Today we are excited to announce Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition! The Extended Edition expands on what made the original a great experience for showcasing the power of virtual reality to friends and family, adding new spells, activities, interactive items and secrets! There are also a number of additional improvements that help keep the experience great for new VR users and fun for more experienced ones.
Head on over the main Store Page for a nutshell overview, screenshots and trailer!As we work towards our next product (keep an eye out for upcoming announcements!), we want to keep maintaining Waltz of the Wizard as a fun showcase of the potential of virtual reality - but we can’t commit more resources than we already have on a free version of Waltz. The Extended Edition is a way for us to continue providing proper support and updates to Waltz of the Wizard, while helping fuel development of new products. The original version of Waltz of the Wizard will remain free in the foreseeable future, but content updates will focus on the Extended Edition.
We made Waltz at a time when experiences for roomscale and natural hand interactions were still rare, following our vision of VR’s potential to simulate reality. It features a fully interactive and diverse environment designed for natural interaction, along with intuitively controlled magic that extends reality to produce sensations we could never have in real life. We are so grateful and amazed by the reception since its release and hope for Waltz to continue spreading VR joy across the globe. Our fans and the VR community have been vital throughout the years in motivating us to take chances and keep innovating in VR content design, at times when innovation is risky.
To the many that have asked for ways to support us — thank you! Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition is now one way you can! Our vision for VR is content designed to present a believable illusion of a real-life experience, where presence and immersion are at the heart of design choices. The way towards those experiences is through broad and continued innovation in game design, character- and world interaction systems, production techniques and software development tools. Even now, years after we began this VR journey, we feel the industry has just barely begun tapping into the true potential of VR.
We remain committed to pushing the boundaries of what virtual reality can be and creating experiences that wouldn’t be possible in any other medium. Community support has always been absolutely vital in helping us accomplish that!
New content details and release notes (SPOILERS!)
Four new spells, two modified spells and new magic potion flasks
New cauldron water physics with precise wave simulation
New magical items with quirky and strange effects
New mini-game with funny commentary from Skully the skull
Key features release notes
- 4 new spells and 2 modified (Fireworks, Symphony, Polymorph, Supersize, Miniaturize, Magnetize)
- 3 magic potion flasks (Giant, Little and Vision)
- Achievements!
- Fireball magic can be used in the labyrinth challenge area
- New cauldron water surface with precise, interactive wave dynamics
- Added new magical items to play with in the tower
- Added reach assist so you don’t have to physically reach down to pick things up
- New crossbow mini game with scoring system and Skully commentary
- Improved gargoyle sword mini-game with scoring system and Skully commentary
- New Physical Movement Only mode for novice showcasing
- Index Controller (Knuckles) with finger tracking, optimized natural grabbing and throwing, magical spell controls (finger guns for spells, luftguitar in Symphony spell) and character reactions to finger gestures like pointing, sign of the devil and shaka sign
Optimizations & other changes
- Massive overall optimization and performance improvements
- Improved loading times
- New hand models, animations and shader
- New Smooth Artificial Locomotion option with head orientation
- Strafing controls for Smooth locomotion
- Improvements to Teleport locomotion
- Teleportation orb now used to enter the labyrinth area
- Improved and added various models, textures and assets
- Improved lighting, image effects and reflections
- Numerous other improvements and fixes
