Game Info



Action Packed Magic Duels

Competitive Gameplay

Spectacular Battle Arenas

16 Powerful Spells

Strategic Wand Loadout

Spectator Support

Q&A with NUX Studios













Well, menus are very presence-­breaking and with presence as one of our pillars, we had to find ways to reduce menus to a minimum. The Workshop, where the player find themselves occupied when the game starts, was built from scratch four times before we found the right mood. The user interface where the players build their wands was also changed at the foundation several times before we found the current design. Going forward, we hope to be able to come up with intuitive ways to remove the last few immersion breaking menus in the game but it’s not easy, since such changes can easily be introduced at the expense of usability and clarity.





Part of the fun of Wands is in building your own wand, assigning it various spells. There’s a lot to choose from, some tough decisions to make. What is your favorite Wand to build out?



Ricky:​ One of my favorites is to bring Hail of Death to have a very cheap way to break the opponent’s Armor of the Sun and a fast way to inflict damage during fast gameplay, Devil’s Twins to make the opponent hesitate regarding which character to attack, Stone Demon to be able to summon a creature that attacks my duelist and finally Devil’s Spit to inflict direct damage. It is a very aggressive load­out and I do play other strategies as well. There are just so many to choose from.



Petter: ​There's a bunch of factors playing in when selecting your loadout, perhaps the biggest is who your opponent will be and their loadout. My favorite set of spells are therefore a great combination of counters and projectiles. Chaos Leap, because you don't want to get trapped in Max's Acid Cloud / Petrifying Prison mix. Devil's Twins is great for keeping your opponent confused, while moving into a more favorable position. Even if your opponent calls your bluff, the fact that the Twins also return any projectiles fire at them when they are destroyed makes them devious in a fun way. I love getting in close and personal with Electric Fist, a direct hit with when charged just deals a ton of damage. Lastly I would choose Flaming Phoenix, I just love watching that fiery bird chase after my opponent.



Hannes:​ I often bring Acid Cloud with me into the arena. It's not just that it deals damage over time, you can also use it to block off tiles, thus controlling where you want your opponent to go. In combination with Lightning Strike I can just keep lining up those perfect shots, inflicting massive damage. I love Armor of the Sun and use it to get a millisecond of extra time to finish my intended move and then get out of harm's way. The last slot goes to Devil's Spit, it’s like that old reliable gun that never clicks, incredibly useful when going in for the killing blow.







Robert:​ I love Heavenly Dome, not only because it provides protection on all fronts, but since it also heals a small amount for each block, I don't have to rely on pickups to survive. For offense turn to Blazing Meteor, Stone Demon and Hail of Death. Since Blazing Meteor deals splash damage and Hail of Death is so cheap I don't have to rely on accuracy in my approach. Stone Demon is just incredibly annoying for your opponent, which makes it hilarious for me to use.



Max:​ I never start a game without Shield of Light. The fact that you can bounce your opponent's projectiles back at them kinda makes this a no brainer to me. Secondly I use Devil's Spit, fast offense with low mana cost, it's like the obvious side arm in Wands. The of course there's no better feeling trapping your opponent with Petrifying Prison in combination with Acid Cloud and then slowly watch them die. To top it off I usually throw a couple of fireballs at them as well for good measure.

Do you have plans to expand on Wands? New arenas? Things to come? ​



We are planning to do a lot of things with this game! This is not the time to talk about them but we will work and publish iteratively to add more content and features continuously for a long time to come. It is important for us to get a fanbase that we can talk to and find out what we should focus on first but anyway, we wish that we could say more right now but we’re not supposed to.



Wands is such a great multiplayer experience, are you organizing and online challenges or meet ups that players can join?



Everything regarding competitiveness is extremely important for Wands, so, yes, we are exploring a lot of possible routes for that. Everyone who is interested can follow us on our social platforms for announcements:



Facebook:

Twitter:

Instagram







Apart from the Gear VR game, you have also produced a novel spectator solution. What can we expect to get out that?



Before we wrote the first line of networking code, we made a very strong decision that we should have spectator support from day one during our development process. Having the ability to watch games going on in VR through a powerful spectator solution (split­screen first person, free­flying camera, fixed camera locations etc.) has been very rewarding throughout the project. With all the awesome on­site tournaments we’ve had, we just know how many people will have Wands tournaments in their homes, on VR meetups and parties. What we envision, is that people will also start using the spectator solution to watch top players battle online to learn their strategies and tactics, that online tournaments will be arranged and followed by people. It also makes it possible to broadcast games over platforms like Twitch and Mobcrush, which we think will increase the interest for competitive VR gaming ­ a genre that we believe will grow the next few years.



Thanks for taking the time to meet with us and talk about Wands, we’re excited to see what people think of the game when it launches on the 18th.

We are planning to do a lot of things with this game! This is not the time to talk about them but we will work and publish iteratively to add more content and features continuously for a long time to come. It is important for us to get a fanbase that we can talk to and find out what we should focus on first but anyway, we wish that we could say more right now but we’re not supposed to.Everything regarding competitiveness is extremely important for Wands, so, yes, we are exploring a lot of possible routes for that. Everyone who is interested can follow us on our social platforms for announcements:Facebook: facebook.com/wandsgame Twitter: twitter.com/wandsgame Instagram instagram.com/nuxstudios Before we wrote the first line of networking code, we made a very strong decision that we should have spectator support from day one during our development process. Having the ability to watch games going on in VR through a powerful spectator solution (split­screen first person, free­flying camera, fixed camera locations etc.) has been very rewarding throughout the project. With all the awesome on­site tournaments we’ve had, we just know how many people will have Wands tournaments in their homes, on VR meetups and parties. What we envision, is that people will also start using the spectator solution to watch top players battle online to learn their strategies and tactics, that online tournaments will be arranged and followed by people. It also makes it possible to broadcast games over platforms like Twitch and Mobcrush, which we think will increase the interest for competitive VR gaming ­ a genre that we believe will grow the next few years. One of my favorites is to bring Hail of Death to have a very cheap way to break the opponent’s Armor of the Sun and a fast way to inflict damage during fast gameplay, Devil’s Twins to make the opponent hesitate regarding which character to attack, Stone Demon to be able to summon a creature that attacks my duelist and finally Devil’s Spit to inflict direct damage. It is a very aggressive load­out and I do play other strategies as well. There are just so many to choose from.​There's a bunch of factors playing in when selecting your loadout, perhaps the biggest is who your opponent will be and their loadout. My favorite set of spells are therefore a great combination of counters and projectiles. Chaos Leap, because you don't want to get trapped in Max's Acid Cloud / Petrifying Prison mix. Devil's Twins is great for keeping your opponent confused, while moving into a more favorable position. Even if your opponent calls your bluff, the fact that the Twins also return any projectiles fire at them when they are destroyed makes them devious in a fun way. I love getting in close and personal with Electric Fist, a direct hit with when charged just deals a ton of damage. Lastly I would choose Flaming Phoenix, I just love watching that fiery bird chase after my opponent.​ I often bring Acid Cloud with me into the arena. It's not just that it deals damage over time, you can also use it to block off tiles, thus controlling where you want your opponent to go. In combination with Lightning Strike I can just keep lining up those perfect shots, inflicting massive damage. I love Armor of the Sun and use it to get a millisecond of extra time to finish my intended move and then get out of harm's way. The last slot goes to Devil's Spit, it’s like that old reliable gun that never clicks, incredibly useful when going in for the killing blow.I love Heavenly Dome, not only because it provides protection on all fronts, but since it also heals a small amount for each block, I don't have to rely on pickups to survive. For offense turn to Blazing Meteor, Stone Demon and Hail of Death. Since Blazing Meteor deals splash damage and Hail of Death is so cheap I don't have to rely on accuracy in my approach. Stone Demon is just incredibly annoying for your opponent, which makes it hilarious for me to use.

This week we're taking a look at Wands on Gear VR from developer NUX Studios ! Wands launches this week and to get you started we have a big informative introduction to get you up to speed, along with a Q&A with the developers. We hope you enjoy!Take on the role as a mysterious Wielder in an alternate 1880's London. Equip your wand with a wide variety of spells and battle other Wielders for fame, power and glory in the fantastic realms of The Beyond. Explore new spells and practice your skills in your secret workshop in between battles.Wands is a first person fully mobile VR experience that offers fast paced magic duels against other players online. Progress and unlock new spells by winning battles and choose your own strategic playing style to defeat your opponents. Use the spectator feature to watch others battle in real time.The NUX team is highly passionate about the whole VR genre and love the craftsmanship needed to make really good content. Parts of the team was the content team from Univrses, a tech company with inside­out positional tracking. We merged Univrses content team with more talent from the Animation & VFX industry. We seek to have a good atmosphere in the studio for the team to feel creative and comfortable. We emphasize having an open dialogue, where everybody is encouraged to speak their mind about anything that could make the productions even better. We try to keep an open mind, keep listening and looking at what others in this young industry are coming up with and we try to engage our curiosity at all times.Wands started as a way of demonstrating Univrses’ inside­out positional tracking system. The game project was very ambitious and found a life of its own and after a long time into the production, it became clear that Wands didn’t need Univrses’ tracking and Univrses didn’t need Wands to demonstrate its tech. Also, the focuses of the two products over time became very different. NUX Studios bought the Wands IP from Univrses and took the decision to move towards launch. From this point on, NUX Studios will work with to the community to expand the game in the right direction.Wands is a virtual reality game that lets the player embody a magic wielder in the late 19th century, in a steampunk influenced world where magic is somewhat understood but forbidden by the state as well as the church. As a wielder, the player travels the worlds of what they call ­ the Beyond to duel other wielders in magical battles using a wide variety of spells.The ancient art of magic was forgotten for thousands of years but was rediscovered in the mid 19th century, when old magical relics was being encapsulated and exploited through new inventions, the wands. They player needs to collect relic dust from their duels to acquire new relics, that yields new spells to help strategize ways to beat the duelists.The wands are only powerful enough to wield five relics, one of them yielding the important teleportation spell. The strategy behind selecting the right set of relics is a very important part of the game, as is the tactical resource management of health and mana throughout the duels in the Beyond.Two things led our way ­ presence and the social aspect.When it comes to presence, we are very picky, since without it, VR gets degraded to a large computer screen! Most VR developers try to be, but it’s easy to take a sidestep and miss the ball. For instance, we did some tests with a winter level but the presence was not quite there because… you did not feel the cold. Another example is a moving elevator on one of the levels where the typical say is that any acceleration of the player induces motion sickness and is a no­go. What we did was to accelerate the platform very slowly and perfectly equal over time, creating a perfect sine wave of movement and we have not heard any user so far that had motion sickness from it. Another important aspect of presence is to have visual objects both close to the user and far away (when people see the movie theater in Gear VR, they are impressed by the movie screen but blown away by the seat their sitting in). To solve this, we found that we had to reduce the number of places the player can be so that each of these locations can be embellished with close­up objects. Before this change, we found that players would often find themselves in very uninteresting places with only the floor up­close, reducing the presence very much. We also worked very hard with finding the right balance for the teleportation feeling ­ when you try it, you will find that the movement is fast enough to not induce neautia but slow enough for your brain to understand where you’ve ended up.Thinking about the social aspect, we found that virtual reality was a very solitary experience (especially looking back at end of 2014, when development started) with one person in VR and others getting bored as soon as they stopped laughing about how funny you look with a headset on. We decided to create a duelling game to mitigate parts of this issue, so that you are actually playing with another person, locally or online. The other thing we decided early on was that a game like this needs a spectator mode so we’ve actually had the full spectator support running for over a year, which has been very rewarding. We have had many exciting on­site tournaments where people get extremely engaged and it’s thrilling to watch the games on a TV during the event or watch top players online.Standing on the pillars of presence and social play, we had a very encouraged team of creators that formed the story early on (there’s another not of lore written than what is shown in Wands at this point). When the setting, story and concept art and game mechanics tests were in a decent state, we started the production. As any other modern project, we have been very agile and iterative in our work to be able to test a ton of things and throw away what does not work. We are now very happy with where we ended up, even though there are a million things we look forward to producing in the world of Wands.