Warpfrog’s ultra-popular melee combat game makes its way to Facebook’s (Meta) latest standalone VR headset.
Blade & Sorcery, one of the most popular VR games currently available on PC VR headsets, has officially arrived on Oculus Quest 2 headsets in the form of Blade & Sorcery: Nomad. In this standalone version of Warpfrog’s 2018 PC VR experience, players battle a variety of AI enemies in close-quarters combat using an arsenal of brutal weaponry, including—but not limited to—axes, swords, spears, and bows. They can even harness the power of ancient magic to destroy multiple enemies at once.
“A big component of Blade & Sorcery, and something that might be tricky for people to wrap their head around at first, is that primarily it is a simulation and secondary a game,” said Warpfrog Producer and Blade & Sorcery Community Manager, The Baron, in an official release. “This seems like a strange concept at first, but to us simulation and presence is what is so exciting about VR in the first place!”
Blade & Sorcery: Nomad features four sandbox maps at launch. There’s also the home environment as well as “Dungeons”, a new game mode that adds a bit of structure to the game by offering players a randomly-generated environment in which to explore. There are currently 50 hand-crafted rooms in total (including several outdoor areas). You also have the ability to choose the length of the Dungeon before each run.
“Where the random part comes into it, each room that spawns is drawn from the pool of rooms we have, but within those rooms there can be one or more exits and depending on your generated seed that exit is random,” added The Baron. “This further mixes it up as it is then not only the random factor of which room spawns, but also the random factor of which exit path you need to navigate to get to the next room, and how all the rooms connect to each other.”
According to Warpfrog, Blade & Sorcery: Nomad is nearly identical to the original PC VR game, minus a handful of small changes. Nomad, for instance, is missing several Dungeon rooms that were too complex for the Quest 2, fewer enemies on screen, and a slight graphical downgrade. Nomad is also missing the Citadel sandbox map featured on PC VR, though the team is working hard to optimize the map for Quest 2.
Moving forward, Blade & Sorcery: Nomad will receive the same exact updates as the original PC VR release. This includes next year’s Progression mode, which will allow players to create a new character separate from their Sandbox character and unlock new weapons and abilities by collecting various loot.
Progression mode is essentially an upgrade to Dungeons mode which, in its current state, is basically a procedurally-generated sandbox mode. An exciting skill tree promises to motivate players to unlock new items and abilities. That said, players will still have access to Sandbox mode where they can access any weapon or skill.
“As best we could, Blade & Sorcery is stripped of as many “gamey” mechanics as feasibly possible. No health bars, no stats, no artificial limiters, etc; if it feels like you should be able to do it, then our hope is that you can,” explained The Baron.
“We don’t tell the player how to play the game, how to fight, or how to have fun; it is completely up to them. We just provide the simulation as detailed as we can (and ever-improving!) and they decide what they want to do with it. Our philosophy is no matter what you are doing, if you are having fun then you are playing it ‘right’.”
Blade & Sorcery: Nomad is available now for $19.99 on Oculus Quest 2 headsets. For more information visit here.
Feature Image Credit: Warpfrog
