The forthcoming Rift Wars has been championed by the Oculus Rift core audience for some time. It’s a linear shooter that follows the design loop of Starfox while being set in a universe with visuals not too dissimilar to that of Geometry Wars. Developer James Andrew, founder of PixelRouter VR, readily admits these influences, suggesting that the transition from standard monitors to virtual reality (VR) is important for all genres.

“VR is the future of gaming.” States Andrew when discussing the reasons why Rift Wars is being designed exclusively for the Oculus Rift. “In order to create experiences which take advantage of the new medium, we need to introduce mechanics into the gameplay which simply don’t translate to a traditional control scheme. For example, in Rift Wars we make use of Head Tracking for locking on to the gems. Could we make a screen-only version of this game? Yes, but I’m not sure we ever will because we’d have to change the mechanics so much that it would be a different game.”

PixelRouter VR are invested in VR, as their name might suggest, and Rift Wars is most certainly a project that is intending to be around for the long haul.

“We are very excited to see what kinds of things become possible with positional tracking. If anyone at Oculus is reading this and wants to send us a DK2 early, we would love to get going on this.” Offers Andrew when questioned about the future of Rift Wars.

A demo version of Rift Wars is currently available as a free download from the official Oculus Share website, and VRFocus will bring your the full question and answer session with PixelRouter VR next week.