If there’s one thing the team at Force Field knows, it’s quality VR development. From the scalable battlefield of RTS Landfall and the stealth action of TERM1NAL to the hatchable strategy of Pet Lab and the crazy combinations of Coaster Combat, this Amsterdam-based developer has been churning out hits since its founding in 2015. Add in immersive experiences like National Geographic Explore VR and the multiple award-winning Anne Frank House VR, and it’s clear that they’ve more than proven their chops. And now, they’re blasting into orbit with a post-apocalyptic puzzler with today’s launch of Time Stall on Oculus Quest!

When the planet gets doomed, the doomed leave the planet. As Earth faces down the Apocalypse, humanity’s survivors abandon ship in style aboard a crowdfunded luxury spacecraft—the Fantastic Leap! The sole “volunteer safety human,” you’re tasked with bending the flow of time to solve puzzles and keep the passengers and the Captain safe.

Originally shown as a press demo at Oculus Connect 4, Time Stall was designed specifically with room-scale standalone VR in mind. We got our hands on some concept art to show how the project evolved from demo to debut and sat down with Force Field Game Director Jay Molloy to hear how this intergalactic puzzler has evolved during its voyage.

What was the initial inspiration behind Time Stall? We’re getting a bit of a WALL·E meets Out of This World vibe...

Jay Molloy: We take a lot of inspiration from movies when looking at new ideas. The initial inspiration for Time Stall’s game mechanics came from Quicksilver’s classic Pentagon kitchen scene from X-Men: Days of Future Past. But we wanted it to be light and entertaining, and Mel Brook’s Spaceballs was a great reference for tone of voice—there’s a ton of wacky stuff going on in the game.

Can you share the backstory of how you brought a demo of Time Stall to OC4? What kind of reception did it receive?

JM: When we were first asked to create a demo for a new untethered headset codenamed Santa Cruz, the goal was to showcase the fact that you had no wire connected to the headset and were completely free to move around. We quickly came up with the time stalling concept and being able to wander through a scene almost frozen in time. At OC4, the people who were given access all adored the experience. It really brought the free-roaming concept home, especially since we had designed it for a 13-by-13-foot space (four by four meters).

How has the game changed over the course of development? Any unexpected or unusual pivots?

JM: The original demo had a lot more guns, dodging bullets and explosions, and we decided to make it a little less serious. Another big change was that we needed to design it for a variety of differently sized play spaces. That means Time Stall now works for people with big living rooms as well as people who want to play it without roaming at all.

Once we added the BOBs (Basic Obedience Bots) to the game, we noticed that most people wanted to interact with them. This was something that we initially discounted due to all of the problems that could occur, and we purposely kept them outside of the players’ reach. But when we put in a few test interactions, the reactions were so positive that we invented the characters of Randy and Dave.

How else did early player reactions affect the finished game?

JM: The Captain originally had a regal British accent and a big mustache. This version of the Captain was in the game for quite a while. Once we started playtesting, we noticed that some players didn’t want to save the Captain, and when we asked why it became apparent that he was unlikable due to his arrogant posh accent. So we decided to give him a more upbeat and positive personality, which worked out great in the end!

What lessons learned from your previous VR work did you incorporate into Time Stall?

JM: The main thing we’ve been focusing on since our first VR project on the DK2 is optimizing the code and ensuring our games run at the highest frame rate—and a very constant one at that—while showing top class visuals. Coaster Combat in particular gave us a lot of knowledge about optimization, as a VR roller coaster game fully relies on a smooth frame rate. Today still, you’d be very hard pushed to find any of our games dipping in performance, including Time Stall.

If people take one thing away from Time Stall, what do you hope it would be and why?

JM: Like any game developers, we want people to just have a good time with the title. A lot of love was put into the game, and we hope that shines through.

What’s next on the horizon for you?

JM: We are working on a new very exciting game project, which will be our most ambitious title to date. I wish we could tell you more about it, but that story will have to wait until next year—sorry to disappoint.

Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

JM: We have a whole continuing story about what happens to our heroes once they reach Terra Prime. Randy and Dave open up their own surf shack, and the Captain is happily carving up some waves with them. Our dev T-shirts even have this depicted on them. Who knows—if the game is well received and we get to do a sequel, we could have a lot of fun exploring this new world our heroes travel to.

Thanks for sitting down with us, Jay, and to Force Field for sharing Time Stall’s own time capsule of concept art. Premium backers or no, we hope the Quest community is as excited for this launch as we are.

Take matters—and the power to control the flow of time—into your own hands and save humanity’s remaining survivors today in Time Stall on Oculus Quest.