First-person horror game Among the Sleep took a slightly different approach to a fairly overstuffed genre, by casting you as a frightened toddler stumbling around in a creepy house.
The game was Kickstarted back in 2013, and one of the stretch goals that was reached was the addition of VR support.
Unfortunately, developer Krillbyte has had to abandon the planned VR version, after discovering that the childlike movement in the game simply doesn’t work with the hardware. The problem is that when the game takes control away from the player, the camera techniques used for emulating a child’s movement are a recipe for motion sickness.
“Basically the game grabs hold of your virtual head for a few seconds or minutes, points it in the right direction and tells you to look at this before you can continue playing. This feels horrible in VR,” the developer explains.
“If you do this in VR it basically feels like someone is physically grabbing your head and forcing you to watch something. Suddenly your entire body is paralysed and the sense of freedom of perspective and immersion that VR does so well is shattered. It’s a violation of the trust you are building up between your game and the player.”
The problem for the team is that if you remove those moments, the illusion of playing as a toddler is lost. Krillbyte is still considering using assets from the game for a smaller-scale demo, but that would involve reworking the mechanics from the ground up to fit VR tech.
“We are humbled and flattered that some of you are still waiting for a full VR-experience of Among the Sleep,” continues the blog post. “But we don’t want to give you a half-assed VR-experience that feels forced and compromised. We’re very sorry to disappoint you.”
