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.
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.
“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.
