At gamescom 2015, Valve lifted the lid on a new virtual reality experience for SteamVR and HTC Vive, set in the massively-popular online game DOTA 2. While the full multiplayer game demands total concentration as you monitor multiple skirmishes taking place across a busy map filled with players, The Secret Shop is a solitary, passive experience that takes a closer look at its world.

We start standing inside a hut, rickety and weathered in appearance but full of warm, inviting objects and details, with bottles containing strange potions on shelving resting on stone walls, a Tango (a healing item in the main game) sitting off to the side that catches our attention with a soft green glow, and a desk covered in old parchment covered in mysterious scribbles.

Valve

There's not quite enough time to take it all in, as after a moment of gazing around, a merchant enters and gives a warm but apologetic welcome, saying he's been a poor host and hasn't given us enough light to look around. He reaches out his hand and drops an orb on a nearby table, inviting us to walk over (SteamVR takes place in an open space that you can explore within set confines) and pick it up with one of the motion controllers.

We're then told to point the light at glowing portals that are dotted around the room. Finding one immediately to our right, sitting on the desk, pressing a trigger sees us suddenly shrunk down and placed onto the desk, standing on the parchment we were just gazing at moments ago like its a giant rug, while a massive spinning globe towers above us.

A huge spider then creeps past, making us take an involuntary step back. Most impressive of all is the merchant, who is continuing our prior conversation and who now appears mountain-sized and intimidating, looking down on our now-tiny stature. The sudden scale change is impressive.

Pressing the button again instantly warps us back to full size, and we can continue exploring the room. There are numerous of these portals that shrink us and place us in different parts of the shop, two of which are sat on shelves, one with a giant, breathing frog overlooking us as we gaze around the rest of the room, and another on the opposite side of the hut, with a mysterious eye ball peering through a gap in the wall from outside.

Valve

There were a few hidden portals, too; peering underneath curtains revealed one on a window, warping us to a shelf so we could see the black forest beyond, with several scary eyes staring back, and there was also another on the ceiling that saw us sit on a beam as a giant book with a menacing face chomped around before collapsing still again.

As we go about exploring, things continue to happen all around the room, such as a creature scampering from the corner, giving us puppy dog eyes before retreating into the shadows, and a toy version of hero Axe that jumps from a jack-in-a-box. At the last minute, we also remember to look down, and see a creature hidden inside an underground sewer.

There's no doubt we missed loads of these moments, and we imagine you can see more if you experiment with the various portals at your disposal. Seeing the merchant towering above from the desk really wowed us, but what would other things have looked like when shrunk down to a tiny size? We'd love to go back and see what else we can find.

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It was an impressive demo that showcased how effective unique scales can be within virtual reality, although it was one that didn't make much use of the Vive's unique features. This was a passive experience and invited exploration, but we didn't walk around as much as in other demos we played (though maybe this would change on repeat plays), and it doesn't use the controllers much either. Though they're represented with 1:1 movement in the demo, and are used to activate the shrinking portals, you could probably do everything here with a standard controller. (Unless, of course, there's something we missed - which is possible!)

But even without direct interaction with the world, The Secret Shop proves that even the more passive experiences in Vive are really entertaining. Teleporting between different places and scales at a moment's notice was fun and not at all jarring, and despite being situated in such a relevantly small location, proved you could cram an awful lot of secrets and blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments. Next time we hope to stay a little longer and get to uncover more of what Valve is hiding.

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