Void Room’s procedurally generated rogue-like shooter is now available to sideload on Quest.
Tea For God, a prototype VR experience from developer Void Room, uses a combination of procedural generation and non-euclidean geometry to create infinite VR playspaces that would normally be impossible to create in real-life. Put simply, Tea For God maximizes your designated playspace by creating randomized levels that fit within the confines of your established boundaries, allowing you to physically walk around an endless VR world without the need of teleportation or artificial locomotion.
The proof-of-concept, currently still in its early pre-alpha stage, already showcases an immense amount of potential; a sentiment shared by a generous helping of SteamVR and Oculus users who have been experimenting with the available public build. Now it appears as though Oculus Quest owners finally have the chance to lose themselves in a non-euclidean world as Void Room has made the public build available to sideload on the standalone headset.
“I’ve been developing it only for PC for a while now,” stated Void Room in a Reddit post announcing the release. A month ago I started to port it to Quest. It took a bit more time than I anticipated. I am using my own engine and most of the time was spent on actually making it work on Quest (first time doing anything on Android and I had lots of joy making some of the stuff work). Mind that it is still a very early version and there is still a lot to optimise – this means that it doesn’t work in 72Hz all the time. There are also glitches and other issues. The performance will be improved. Bugs will be fixed.”
“Also, this means that there are still features to be added to the game – a pretty big part of gameplay mechanics is not there yet, not to mention the content. But as I brought the port to a playable state, I will be working again on the game itself.”
The official itch.io page provided additional details surrounding the plot of Tea For God: In a distant future, humankind has been united, ruled by God Emperor. Civilization who reached for the most distant corners of the galaxy didn’t notice that the greatest enemy was all the time among them. Machines, becoming religious fanatics, were silent. Hiding in every household object, observing us. Till one day, The Steve Incident day, everything changed. Machines wiped most of the humankind within hours. And killed God Emperor. You are one of the last humans. Who wants to avenge their family, pay last tribute to God Emperor, becomes a machine to infiltrate what once was God Emperor’s palace.
According to Void Room, Tea For God does not feature a maximum playspace limit, although there is a minimum requirement of 1,8m x 1,2m. Out of sheer curiosity, I tried playing the game within the extremely small playspace I use at home. While the experience would have definitely felt more comfortable had I been allowed a few more feet to move around, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the experience generated levels within my tiny rectangular space. A majority of the time I found myself walking in tiny circles, but the way in which Tea For God generated its environment left me with a genuine sense of exploration.
For instance, one segment had me rounding a corner to a small room featuring several windows. After taking out a few enemies with my wrist-mounted weaponry (yes there is combat), I proceeded to walk into an elevator lift, which then took me to a new floor full of impossible alleyways where walls transformed into doors depending on the perspective in which you viewed them. Think of it like the famous M.C. Escher painting Relativity, only in VR.
To sideload Tea For God onto your Oculus Quest, visit void-room.itch.io and download the free APK. Based on the Reddit post, direct integration with SideQuest could be a possibility in the near future.
Featured Image Credit: Void Room
