Beach Ball Valley News

Beach Ball Valley 1.0 is out, after only 36 build updates since April 2016!

It's been an adventure & we're happy to launch our super unique VR game into the world. Here's a list of the changes we've added since EA launch! Thanks to everyone for joining us in early access! We've had a blast playing & making it & tweaking from your feedback! We're now at a happy, stable, carefully polished release that's so small, it would fit on a CD!

We've tweaked and changed a lot!

• photo based & hand painted graphics
  
• rebuilt and simplified the valley
  
• removed teleporting to make it super simple
  
• added tutorial graphics to show you exactly what's going to happen
  
• made all the beach balls come to you
  
• updated unreal engine versions to include better low latency
  
• balanced mind control around hand instead of head
  
• mind control two balls at once
  
• added a number of beach ball drops to make sure you had enough
  
• super rad beach ball model
  
• ring the bell minigame
  
• goalie minigame
  
• demo keys show up on the pc monitor for easy reference
  
• rain cloud to grow bigger beach balls
  
• hints that show up when you look at your hand
  
• wind in the valley will blow beach balls around
  
• magnus effect curves spinning beach balls flight paths
  
• discord rich presence
  
• keys to start minigames from the keyboard
  
• beach balls have fall and Christmas colors!
  
• pimax & virtually all other headset support
  
• keys to have beach balls jump at the player
  
• 5+ tracker support for foot & more paddles
  
• hidden advanced mode with desktop music controls & old mind control
  
• realistic binaural (hrtf) audio effects
  
• tiny coins you can eat
  
• trading cards
  
• achievements!
  

Have fun!

Prepare your pizza paddles, because Beach Ball Valley is releasing on October 10th, 2020!

It's been a blast working on it and sharing it with everybody. Seeing many smiles & beach balls slammed skyward around the world. We've tweaked and polished many areas of the game, most notably graphics, sound and haptics!

But wait, there's more!

- achievements
- trading cards
- profile badges
- beach balls
- 5 tracker support (possibly up to 11, but we couldn't test that)
- device support for pimax 8KX / index / wmr / rift / cosmos / quest (via oculus link).

You can see the achievements right now, but you cannot unlock these achievements yet, they'll go live when the game releases!

We've fixed a few little bugs due to user feedback! Keep it coming!

- hjk keys start minigames when no other minigames are playing
- strength game is named correctly!

To play those minigames from in VR press the menu button and squish the button of the game you want to play.

After over one year of testing and tinkering, we totally rebuilt the valley to put you right in the middle of the action, with as little confusion to new players as possible! This is the release candidate. Next release is out of early access!

• Balls come to you no matter what!
  
• Minigames are a bit different
  
• Pimax Support
  
• More hotkeys to amuse your friends
  
• New simplified mind control system
  
• Discord integration – so your friends can see how many beach balls you've hit!
  

Want to know everything? Read the manual!

Notes:

• Can be played with index controllers, but they're not modeled nicely into the paddles
  
• Tracker Support might not work due to issues in STEAMVR itself – should resolve presently
  

The original valley will always be available – check it out under the original-valley branch in beta tab when you select game properties.
Here's a handy guide.

We're going to be out of early access soon, but we've made big changes which we will release this month! Here's a bit of back story behind our development!

Beach Ball Valley started out a long long time ago. It started back when HTC was going to Release the vive in December 2015. We had 2 months to learn VR development and develop a game in VR. This game made a lot of people smile and laugh at VR demos in 2015, so we figured we'd build it out for a release with the Vive.

Release schedules changed to April, and we shifted to work on a different game entirely - a castle defense crossbow game where you were being actively attacked by wizards and dodging shrapnel, as your castle was getting destroyed. The team behind that game believed that it needed to look AAA and be way more complex (skill trees, etc) if we were going to release. We didn't release, but instead I turned back to the crowd pleasing beach ball whacking project.

We released it on launch day against all the other VR launch titles & were promptly buried. Had we waited a week or two for people to start looking for content, we may have reached more folks.

We we kept updating the game and tweaking things based on demos we did to friends and game conventions. We watched how people played and kept up the goal of making it accessible and fun. It's been a blast seeing people play it & seeing families where the kids play the game and then play with their parents with the keyboard controls. It's also lots of fun seeing the extra trackers in play - giant paddles on your feet is hilarious.

We've come a long way - figuring out lots about the UX behind VR & how to experience something using only pizza paddles. We've wrapped up all that we've learned and are packaging it into a nicely accessible beach ball paradise.