QuiVr is an Archery Castle Defense game for the HTC Vive developed by Blueteak. The game allows you to play solo or with your friends. You teleport between vantage points in front of your castle, battling hordes of hideous monsters swarming toward you in gradually increasing and unnerving waves, each monstrous entity hell bent on ripping your castle to the ground.

The archery dynamics are realistic, tactile and intuitive, in my opinion the best archery mechanics I have experienced in a game, even with the networked multiplayer the physics in the game work flawlessly.

The monsters are creepy and not limited to staple fantasy creatures, you are attacked by dirt skimming manta ray, giant tarantulas, swollen ogres, the obligatory army of skeletons.

The game itself is tremendous fun, this is certainly exemplified by the multiplayer functionality. Chatting away with your fellow archers, as more and more corruptions sweep in, certainly adds a feeling of camaraderie and presence.

What is incredible is that currently it is a FREE alpha release, even more encouraging is that even in this Alpha state the game is very mature, fantastically playable and there is a healthy community of people having a great deal of fun simply testing things out.

Free of Charge Alpha NOT early access.

Blueteak has shown tremendous integrity with a development strategy I have not seen often. The alpha demo for testing can be downloaded as a “free demo”, in fact it is not a demo at all, it is the entire “work in progress” game. Blueteak do it this way because the Steam platform does not currently (at time of writing) provide a facility for free-of-charge Alpha releases. The trend of recent years, that peculiarly we as gamers seem to willingly accept, is that you purchase a game on “Early Access” and wait for it to become a full fledged release, you put up with the bugs in the hope it will improve. While I accept that “Early Access” can provide vital funds to allow development of a game, purchase of assets, etc, I do wonder if it masks some sinister practices and poor quality development. It is not clear if Blueteak will be releasing on “Early Access” after giving the “Alpha” away free-of-charge, but what is clear is they are thanking the VR community in advance with a mutually beneficial agreement, you get a work-in-progress title, you play, find issues and make enhancement requests. Only when Blueteak are comfortable, they release a solid game.

I sincerely hope Blueteak are rewarded for their fair approach to development and that it serves as a model for other VR dev houses, then perhaps we may see the torrent of poor quality titles be held back a little and given time to mature into something worth buying.

Watch my review of the Alpha below:

As for QuiVr it is certainly worth your time right now, in the future the developers plan many exciting additions:

Upgradable Bow and Quiver

Different arrow types

Engaging campaign

Many additional enemy types

Online COOP gameplay

Target range with various scenarios

Local and global leader-boards

Achievements and local statistics

No word on a launch price just yet, but I strongly recommend you play the demo, provide lots of good feedback and keep this game firmly locked on your wish list. Good luck Blueteak.