We Are One : Review
Introduction
"We Are One" is currently still in active development but its demo is in the Oculus store and features many fully working levels and a leaderboard. The game is a turn-taking strategy game. They also have a Discord channel that tracks the development process and provides a backchannel for followers to come up with their own ideas.
The game is set in an industrial landscape where robotic machines have somehow taken over. We play a mercenary in support of mother nature, using organic plants and fruits to combat the machines. In each challenge level, the player records a sequence of motions from one location, then goes to another location and records another set of motions that happen at the same time as the first, the idea being that you then act as a teammate for yourself. For example, the first instance of the player could take fruit-bombs out of a container and throw them one by one to the second position the other version of that player will be. Then, the player will hop into the second position, catch the bombs, load them into a gun and shoot them at the machines (thus destroying them).
The time-travel element takes a while to get used to, but the earlier challenges allow plenty of time for experimenting with it before really testing the players grasp of what they can do with it in later levels. All based on the same core principle of asynchronous teamwork with yourself, the subsequent levels add further challenges to overcome; robots that charge at you, blockades between you and your teammates, and coordinating larger teams. In some later levels, you have to play the role of 6 different people, having to record them in the right order and time the moves of each just right. The variety of levels keeps the game quite addictive, where the player is ever-curious about the next set of challenges.
Good Use of VR
For me this app is a great example of using the special affordances of VR in ways that wouldn't work as well in 2D video games or even real life. It blends strategy with 3D physical motion and working with the concept of time-travel. The player always has a fixed position (having grown out of the ground there) but has to duck, look around and take advantage of the three-dimensionality of the game. The time-travel element could work just as well in other media, but in this immersive environment there’s an additional level of fascination in watching your own avatar in three dimensions that you don’t necessarily get from watching yourself on video. While the avatar doesn’t attempt to look anything like a human, its motions are quite identifiably yours.
The aesthetic of this game is also quite fascinating. Most of the elements of the game are depicted in a cartoony outline look with bold outlines and black-line shading and brush-like color. This style is particularly unique in the special effect animations, such as when the gun fires or objects collide. The use of clear color pallet also helps distinguish the brightly colored items of focus from the drab mostly black & white background, which not only adds to the theme but also helps guide the players eye to the more salient parts. This is particularly useful in VR, where the player has 360 degrees within which to find their focus.
Target Users
Because this game straddles between genres of turn-taking strategy games and shoot-em-ups, I think this has a wide target audience. It’s currently on Beta but having the honor of being in the Oculus store and on Steam means it is already collecting up a large fan-base of followers. They also actively promote their users to connect with them on Discord, where users can track updates and suggest ideas for features and levels.
The programmers have also given special access to new experimental levels to their Discord group. This form of pre-sales marketing and user testing is clearly a great way to prepare for an official launch, especially for something that is so experimental and doesn’t sit quite so well into a singular game type.
The Pros...
What stands out the most is its use of unique asynchronous turn-taking. The fascination and challenge of working with other instances of yourself just doesn’t get old.
There is often not just one way to solve a level, so this allows for a fair amount of creative problem-solving on behalf of the user. You can also re-do a level, and I found that sometimes I would re-do a level to try out a different approach that may go smoother or quicker.
The game also finds a good balance between easy-going strategy and having adrenaline-pumping time pressure. In some later levels you have just 30 seconds to record all of your moves for each player, which is sometimes quite tight, and getting those moves synchronized with those of the others adds another level of time pressure.
The unique graphics really stand out too, and while its not the first game to use this cartoonesque style, it really adds to the experience in an immersive experience becoming almost magical.
...and the Cons
Having praised the graphics above, I should also point out that the drab environment -a key theme to the game – seems to wear on you after a while. Maybe some of this could be alleviated by some intermittent levels in a different sort of environment, or maybe by bringing just a little more life to the background environments with movement.
I also think the organic humanoid representations of ourselves could be improved, especially as some of the fascination is viewing ourselves in them. While I don’t think we need to represent a realistic-looking human, I think the head and facial features should be a little less alien-like. It would be interesting if the user could create or choose an avatar head close to IRL at the start of the game which could be converted to an organic avatar in the game.
Finally, I think later levels could do with introducing a greater variety of movements, particularly ones that take advantage of the asynchrony. While the challenges themselves add variety, the simple abilities throwing/catching/firing gets a little limited after a while. For example, creative use of mirrors, bouncing, liquid effects, could expand the range of interesting interactions while keeping to the theme.
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