The first VR video game from the Horw-based start-up Holonautic has been released: Holoception. The seven-strong team has therefore completed the first step on the road to establishing themselves within this nascent industry. The game is still in the test phase and is currently being finalized, although the next game is already in the pipeline. “There are no standards in this area”, comments Roger Küng, one of the founders of Holonautic, in a profile of the company published in Luzerner Zeitung. “The rules are only being written now”.
Roger Küng from Lucerne and Dennys Kuhnert from Lausanne, two graduates from the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), first came into contact with VR back in 2017. They wrote on their website that after this it was difficult for them to focus on anything else other than the opportunities presented by this new medium. It offers them a platform to combine their creativity with the most innovative technology. Their aim is to create what are known as immersive experiences.
Holoception, an action-adventure video game from Holonautic, features an innovation: players have the chance to adopt two perspectives. In addition to the ‘ego perspective’ common in similar games, players can also look over their characters' shoulders.
As Markus Zank, Lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and VR researcher, says in the article, the VR gaming industry harbors huge growth potential. In 2020, the sales volume of 100 million US dollars recorded in the prior year could be trebled. The chances to gain ground within the VR sector are even larger for small, independent games developers such as Holonautic in particular. Innovative ideas such as the change of perspective option in Holoception are therefore not a bad way to kick things off.
