Recent reviews by skewed

If you *just* purchased this game, make sure you return it before the 2hr-playtime-mark to get your money back.
TL;DR is that it's abandonware. See below for a more complete timeline of abandonment. It's a bit long at seven paragraphs, I know, but if you want the full story, here it is::

Development slowed after the final update in October, 2022, and the next major development we got was an announcement in February '23 to let the community know that Blake(the lead/only developer), had slowed development because they were working on a NEW game project. The 'new' project they described sounded like another generic, 5v5, PvP-focused shooter. They were even calling it 'Breach', which caused confusion because the name and description basically described another, already-established, already-on-the-market, PvP-focused VR shooter('Breachers').

The reaction from the users on Discord was mixed, but everyone was mostly concerned with how much this would slow development on Crunch Element-- the game they'd already been supporting. And, why was he abandoning development on the game we were all still playing, especially when there was an outstanding stack of reported bugs to squash from since before the final update?

Blake barely logged onto the discord after that, popping up once or twice a month, with weeks between responses. After the Feb announcement, he made some statements in late-April and then mid-May about working on a long term partnership so he could assemble a team to "finish the game y'all deserve", but that he couldn't make any official announcements about it yet.

That was May 14 of last year. He replied to an @ about an oft-requested-feature on May 16 and then went silent. As far as we know, Blake doesn't read his Discord chat or any of our questions or feedback or bug reports or feature requests. I assumed he was leaving this all for whatever "team" ends up being assembled to take over development of this dead game, but we're coming up on a full year since that announcement, so maybe that deal fell-through? We'll never know because Blake doesn't seem to care enough to give any updates. However, he DOES still have active YouTube and tiktok channels where he talks about how to succeed at being an entrepreneur, so I'm honestly not sure if he's even still working on his 'Breach' project, or if he'll have to assemble a team for that as well. As of Feb, users on the CE Discord have reported that 'Breach' has also been abandoned(inactive discord, website is down, etc).

This 'game' is more like a janky tech-demo of good ideas that were diminished by poor execution. It exists as a cautionary tale for any ambitious developers who have a cool concept but lack the resources carry it off. With all the bugs, performance issues and lack of players, it's not worth the $23 Canadian Dollars they're asking for it. It's barely worth $10, especially when you learn that the only dev working on it has long-since abandoned the project without any explanation except that which we can glean ourselves by reading his interactions with the community that grew around him.

If you visit the official Discord now, it's an unmoderated server full of spam and frustrated people who feel like they were swindled. Feel free to visit and scroll the #announcements and #crunch-chat to all the dates I've listed. Super disappointing.

There are other 'slow-tactical' titles already on the market that are being actively developed(Onward, Tactical Assault VR). They're not perfect, but they ARE active, which makes all the difference.

[Reviewed using a Reverb G2]

My favourite games tend to trend toward co-op and PvE and the ideal is when I can be fully loaded-in and playing a game-- all within 60 seconds of booting it. With Ashen Arrows, it takes less than 30 seconds.

This game is a great time, solo or with friends! It boots quickly, supports drop-in/out multiplayer for groups of three, has a story mode solo campaign, is fully ambidextrous and it has a LOT of character. There's already a sizeable amount of unique skills and enemies spread across multiple multiplayer maps with optional Hardcore modifiers to keep things interesting for veterans while new content is developed.

There's more that I didn't mention, but it's worth checking out the demo and then trying the full game if you find the gameplay mechanics to your liking. I'd definitely say this is worth picking up while it's in Early Access because you'll have plenty to keep you and your friends entertained while more content is released.

Full Disclosure:: I answered an open-call for Beta Testers on the Discord, which is how I received my key for free. I had a lot of fun helping the team playtest/locate/log/recreate/squash bugs in the weeks leading up to release. I had over 8hrs logged on the demo when I applied to playtest, now currently sitting at somewhere over 46hrs on the full game because I enjoy playing it even when I'm not testing, loll. ^_^

Several years, 500+ hours of PvE with friends-- and I'm uninstalling this after October 27, 2022 because they removed the beta-branch that allowed PCVR users to play the final "good" build of the game before it was remade and nerfed to accommodate Quest 1 hardware.

Here's some background on WHY the massive influx of Negative Reviews in October, 2022-- YEARS after this game launched:

The graphics were the first obvious thing to go-- to save on processing polygons, all models/assets were crushed back to N64-era fidelity. With the promise they would eventually be improved as things were optimized for both Quest and PCVR platforms. Okay, sure, I could wait for improvements-- that's reasonable. I mean, I would've preferred they figure that out internally before nerfing my game experience while they experiment as they go, but whatever, this is indie development and there are no maps for these territories.

However, Downpour Interactive have a bit of a history of talking-up various plans for their game and then quietly abandoning or delaying them. Before the 1.8 update, they were already talking about overhauling/updating the AI. This excited me because I played this game EXCLUSIVELY to play PvE(Hunt and Evac, humans vs bots) with my friends-- the PvP didn't interest me and it didn't matter because the PvE was good. A little buggy sometimes, but this is VR and there are always growing pains, so the deficiencies were acceptable and we just assumed they would be improved-upon as a natural part of development.

Except, as they got closer to their 1.8 launch, DPI stopped talking about AI altogether. There was one initial comment in a SITREP about how the AI-overhaul was going to be a large part of 1.8 and then NOTHING for the months after that-- so, was it really so surprising when we booted up 1.8, hopped into a Hunt match and were immediately disappointed in the obvious DOWNGRADE to AI? Bots no longer spawned-in to populate the map on-load-- in order to save processing/resources, the game now spawned them in waves-- the downside to this being that we would clear a building or a section of a map and then have the next wave of bots spawn in and attack us from the places we literally just cleared. We got shot in the back a LOT. In addition to that, they seemed, somehow, DUMBER than the AI in 1.7. You could shoot a bot in a squad and NONE of the other bots would react-- when in the previous version they would scatter, throw smokes/frags in your direction and then hide for a wee bit. Sure, it was predictable-- but it was better than having them just standing there to get shot one-by-one like slightly-mobile target dummies. It felt like DPI didn't even test this new version of their PvE mode. I expect they knew and pushed the update live anyway. Their focus has often been on PvP because that's where the League games happen. I get it-- but that shouldn't mean you ignore the broken PvE mode if you're still including it in the game.

Anyway, this ruined the only gameplay aspects my friends and I cared about. Luckily, after the initial massive outcry and pushback from the PCVR customers who had purchased/played/promoted/FUNDED DEVELOPMENT of the game up to this point, DPI graciously gave us a beta-branch to run the legacy version, 1.7 on. Various Discord communities popped up for players to find each other and assemble to organize games, but you could often pop on and see one or two servers of friends running missions.

Now, in 2022, they've announced in a SITREP that, "...with all the fundamental changes we’re making to our backend it is no longer feasible to keep running the legacy systems that version 1.7 relies on. We’ve made the choice to remove access to it starting October 27th, 2022." (comments closed on all SITREPs, btw. No bad feedback if there's no feedback!)

No explanation yet on what exactly the legacy systems are and why they're considered such a resource-drain if there's still an active PCVR community assembling regularly to enjoy a popular version of the game they paid for and prefer to play. At best, it's a careless oversight decision made by an employee who doesn't know the volatile history of the transition to v1.8. At worst, it's an effort to erase any reference to what the game USED to be in order to keep development Quest-focused. DPI getting acquired by Meta casts them in an very unfavourable light, in this regard.

Anyway, tl;dr is that Downpour Interactive built a good game that was unique among its peers for a time. They're now making questionable decisions and assuming that their playerbase will just "suck it up" and continue playing. I'm filing this review and uninstalling after I lose access to the only version of this game I would spend money on. I'll be looking forward to the other "slow-tactical" style of VR games that have entered development SINCE Onward nerfed itself and the community realized there was going to be a major void to fill.

I've been describing this game to my friends as "Battlefield 2 in VR" as a quick way to get across the basic gameplay loop they'll encounter.

Teams are broken into Squads of the typical Battlefield character tropes: Assault, Engineer, Medic, Scout, with the loadout options you'd expect from each.

There are vehicles. There are mods. The servers fill with bots to ensure consistent gameplay flow, but, depending on the time of day, you can often find anywhere from 7-20 humans in-game(as of Sept. 2022).

This game has been out for a while, but development/support seemed to stall while Raptor Lab focused their team efforts on Gang V. As of 2022, they've hired someone from the community to work exclusively on WD and the quality of the game has increased exponentially-- with more updates planned for the foreseeable future!!

I'm not sure if anyone else is even working on another VR Battlefield clone, but if that concept interests you at ALL, this is the title to try!!

I came here looking for VR-supported Tabletop sandbox action-- and I found it!

I picked up a copy of Tabletop Simulator back in 2015 and was excited by the prospect when they added "VR-Supported" to their list of features in 2016.

Six years later, game-breaking control-support issues and a lack of basic VR movment/UI implementation(or even acknowledgement from the devs that there are issues) have driven me from their platform, looking around to see if anyone has risen to fill the void of "VR Tabletop Gaming" that was teased and then ignored by TTS.

That's why, for me, Tabletop Playground is a Recommended title and TTS isn't. There's dev communication and support and the VR controls are GOOD. Bugs pop up, as they do, but the dev is quick to assess and squash them and it's encouraging to see such interactions on the Discord.

The community isn't as large as what you'll find with TTS, so the mod workshop on mod.io isn't yet as expansive-- but that's the sort of metric that changes with the number of users, so I'm happy to enjoy what's available now and I'm looking forward to more titles in the future because I know I'll actually be able to navigate/interact with them in VR, something that was always a pain-point for TTS.

Tabletop Simulator has, by far, the largest Workshop of games/mods to play. However, if you're looking for a *VR* Tabletop experience, I strongly recommend shopping elsewhere first.

They shoehorned VR into this game back in 2016 and it feels like development in that area has been mostly ignored ever since. Basic VR UI best-practices have not been applied here. You won't find things like smooth locomotion or turning. Moving around the board/playspace or even navigating the menus is a chore, the controls are so unintuitive that you end up distracted from whatever boardgame you were trying to play because you're too busy fighting the sloppy VR controls. So many bugs and it's been six years without even any acknowledgement of them.

I had to go "under-the-hood" with this game to mess with the controller-bindings to even get SOME functionality, and it was STILL such a headache to interact with. The only VR experience in it I can actually "enjoy" is the jigsaw puzzle-- because that's literally just sitting in one spot while dragging/dropping pieces on the board without having to do anything more-involved, like rolling dice or something. Good luck to you if you'd like to zoom around the board a little to get a different angle or a closer look at a piece-- it'll be at least a minute of awkward teleporting/scaling up-and-down while trying to just rotate your view, etc.

The only thing TTS has going for it over any other titles(like "Tabletop Playground", etc) is the expansive workshop of mods/games supplied by the community. Take that user-submitted content away and you've got a game platform that has been able to rest on its laurels because, for a long time, they were the ONLY game platform in town. As soon as the community discovers other, more user-friendly platforms with VR support that actually works straight out-of-the-box, I wouldn't be surprised to see users abandoning TTS.

TL;DR, if you're looking for a VR-capable/supported Tabletop-genre game: This isn't it. Playing it in VR is like time-travelling to 2016 when VR controller-support was often bugged/broken/required heavy-lifting from YOU to implement. Maybe they'll address the issues some day, but they've made no indication that they will. As far as I can tell, they haven't even acknowledged anything is broken.