Skip to main content

The biggest news from the Upload VR Showcase: Summer Edition

The Upload VR Showcase: Summer Edition 2020 showed off some games that allow for deep storytelling and others that touched on social issues.

The Tuesday event featured a bevy of new VR games and experiences, including some titles from well-known properties like The Walking Dead, as well as a fantasy game from Jon Favreau. The showcase also highlighted games from two African American developers, Derek Ham and Micah Jackson.

Recommended Videos

I Am A Man is set in the late 1960s, during the civil rights movement. The game covers the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, as well as the circumstances leading up to the assassination of  Martin Luther King Jr.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

“There’s something powerful about being able to put on a headset and go back years, years ago,” Ham said during the showcase. “It allows one to be reflective.” The game is available on the Oculus Rift.

Where Angels Meet, which is also available on the Oculus Rift, follows the story of Marcus, a young man navigating his way through harsh realities. Jackson said he created the game to “really shed some light on what it’s like to grow up as a young African American man in the U.S.”

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, a zombie fighting game based on the comic book and not related to the Telltale Games title, announced a new iteration called The Meat Grinder Update.  The Oculus Quest version of the original game is due out later this year, and the update will come to PC VR and PSVR in July.

Norman Reedus, who plays Daryl Dixon on the show, teased a different new game in the franchise called The Walking Dead Onslaught.

While The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is based on the comic book, the new title is a new story set in the world of the AMC TV series athat’s features performances from the cast. There’s no release date yet, but it will be available on the PC VR and PSVR.

Jon Favreau said he wanted his fantasy game Gnomes & Goblins, which is coming soon, to be a completely immersive experience.

Other titles include a VR puzzle game about hell called Trial by Teng, a neon ninja swordplay title called LONN, a ghost-killing game reminiscent of Luigi’s Mansion called Patrol, and a space puzzle physics game called Gravity Lab.

Jon Silman
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Every summer 2023 gaming showcase: full schedule of live streams
Detective Pikachu and a Slowpoke wearing a cowboy hat.

Summer is one of the most exciting times to be a gamer, as it's when most video game developers and publishers tease what's coming next. For years, this was all centered around E3, but since that show went away during the COVID-19 pandemic, publishers have switched things up and held a variety of reveal-focused live-stream events throughout the entire season. This year has been no different, especially with E3 2023 is canceled.

On May 24, Sony kicked things off with a PlayStation Showcase that revealed games like a Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater remake and that Bungie is reviving the Marathon series. In June, though, the number of showcases ramped up. Now, things are winding down with new Tokyo Game Show-related events, as well as a second Nintendo Direct. It can be a lot to keep track of, but we're here to help. This is every important, announcement-filled video game live stream that has taken place throughout summer 2023.
PlayStation Showcase: May 24

Read more
Escape Academy: The Complete Edition solves the sleeper hit’s biggest puzzle
A plaza in Escape Academy.

Last year, first-time developer Coin Crew Games made an unexpected splash with its debut Escape Academy. The escape room puzzler became a modest summer hit thanks to a day one release on Xbox Game Pass and strong recommendations from media outlets like Kinda Funny Games. The enthusiasm came with some common critiques, though. In my own review last year, I noted that the game’s short runtime left me wanting more.

One year later, nearly all of those problems have been rectified thanks to some unexpectedly meaty post-launch support. Now, players can get a much fuller experience in Escape Academy: The Complete Edition, which launches today on Nintendo Switch. Ahead of the release, I spoke to Coin Crew Games about the game’s unusual launch cycle and how it was able to solve the biggest problems players had with the base experience. As a result, the Complete Edition is the best way to enjoy one of last year’s best hidden gems.
Gathering feedback
Before Escape Academy, Coin Crew Games was making real-life escape rooms and arcade machines. When the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily shut those experiences down, the team decided to use their expertise to make a true escape room video game. That would prove to be a surprisingly ambitious task according to Mike Salyh, Coin Crew co-founder

Read more
I rated this summer’s biggest gaming showcases. This was the best one
An astronaut stands on the moon in Starfield.

Over the past month, it's been nice to see the game industry truly get back into the swing of things with its midyear showcase. While there was no E3 this year (and it doesn't look like there will be ones in the future), the likes of Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, Ubisoft, and Geoff Keighley all still held exciting live streams of their own that were filled with surprising announcements and entertaining moments. With the season's biggest gaming showcases seemingly over, I began to ask myself which one I enjoyed most. To figure out what makes an event like this work for me, I devised a rating system built on my own metrics and gave each one a grade.

I considered a variety of factors while looking at these showcases. The quality of the announcements is obviously very important, but so is the pacing of the stream and the relevancy of what's shown. I assigned each showcase a letter grade based on that, with some notes on what worked and what didn't. Here's where each show landed for me.
PlayStation Showcase

Read more