I walk out of a cave into daylight and see a vast, colorful world of cascading mountains. The world around me feels vast and serene. As I look up, birds fly over my head.
I'm inside "Land's End," a beautiful virtual reality game for the $99 Gear VR headset. Saying I'm "inside" a game may seem a little weird, but it's the most apt way to describe VR.
"Land's End," which was made in a partnership with the design studio Ustwo (the same company that made "Monument Valley") and Facebook-owned Oculus, arrives at the perfect moment in time. VR is starting to go mainstream with the rising popularity of Google Cardboard and the Gear VR, and more people than ever are willing to strap headsets on their face to experience it for themselves.
"Land's End" co-designer Ken Wong hopes he's made "the game that early adopters use to show VR to the non-believers," Wong told Tech Insider in an interview.
It's a fitting wish given that Wong was a self-admitted non-believer in VR prior to working on "Land's End." While creating the artistic vision for the game, he became a champion of VR as not just an immersive way to play games, but a powerful storytelling medium.
"We didn't realize how much we didn't know about VR," Wong says. "We had to really come up with all these solutions from scratch because no one's really established how to make a good experience in VR."
Aesthetically, "Land's End" is gorgeous. Wong describes it as a "spiritual cousin" to his team's hit "Monument Valley." The comparison is an obvious one to make, but it's how you interact with "Land's End" that makes it truly unique.
In the game, there are no physical controls. You maneuver by focusing on "look points" throughout your environment. Simply stare and move.
There are puzzles that require you to move objects and connect patterns with your mind. It's difficult to describe in words, but the result is an effect completely different from anything you could experience in non-VR gaming. You feel telepathic.
After holding initial talks with Oculus last June to make a game, Wong expected development to take about three months. It ended up taking much longer, and the game's five levels were just recently made available on the Gear VR's Oculus Store at the end of October.
"What we thought we could bring to the table was our experience in UX [user interface] design," Wong explains. While co-designer Peter Pashley put together the gameplay mechanics and flow of the levels, Wong focused on taking what made "Monument Valley" so successful (an indie, paid iPhone game making millions is practically unheard of these days) and translate that to VR.
"Where Monument Valley was customized for the tablet, we thought we could design something that was specific to VR, especially mobile VR," he says.
There's no text or voice in "Monument Valley," which Wong says was a deliberate decision to make "the architecture and your interactions with it tell the story." Ustwo wanted to do the same thing with "Land's End," but instead of architecture as the main storytelling device, they chose the 360-degree landscape.
Wong describes perceived space — the player has a sense of where he is in space relative to other objects — as the unique aspect of designing for VR.
"We thought a lot about changing the space around the player," he says. Whether it be walking around cliffs, looking up at a puzzle, or flying through the air, everything had to feel as close to moving through real space as possible.
"We're actually constructing a tour, if you will," Wong says. "Something a bit like a fairground ride or like a hike. It's a very different type of storytelling."
There's also a puzzle element to "Land's End" that Wong says is intended to appeal to even the most casual of gamers.
"If you're making games that everybody can enjoy, then blending puzzles and art is really good," he explains. "You're stimulating both the part of your brain that wants beautiful experiences and the part of your brain that wants to feel active and have some sense of achievement."
While the game was in development, the Ustwo team would take headsets to parties with friends and find that everyone wanted to play.
"Even though VR tends to be very isolating, it turns out that there is a social aspect to it, which is that it's so new and novel that you want to show it to your friends," he says.
Wong believes that the Gear VR, which "Land's End" is available exclusively on for the foreseeable future, is "the most democratic way to introduce VR to a wide audience."
Although the Gear VR requires Samsung's newest and most expensive smartphones, the headset itself is extremely portable and only costs $99. By contrast, the upcoming Oculus Rift headset will require a dedicated PC — a combination that is expected to cost at least $1,500.
Google Cardboard (which is literally made of cardboard) is a cheaper and even more accessible headset, but it lacks the Gear VR's hardware and Oculus software, which is designed to work tightly with Android phones.
So when does VR reach its tipping point? The Gear VR is the first mainstream headset to hit the market, but it's restricted to Samsung's newest phones ("Land's End" only works on the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, and Note 5). Google Cardboard supports the iPhone and many other Android phones, but the experiences on that platform are nowhere near as impressive as the Gear VR.
Wong is pretty sure that Apple "is cooking up something" in the VR department, but has no idea what it will be. But for now, he's content with "Land's End" on the Gear VR. Millions of people probably won't play it, but those that do may become believers in VR too.
