"Sparkling Spirit Realm" was officially launched this week. As the first work of PICO Yifang Studio, many players have high hopes for it. Even as a light user of VR audio games, after a short experience, I also found some differences between Immortal Realm and the current popular Beat Saber. The following are some of my views after a brief experience, for sharing and exchange only.
Let me talk about the feeling first. The overall completion and experience can be scored as 7 points. The need for leg tracking is a bit far-fetched. For beginners, more practice is needed to adapt. I think a separate dance mode can be launched. Of course, the self-made map also provides flexible gameplay, and there is still a lot of imagination in the follow-up.
Like the logic of Beat Saber, suitable tracks + arrangements are the core of the audio game experience. At present, there is no original track in "Sparkling Spiritual Realm", and almost all the first tracks are of a more obvious rhythm type, and there are not many Chinese songs.
As a work of PICO, "Spirit of Light" is also the forerunner of the subscription model on the PICO platform, and is also exploring for such a charging model. You can see that the subscription fee plan of "Super Burning Moment" has not been announced for a long time, and it has been playing for free. In fact, Meta has also expressed its point of view before. Now a trend of Quest users is to prefer free apps, so the model of free + in-app purchase/subscription may become more common in the future.
Features/Advantages:
scenes and tracks
Hit quality is good. The completion and quality of audio games on several domestic platforms are higher than those of the previous domestic platforms, mainly reflected in the block arrangement and rhythm control of official tracks;
Scenes, lightsabers can be selected individually . There are currently three scenes and ten "light saber" models, combined with the delicate vibration of the handle (PICO 4 handle), the feel is in place.
Tracks offer different percussion sounds . For example, the chivalrous style embodied in "Xiao" is matched with the sound effects of fencing, which has a good sense of immersion. In my impression, Beat Saber does not have such a rich percussion sound effect.
Lead dancer silhouette . Some tracks add the silhouette of the lead dancer in front of the vision (the position of the white circle in the picture above). This is a very interesting starting point. I think that "Spiritual Rhythm" is to highlight the attributes of dance first, and the purpose is to let you experience it while striking. Dance for fun.
Interaction and gameplay
The hands and feet are used together to enrich the gameplay . Adding a leg tracker and using both hands and feet can theoretically achieve higher-level gameplay. There are even some official "dance"-themed tracks, emphasizing the attributes of dance movements.
Block/note design
- The hand blocks are arranged in a circle as the center, and your hands swing around when hitting. Most of Beat Sbaer's Blocks are on the same level. I think this design is to deliberately guide the user to increase the range of motion on the hand. For example, it is really great to realize the combo movement through a circle, but most of the movements can be completed only by turning the wrist;
- The hand Block is divided into 10 directions with the circle as the center, which is more distributed than the 8 directions of Beat Saber. Many continuous Block movements of Beat Saber are designed in opposite directions, while the Shining Rhythm can do a lot of asymmetrical designs, but in In practice, I found that it will still be maintained;
- The hand Block has no hitting direction, which means that it can be hit from any direction, as long as it touches the Block, it will not miss. Compared with most blocks in Beat Saber that give a clear hitting direction, the fault tolerance rate will be higher. That is to say, the accuracy of hitting is even less important. This is also one of the factors to expand the dance mode, because the flash of rhyme does not seem to focus on precise strikes.
Generally speaking, the difficulty of the hands is reduced, and the difficulty of the feet is increased. It is easy to be in a hurry, so the peak value of the comprehensive difficulty coefficient is higher.
Rich support for tools
When it goes online, it provides a custom score function. This tool is online editing, and the overall is relatively smooth. It supports the customization of blocks and scenes, which provides a lot of fun for high-level gameplay. At the same time, there is also a live broadcast tool that supports MRC recording.
More reliable continuous update capability
The experience of the game depends on the continuous optimization and improvement in the follow-up. I think this is also the advantage of "Sparkling Spiritual Realm" over third-party apps. After all, PICO developed it alone, so there is no need to worry about follow-up support. It is currently known that the follow-up plan of "Shining Rhyme" will add 10 new tracks/props every month.
To be optimized/deficient:
Higher barriers to experience
Must have leg tracker hardware . If you don't have it, you can't play it. At present, there seems to be no official plan to open the tracker-free mode.
There is no direct free trial . Other VR audio games do not require additional hardware and can be experienced directly. If you don’t like it, you can get a refund directly (this is how many players try new VR games). However, "Spirit of Rhythm" must first purchase the leg tracker, and the leg tracker only supports this game now, so the result is that the purchase of the leg tracker is clearly aimed at "Spirit of Rhythm", so Users will have higher expectations of you, and their deficiencies will also be magnified. Hope to push the third-party App as soon as possible to increase the adaptation work.
Increase user wearing steps
For example, I can put on the head-mounted display and pick up the handle in a few seconds, but wearing a leg tracker increases the steps, which may need to be adapted to old VR users who do not have this habit, but it is true for new VR players. A habit-forming process has both advantages and disadvantages.
It even provides an automatic pedaling mode
I thought it would be a feature to add foot tracking, but considering that beginners tend to have inconsistent hands and feet, I had to add automatic pedaling mode, that is, I can play without a leg tracker. So what is the significance of the leg tracker?
The leg action doesn't seem to be great . In particular, I have seen the official trailer video, which is played in the form of "dancing", but after watching the videos of many netizens, I found that most people's feet are slightly lifted, or only the heels are touched, so that the sensor detects that there is something wrong. This action is enough, the more skilled the player is, the more it will be like this. Everyone will not deliberately add too many movements to the legs, instead of the big dance moves like in the promotional video.
scene design
Scenes and tracks are not strongly associated . At present, the design of the three scenes is too heavy, and only three scenes are provided to adapt to all tracks. For example, scenes with Chinese style are very suitable for Chinese style tracks. It is easy for users to choose the style and scene mismatch. .
Too many visual elements . There are too many visual elements and it looks a bit too full. I think it can be appropriately streamlined, especially the background can be optimized and different scenes can be blended for different tracks.
Confusing foot movements
Due to the increased leg movements, there are mainly two types of legs: short step and long step. Although they are also distinguished by red and blue, and marked with "L" and "R", it is still easy to step on the legs when I experience them. I think it is more obvious that novices are prone to confusion on their feet. One is that the experience time is short and they are not proficient enough. The other factor is that the color distinction on the legs is not obvious. It is not like when you can see the red and blue of your hands when you hit the hands. "Lightsaber" always reminds the user through the color of the lightsaber in the field of vision, and the leg movements are often outside the field of vision, which makes me easily confused in the game, and the human eye judges directly by the "color seen".
The above are just my feelings after a short experience, for sharing and communication only. Generally speaking, it is still not possible to use the experience of previous audio games to apply to Shining Rhythm. Previously, most of the audio games in China were imitating Beat Saber, while Shining Rhythm has made some differentiated gameplay, which is worthy of encouragement and exploration. I think it would be possible to add a purely dance mode, a whole "just dance" subsection in Astralia [laughs].