Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset for 3D gaming, gets an exclusive game adventure called “Lucky’s Tale” from Playful Corp.
The Rift-exclusive game stemmed from a latest deal with Playful, an independent game studio said to be among the first to have inked on an official partnership with Oculus VR, Inc. The partnership would bring about the development of content that is exclusively for Rift virtual reality headset.
"Oculus is committed to bringing the best and most innovative content from developers large and small to our new platform. We are delighted with our new partnership with Playful," David De Martini, head at Oculus’ Worldwide Publishing, says in a statement.
The complete details of said virtual reality game will be disclosed next week at the E3 convention to be held in Los Angeles, California. Convention attendees will also have the chance to take a look at the playable demo of Lucky’s Tale at the Oculus booth, according to the Oculus VR’s blog post.
The blog post also reveals that Playful founder Paul Bettner believed in Rift technology from the very beginning, having been one of the Kickstarter backers of the $5,000 campaign of Oculus. He even paid a visit to the original office of Oculus in October 2012. Since then, Oculus has been in collaboration with Playful in terms of hardware, software and virtual reality research.
Bettner, who is best known for being the co-creator of the popular game “Words with Friends,” believes that virtual reality is the most significant thing that happened to “interactive entertainment in decades.”
"I know it sounds like exaggeration, but it's impossible to explain what this is like to someone who hasn't experienced it for themselves. Your brain is convinced that you are somewhere else, that you are in another world. I have worked my entire career to get to this moment, to create something like this," Bettner adds.
Bettner explains that Lucky’s Tale was made from scratch, but the result was “unexpected and surprisingly delightful.” He also says it’s not the typical game that comes to mind when one thinks of virtual reality gaming, which is why he can’t wait to see the reactions from people when they play the game for the very first time at the video gaming convention.
Aside from Lucky’s Tale, Playful is also developing an open-world sandbox game, “Creativerse,” that it again plans to bring to Oculus Rift soon, but only after the initial launch on Steam digital distribution platform later in 2014.
