At the moment, Private Eye is already comparable to something like Asunder: Earthbound, and certainly has the potential to eclipse that title. It certainly needs a few more coats of polish but there seems to be a strong foundation of an involving, engaging game here. Private Eye is well worth paying close attention to.

The 2013 VR Game Jam turned out some great VR concepts. One of my favourites was Private Eye, which cast you as a wheelchair-bound investigator, spying on the neighbourhood through a set of binoculars.

This brought a new dimension to the hidden object game – the binoculars giving you an ability to zoom and focus your gaze in a way that felt natural and engaging. While the story of that demo was held together with only the loosest of threads, the developers’ ambition for a full version of Private Eye is quite the opposite; it aims to tell an immersive, cinematic narrative – in which the binoculars of the original Game Jam build are just one component. As such, in this new early demo of the full experience showcases this new focus on story and environmental interaction, over re-emphasising what the Jam demo already proved works.

A big part of the game looks like it will involve inspecting objects and solving puzzles in order to unlock the protagonist’s memories – which are themselves playable scenes, that will begin to piece together the answer to a mystery. Not only is has our protagonist lost crucial memories but he has also lost the use of his legs. The central conceit of Private Eye seems to be that the story plays out with your character seated at all times. The scenes involve your protagonist in places like a hospital bed, a wheelchair or a car. They don’t stick out too much as contrivances because of how central they are to the story and the way in which it’s delivered. Indeed, it is nice to see a developer embrace and accept the current limits of the medium – and try to deliver the best narrative they can within them – rather than constantly brush up against those limits.

Interaction with the environment is currently handled with a gamepad. You use left or right trigger to pick up an object with that arm and the corresponding analogue stick to interact with that object in various context-sensitive ways – for example clicking in the stick to switch on a flashlight, or swiping left to turn the page in a notebook. Some of the interactions in the demo I played did need some tweaking – for example rolling down a car window required far too many revolutions of the L-stick to make the window move. The design and UI is definitely taking cues from Quantic Dream– which may split opinion, but personally I find them to be quite engaging for this kind of interactive fiction. The controls are crying out to be adapted for a hand-tracking motion controller, and it would be a great shame if this support were overlooked.

The game is still running in Unity, so it doesn’t look quite as good as some other demos; however the care and attention to detail is still quite palpable. There are nice touches throughout, even down to the title screen, where your eyes emit beams of light at that intentionally lag slightly as you move your head. The main character’s office is nicely detailed and the first memory of before the accident that you recover is atmospheric enough to build appropriate tension. The character models are quite simple and no attempt is made to lip-sync dialogue, but their body motion is actually rather good – quite expressive and natural. It is also worth mentioning that the voice acting is certainly strong enough to draw you into the story – I’d love to see more direct character interaction in the final release.

The version of Private Eye that I played is unfortunately only available for the DK1 for now. The game will definitely benefit from the DK2’s screen resolution as there are a few parts where it would be beneficial to be able to more easily read text from objects in the world. No doubt DK2 support is coming, but positional tracking would need to be handled carefully for a game like this where the restricted movement of the protagonist is a central theme.

The build that I was able to play was not without its bugs but even in its current state it is extremely promising. Its ambition is admirable and it succeeds at a lot of what it trying to achieve – demonstrating a good sense of pacing and delivering an intriguing teaser of a narrative I’ll be interested in experiencing. At the moment, Private Eye is already comparable to something like Asunder: Earthbound, and certainly has the potential to eclipse that title. It certainly needs a few more coats of polish but there seems to be a strong foundation of an involving, engaging game here. Private Eye is well worth paying close attention to.

More info can be found at www.privateeyevr.com

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