EarthShape is one of the Daydream launch titles. It is a minimalistic arcade game that features the voice of Sue Perkins from The Great British Bake Off and unfortunately, that is already the highlight of the game.

Gameplay

The actual gameplay of EarthShape is very simple. You are presented with a grid of points that you can connect by drawing lines with your motion controller. You do so in order to change the course of a ball that comes flying into this grid and gets reflected from the lines that you draw. Your objective is to direct the ball into the goal of each grid without the ball leaving the playing field. The ball becomes faster as time goes by and to add at least a bit of game mechanics, some special fields might be added to the playing field. These special fields could speed up the ball, give you extra points if the ball flies through them, or change the location of the goal.

The story that is built around this gameplay goes like this: you are an astronaut that travels from planet to planet. You do so in order to bring life to those planets by planting plants and the above described game mechanics are your way to do so. So with every reflection of the ball your plants grow a little bit bigger and once you have reached your 100% mark you may fly to the next planet which will differ in the background image and the special fields that may occur on your playing field.

Presentation

If EarthShape succeeds at one thing then it is packaging this more than basic gameplay into a beautiful package. The intro and the animations between gameplay are well done but unfortunately they overpromise what the game itself can never deliver upon. But even the animations in between gameplay get stale soon and once you have seen exactly the same animation of the astronaut in his spaceship taking off one of the control levers by mistake for the 3rd time, you will definitely not enjoy that anymore.

Immersion

EarthShape could be a mediocre tablet game at best and you could really wonder why the developer made a VR game out of it. The medium does add nothing to the game, since it is completely in 2D. You are standing in front of that 2D playing field and connect dots with your motion controller. Something that you could easier do on your phone or tablet.

Comfort

At least you won’t get sick in VR since there is no motion at all. However, your comfort levels might still be low since you will wonder why you bought this game in the first place.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately we cannot recommend EarthShape at all. The meager contents with its over simplistic gameplay mechanics do not live up to the beautiful packaging of this game. There are lots of arcade games that are simple, yet genius, but EarthShape is not one of them.