Since its inception, fully immersive and interactive experiences have been the end goal for the games industry. Going beyond what you see on your TV, and giving the player complete control of their character is something game companies have been trying (and failing) to get right for the last 25+ years. When you think about the implication behind the idea it makes sense: games are all about creating new worlds, and making the impossible suddenly become possible. By taking all of that potential and putting it into the hands of the players, you’re opening up the aperture of what it means to “play” video games.

Redefining how you play is more than just a dream for San Francisco-based start-up Sandbox VR, it’s their entire business model. Where other Virtual Reality competitors are focused on selling hardware and getting products in the living rooms, Sandbox VR sells experiences, touting itself as “immersive VR experiences that feel like the future”. After hearing so much about Sandbox VR’s future-defining gaming experiences, we had to see what they were doing. The Pause Button team grabbed a few friends and took a trip to the company’s San Francisco Pop-up and tried out the experience ourselves.

The Set-Up

Sandbox VR’s entire value proposition hinges on a deeper, more immersive VR experience. Where PC-based competitors like Facebook’s Oculus Rift and HTC’s Vive enable the player to experience VR right in their own homes, Sandbox VR takes things to the next level. From the moment players walk into the space, they are greeted with a sci fi-esque futuristic design, with lobbies filled with 3D printed art and geometric furniture. Once all of our team had arrived, we were ushered downstairs by our guide to our VR-deck, a 10’x10’ room with cameras on the peripheral. Each player was then outfitted with enough VR technology that would make even the biggest tech geek impressed. In total, we were each given:

Individual hand & foot sensors for detailed limb tracking

Haptic-vests with real feedback (like vibration or jolts when your character get shot)

A HTC Vive Pro Headset

A portable gaming PC in a backpack for per person processing/rendering

A trusty pair of gaming headphones for communication with teammates and audio immersion

A somewhat hefty VR gun for taking care of business in whichever game you play

While all the above may sound like overkill, the immersion and gameplay experience actually benefits greatly from the level of detail the technology provides. The additional hand and foot sensors allow for players to have some-what passable limb tracking as they move around the play area The PC-outfitted backpacks, while somewhat hefty, ensured that each player had enough individual processing power so as not to inhibit their playing experience too much (more on this in a bit). After we completed a brief tutorial, we launched right into our playthrough.

The standard game area and equipment for Sandbox VR (Source: Sandbox VR)

The Gameplay

Sandbox-VR offers a number of titles, each with a unique but classic VR spin. Options include fighting space pirates, ghosts, aliens, and even a Star Trek focused tie-in. The company makes you select before booking your reservation, so we opted for the classic: an alien-themed adventure known as Amber Sky 2088. The premise was basic, taking a page from Halo’s book: Aliens are attacking the world, you have to escort a payload up to a space station in order to take them down. Two of our party were outfitted with unique-defensive kits (a pistol and throwable shield), and three of us were provided more assault focused load-outs (a big gun with a flamethrower attached)

Pros

The positives were what we expected: the gameplay felt immersive. Giant bosses felt imposing, fans and haptic vests did a solid job of simulating external forces like wind or bullets, and the visuals were impressive. At one point the game split our party in two, seemingly moving other players characters hundreds of feet away, even though they were standing right next to us. Almost everything from an immersion perspective was somewhat believable, the heights felt high, the shots of our guns felt impactful, and the bosses seemed menacing.

Cons

However, where immersion led the way, Sandbox VR struggled in honoring the cardinal rule of games: good content trumps everything else. In an industry with so much competition, a game has to be fun on a fundamental level to stand out from the crowd. While the technology created a better than average immersion experience, the game, the actual content we paid to play, was somewhat weak. Traditional VR experiences like Superhot or Space Pirate Trainer find ways to take traditional first-person shooters and turn the idea on its head, using unique gameplay mechanics to keep things fun and fresh. With each player outfitted with state of the art VR tech, you’d expect the gameplay to be mind-bending and genre-defining. In actuality, the experience was a very vanilla FPS. On top of that, the title was marred with your run of the mill technical issues. Random lag spikes, un-rendered visuals, and one player’s game completely crashing mid-experience are the type of issues that an immersion-first experience like Sandbox VR can’t afford to have. No tech is ever perfect, but the degree to which Sandbox VR struggled bordered on unpolished, and that’s an issue. Ultimately, our unreasonably high expectations coupled with a vanilla FPS experience left us satisfied, but not overly impressed.

One of Sandbox VR’s many immersive digital worlds (Source: Sandbox VR)

The Verdict

Overall, Sandbox VR was an experience unlike anything we’ve done before. From the moment you walk through the door, until the minute you leave, the company excels at creating a truly immersive experience, and that absolutely counts for something. One of the main benefits of VR is to bring you as a player closer to the gameplay, but the putting on the actual gear and exploring the two floor pop-up space felt more futuristic than the gameplay. For a steep $48 per play, Sandbox VR is worth trying, especially if you have some spare time and a few friends interested in games, but until the content experience improves, one visit to this futuristic VR space is plenty.

This article was made in conjunction with our weekly gaming newsletter, The Pause Button. For weekly insights on the future of the games industry, check it out.

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