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The climbers on our team added a lot of little nuances that make it all the more enticing for rock climbers.
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While we didn’t intend to make it a simulator, the guys that climb on a regular basis say it feels really accurate to the sensation of climbing, at least as close as you can get in a game. We built it from the ground up as a fun mechanic for VR. Our intention wasn’t to go out and build a rock climbing game. Is it challenging to recreate rock climbing while keeping it fun for the average player? They go on field trips to the gym on a regular basis, at least to investigate certain kinds of handholds and things that will be evident when you play the game. Has the team made any trips out to the gym or crag for “research”? The game is tuned so that you don’t feel a lot of that, but there is a tiny sense of it. Then they get that sense of vertigo because they can see off the edge. They don’t have any issues until they reach a platform. One of the things we found is that people with a fear of heights can climb in the game forever. Were there any interesting things that you didn’t expect? It’s not as abrasive as hitting the ground, which would be incredibly disruptive to the brain. So you just fade to a shade of black when you fall in The Climb. One of those activities is falling without any control. There are certain things you can do that create motion sickness. Virtual reality is a very sensitive mechanic. How do you handle falls in virtual reality? We also have a German/Austrian Alps location, and a desert canyon location. The idea is to get people to feel like they’re climbing in that environment, give them really beautiful views, and offer that sense of nature. We did a hyper-realistic version of it because we wanted to make the gameplay fun for the average consumer, not someone who would actually know the real-life routes. The first setting is loosely based on Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. Then you’ll raise your hand up and pull the trigger to grab something. That’s how it works with the basic game controller, but eventually, we’ll be using the Touch controllers. Pull the trigger and you’ll grab the handhold. The headset is tracked, so wherever you look, that’s where your hand lands. How is the player physically controlling this? All these things combined make really interesting routes and gameplay. If you chalk up, your stamina drains slower. That one gives you a couple seconds on before it falls away. There’s a crumbling hand grip, for example. As you move up into the more difficult routes, we introduce different hand grips. You’re climbing for fun, but you’re looking for speed and accuracy. You can’t hold on for very long because the stamina drains accordingly to make you either reach elsewhere, grab on with two hands, or grab the hold in a more natural position. We introduce challenges, and we also have a stamina meter for your hands. You basically make your way up one hand after the other. You’re given different routes there are different degrees of difficulty and multiple ways to climb those individual routes. You’re represented in the game by two hands. I wouldn’t call it a simulator, but it is certainly a climbing adventure that you can have from your living room. The game started taking shape, and there was no other option than to move forward.
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Then the other climbers in the studio got really excited and started gravitating toward it. The sense of scale you got from climbing up and seeing the environment was amazingly fun, and we knew we had something special. They began experimenting with the verticality and built a prototype. We took some of our best prototyping designers and thought, “Hey, what could we design that would make sense in VR?” Climbing wasn’t our focus, but we have rock climbers on the team. We wanted to create a special experience, designed specifically for this new virtual reality (VR) hardware. How did the idea for The Climb come about? We spoke to executive producer Elijah Freeman about the experience of virtual climbing. Crytek, a major game studio known for state-of-the-art technology, launched The Climb, a game that emulates real rock climbing. Photo: CrytekĪ monumental shift came to the video game world this year with the arrival of long-awaited virtual reality headsets.
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Virtual rock climbing in virtual Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. Get access to everything we publish when you