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Vanishing Realms: The Sundered Rift - long awaited (giant) expansion has arrived!

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
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Vanishing Realms has received many great reviews, and it's got a 9/10 average rating on Steam based on more than 2,000 ratings. The game supports Rift, Index and Vive hmds. Although the Steam rating system is different from the one used in the Oculus Store, it still implies that many persons love the game, also witnesses by the many positive reviews. Vanishing Realms is a rather small game, but especially the fighting mechanics have received a lot of praise, like shown in this early trailer:

https://youtu.be/ORmR5liu1pk

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Delayed more than 2 years, the large expansion The Sundered Rift has just arrived. The expansion opens after finishing the original game's 2 chapters, thus after completing chapter 2 (Rites of Steel), now you'll get the option to start chapter 3. Here're some notes from the dev describing the expansion:

Complete the epic adventure! Out now, the all-new expansion and finale, Vanishing Realms: The Sundered Rift. Explore new lands, master new weapons, assemble a relic of mighty arcane power and battle a host of new foes while you forge a hero's path to the heart of The Sundered Rift.

Dark times are upon these lands, for a Servant of the Black Pit has stolen from the Dragon Guardians the secret of their arcane fire. With such power, this Winged Corruptor has driven out the last of the Guardians, and unleashed a horde of minions upon once peaceful Realms. Unfettered, they sow chaos from tree to tower, from sacred grove to deepest cavern. Only one Dragon remains, waiting in silent vigil just beyond evil's reach. For the bright Blue Egg you carry, she keeps a tireless watch.

Once again the Ancient Gods summon you. Take up sword and shield, axe and spear, and defend the last of the Vanishing Realms!

What's Included

Vanishing Realms: The Sundered Rift is a full-length Expansion to the base game Vanishing Realms: Rite Of Steel. 

  • Six distinct new realms, each beautifully hand-crafted for VR. Watch from a sheltered cove as the the moon rises over the sea, surrounded by birdsong discover deep forest groves by dawn, see clouds in twilight moving over mountains, walk upon the bleached bones of a colossus onward to windswept canyons and the deadly desert beyond, in a gathering storm ascend a thousand stairs leading to the heart of a dying peak, traverse a bottomless crevasse, discover secret caves, waterfalls, ruins, wander a mist-enshrouded swamp, loot treacherous dungeons and more.
  • New weapons to master, including an enchanted throwing hammer, deadly throwing axes, war-spears, bashing shields, shields to ward off blade, arrowhead or flame, quick-firing elven bows, hard hitting long-range bows, new two-handed weapons and an epic relic of such power...well...it Shall Not Here Be Named. 
  • 10 new monsters and diabolical automata with unique combat mechanics.
  • Challenge yourself with over 15 new achievements.
  • Experience the thrill of face-to-face melee combat, explore, climb, mine, unravel the clues within poetic riddles, detect and defeat traps, solve puzzles, ride mystic levitating stones, follow spirit animals to healing groves and ancient gateways, all in a regenerating human-scale VR world.

Developer's Note

As a kid growing up in the 80's, writing games on an Apple II computer and playing D&D with friends, building Vanishing Realms has been a somewhat nostalgic experience. Back in those days, we read everything by Howard, Tolkien, Pratchett, Anthony, Leiber. We spent rainy Saturdays rolling 20-sided dice and letting our imaginations transport us of out a suburban basement onto epic battlefields, to ancient cities and dark underworlds. For atmosphere and inspiration, we'd often have the electronic music of pioneers like Synergy, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis playing in the background. Reminiscent of those times, I've written a somewhat 80's inspired sound track for this expansion. When I first encountered VR in 2015, I was captured by the possibility that the adventures we once experienced in shared imagination might actually be realizable in some tangible form. I'm still inspired by that idea today. I hope you will enjoy playing these new chapters of Vanishing Realms as much as I've enjoyed building them!

Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1082250/Vanishing_Realms_The_Sundered_Rift/ 

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Currently the expansion is on promotion sale (-20%). Maybe the game could be called "one way Skyrim VR Mini", lol - but you don't get the same amount of freedom as in Skyrim VR, but you do get great weapons and get to battle great enemies. One advantage of the game its very low system requirements - you should be able to play this game perfectly on all VR compatible rigs. And if you've got a GTX 1070 or faster, you can crank up super sampling to achieve the best possible image quality. Using such video cards SteamVR can easily be set to 150% or higher. I used SteamVR ss 200% and the Valve Index, still fps were solid 90 with extremely few dips below. Although finger tracking isn't supported, the Knuckles has been supported probaby as perfectly as possible in this game. And Touch works perfectly too. This game has several dark areas, and has been originally designed for OLED hmds, so although Rift CV1 can't match the Index res, CV1 may provide the best image quality in the very dark dungeons. The game has full locomotion using one thumb stick, the other thumb stick is used for rotation (no smooth rotation though), so controls are basically great - would have been nice with smooth rotation though.

The original game also received a somewhat massive upgrade:

New Expansion Just Released

23 AUG @ 9:51PM - INDIMO
I'm extremely happy to announce the launch of the new Expansion to Vanishing Realms! 

[...]

The update also includes the following changes in the base game:

  • Outdoor Detail Upgrades. The wild/outdoor areas of ch1 and ch2 have been updated to include a higher level of detail. Ground which previously showed 'painted' grass now contains tall, 3d grass. Shadow stability and distance has been improved. Most trees maintain higher resolution at greater distance and no longer 'pop' to a different level of detail.
  • Index Controller Improvements. Index controllers should be better recognized when activated after the game starts. 
  • Item Drops. It's no longer possible to drop certain critical items, such as special keys or, for instance, the last mining pick in player inventory.
  • Item Grab Improvements. There are two ways to grab items, you can click outside the item, then 'sweep' through it, or you can click within the item. This update improves the second case - all items should now respond to either method. 
  • The price of the Dragon Fire wand has been lowered so players who spent gold on the Giant's Bane weapon can more easily afford it.
  • Monster AI. Many changes to improve the agility of monster movement, especially in outdoor areas.
Thus if you've never experienced Vanishing Realms before, now may be the time - the game has never looked this good before, especially the grass looks awesome and doesn't seem to lower performance (much). 

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Get the original game here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/322770/Vanishing_Realms/
Get the expansion here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1082250/Vanishing_Realms_The_Sundered_Rift/

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Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

5 REPLIES 5

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
The further I go into the expansion the less it seems to become "one way Skyrim VR Mini". It still is Skyrim VR Mini, lol - but the game opens up and does give you several choices (=more freedom) later on. 
I was amazed playing the game today - especially thinking that only one person made this game, I'm starting to understand why he used "thousands of hours" to make this game. You can feel that this game was made with the greatest passion for RPGs - the music and the world design are second to none, even if the textures and poly levels could be better - but then you get the ability to use SteamVR super sampling 200% and still get solid 90 fps, maybe not a bad trade...

It's one of those rare game where I just like to be present in the world - but you can get that feeling in Skyrim too, although Vanishing Realms feels like truly made for VR (even with no real hands and fingers). 

Also the expansion is much better than the first 2 chapters. Today I picked up wooden planks to make a small bridge, can you do that in Skyrim? And the new monsters have many more polygons - some are really hard, I even died once today and started doubting my top-of-the-line-weapons were good enough - and these fights get me sweating, doesn't happen often in other games, lol. Right now I can't think of any other VR game I'd rather play - I even stopped playing Westworld, and never got started finishing Arizona Sunshine this evening, sigh 😉


Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Morgrum
Expert Trustee
Crap so many games so little time!
WAAAGH!

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
Not sure if this dude was high before playing Sundered Rift, or if the game had that effect on him 😉 (He actually just plays the intro - video stops when he exits the castle and enters the open mountain-like area, which is kinda the real start of the game.)

https://youtu.be/7o3Vs_HMX_0

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

MowTin
Expert Trustee

Morgrum said:

Crap so many games so little time!



Yeah, I never understand people who complain that there are not enough games. I have too many games and not enough time. 

I'm interested in this game. I hope it's better than Mage's Tale. Of course, I'm waiting for Asgard's Wrath. 
i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

MowTin said:


Morgrum said:

Crap so many games so little time!



Yeah, I never understand people who complain that there are not enough games. I have too many games and not enough time. 

I'm interested in this game. I hope it's better than Mage's Tale. Of course, I'm waiting for Asgard's Wrath. 


Graphics are worse than Mage's Tale, but the gameplay feels much better, and the content is made by a person who really loves the old Dungeons and Dragons games (at least there're a lot of dungeons - and some dragons - in the game). With the new chapters the world is much bigger and you've got a lot more freedom. I still prefer to think of this game as Skyrim Mini, it probably reminds me more of Karnage Chronicles than Mage's Tale...

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"