order to ensure higher performance for the port.[5]
Red Matter received "generally favorable reviews" according to Metacritic.[13]
UploadVR's Jamie Feltham praised the game's atmosphere, writing "there’s the atmosphere, which is masterfully layered on. Red Matter’s environments are intricately detailed with decorations and notes that flesh out the story in an authentic way". He criticized some of the game's later puzzles, "There are some duff notes with the puzzling, especially in the later levels where Vertical isn’t as generous with clues as it should be".[1]
Scott Hayden, writing for Road to VR, liked Red Matter's visuals, saying that "Visually, Red Matter is a stunning showcase of the team’s expertise in Unreal Engine. Textures are extremely high quality, and the game’s architecture is nothing short of awe-inspiring". Hayden disliked the intrusiveness of the suit's AI, "I’m not a fan of the ‘helpful robot’ trope in VR adventures because they tend to get annoying after a while, and I’ll admit the commander got on my nerves a little".[2]
Related Research Articles
Cross-buy is a feature of some digital distribution systems available across multiple device platforms, where users who purchase a license to a specific piece of software are able to use the versions of the software for different device classes at no additional charge.
Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is a virtual reality adventure game developed by Double Fine Productions. It was released for PlayStation VR in February 2017 and on Microsoft Windows in April 2018. The game's story bridges the events between Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2.
Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives, commonly referred to as simply Job Simulator, is a virtual reality simulation video game developed and published by Owlchemy Labs for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Oculus Quest, Oculus Quest 2 and Meta Quest 3, in which players participate in comical approximations of real-world jobs. A sequel, Vacation Simulator, was released in 2019.
AltspaceVR was a social VR platform that was founded in 2013 by Eric Romo and launched its initial product in May 2015. In 2017 it was acquired by Microsoft and became part of the Mixed Reality division within the Cloud and AI group. Some elements of the platform appear in Microsoft Mesh.
Robo Recall is a virtual reality first-person shooter game developed and published by Epic Games for Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest platforms. The game was released for the Oculus Rift on March 1, 2017, and an Oculus Quest version titled Robo Recall: Unplugged was released on May 21, 2019. Players that activate their Oculus Touch virtual reality controllers with its software are able to download the game for free.
I Expect You to Die is a virtual reality action video game developed and published by Schell Games and released in December 2016 for PlayStation 4, and April 2017 for Windows. In the game, the player assumes the role of a "james bond-esque" spy and is tasked to complete levels. The game can be played using the Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, the Oculus Quest and the Oculus Quest 2.
Ghost Giant is a virtual reality puzzle game developed and published by Zoink for PlayStation VR and Oculus Quest. It was released for PlayStation VR in April 2019 and Oculus Quest in February 2020.
The Oculus Go is a standalone virtual reality headset developed by Meta Reality Labs in partnership with Qualcomm and Xiaomi. It is in the first generation of Facebook Technologies' virtual reality headsets, and the company's first device in the category of standalone VR headsets, which was a new category at the time of the Go's release. The Oculus Go was unveiled on October 11, 2017 during the Oculus Connect developer conference, and released on May 1, 2018. Xiaomi launched their own version of the headset in China as the Mi VR Standalone on May 31, 2018.
The first-generation Oculus Quest is a discontinued virtual reality headset developed by Oculus, a brand of Facebook Inc., and released on May 21, 2019. Similar to its predecessor, Oculus Go, it is a standalone device, that can run games and software wirelessly under an Android-based operating system. It supports positional tracking with six degrees of freedom, using internal sensors and an array of cameras in the front of the headset rather than external sensors. The cameras are also used as part of the safety feature "Passthrough", which shows a view from the cameras when the user exits their designated boundary area. A later software update added "Oculus Link", a feature that allows the Quest to be connected to a computer via USB, enabling use with Oculus Rift-compatible software and games.
Time Stall is a VR single player physics based (action) puzzle game for the Oculus Quest, developed by Netherlands-based Force Field Entertainment and released August 15, 2019.
Boneworks is a 2019 first-person shooter VR game developed and published by Stress Level Zero. The game is designed to be entirely physics-based, with the player controlling a full virtual body that responds not just to the player's real-world input but also to obstructions in the game world.
Death Horizon: Reloaded is a first-person shooter for virtual reality devices. The game was released on September 26, 2019. The game is available for Oculus Quest, and there is a version in development for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR. It is a sequel to the game Death Horizon, which came out on September 21, 2017 for the Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR platforms.
Lone Echo II is a 2021 virtual reality adventure game which serves as the sequel to 2017's Lone Echo, both developed by Ready at Dawn and published by Oculus Studios.
Gorn is a 2019 virtual reality game developed by Free Lives and published by Devolver Digital. The player is a gladiator who fights opponents to death in arena using weapons at their disposal. The game was launched in early access in 2016, and had a full release on July 18, 2019 for Microsoft Windows. A PlayStation VR version released in 2020 and an Oculus Quest port followed in 2021. An updated version for the PlayStation VR2 was released March 16, 2023.
A Fisherman's Tale is a 2019 virtual reality game developed by InnerspaceVR and published by Vertigo Games. The game is set in a recursive world where the player controls a fisherman in a lighthouse. The game was released on Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4 on January 22, 2019, with a Oculus Quest port being released in 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
