One of the most widely played games on the face of the planet is your only means of survival in RPS Island. Created by ISVR, it took third place in this year’s 3D Jam VR Track for addictive gameplay and solid interaction design. Faced with a never-ending onslaught of enemies on a tropical island, you must defeat them by signalling their weakness. The demo is available free for download on our Developer Gallery.

ISVR is an indie studio based in Beijing, formed last year to focus on VR game development. RPS Island was originally inspired by games between ISVR founder Yi Zhang and his five-year-old daughter. “We have lot of fun with it, so it came into my mind when we decided to join the 3D Jam. We designed lots of details for characters, background story, etc. and we hope players could have a new experience with RPS.”

Yi has worked as a game artist and programmer since 2004, producing PC, web, and mobile games. We asked him about his preferred RPS strategy, and while there is random chance involved, he points out that it’s often possible to outthink human opponents.

“There are some Chinese professors who reported on social cycling and conditional responses in rock-paper-scissors. The result is there are a few more people who choose ‘rock’ than others, and if the player didn’t lose in this round (won or tied), in the next round there is a higher possibility he will choose the same.”

Despite building an award-winning game around rock-paper-scissors, it seems like ISVR has terrible luck in the real world – at a recent developer meetup where the game was played, they all lost in the first round. “And later people asked me what VR game we did. I told them RPS Island…”

“My daughter also outthinks me, and she enjoys defeating me a lot.”