‘From Other Suns’ Kicks Off Free Beta Weekend On September 29

By Kevin Carbotte
published

Gunfire Games announced that it will be running a free open beta weekend of its upcoming Oculus-exclusive rogue-lite space exploration game, From Other Suns, through the last weekend of September.

Gunfire Games is one of the few VR developers with multiple titles already available. It got its feet wet with the release of Herobound: Spirit Companion on the Gear VR platform. By the time Oculus released the Rift, it had Chronos and a port of Herobound ready to launch alongside the headset. In December, the studio released yet another Oculus-exclusive title called Dead and Buried alongside the Oculus Touch controllers.

Few developers have three VR titles in development, let alone on the market; Gunfire Games will soon have four. The developer hasn’t announced the official release date for From Other Suns yet, but it maintains that the title will be available this fall and is starting to ramp up its testing process in preparation for the launch. At the end of the month, Gunfire Games will run a three-day free open beta of From Other Suns to weed out some bugs and problems ahead of the full release.

From Other Suns is a combination of space exploration game and first-person shooter. You and up to three friends are the crew of a cargo ship in alien territory. Gunfire Games said From Other Suns is inspired by the space-faring rogue-lite FTL: Faster Than Light, in which you must maintain and defend your spaceship in hostile areas. We tried an early build of From Other Suns in February, and we didn’t see many similarities between the two games, but we didn’t play for long and the scope of what we could do was limited.

At the end of the month, we’ll be able to sink some more time into From Other Suns to see if Gunfire Games’ claim holds true. The developer said that the From Other Suns free open beta would start on September 29 and conclude on October 1. It didn’t say what time the open beta would start, but we’ve reached out to it for more details.

From Other Suns is an Oculus Rift exclusive title. To play the game, you must have an Oculus Rift HMD and Touch controllers. HTC Vive owners will likely be able to play the game eventually with CrossVR's ReVive application, but we wouldn't expect that utility to work during the beta weekend.

Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ironside69
    Oculus is the worst thing to happen to the VR landscape. Develop for the consoles with your exclusive crap!
    Reply
  • pabloxmena
    @IRONSIDE69 I disagree, Oculus helped VR more than you think.
    Reply
  • ironside69
    @PABLOXMENA I'm not sure how good exclusive titles are for a niche market, especially when establishing a platform. I don't see how this is good for VR, seems only good for Oculus.
    Reply
  • dchu3388
    IRONSIDE you are either misinformed or you don't know what you are talking about. How is a lower price for entry (compared to VIVE and even PSVR now) for a AAA VR experience bad for VR landscape? How is putting money for exclusive AAA VR games instead of NO AAA VR games from GUNFIRE bad for the landscape? Just because you don't get to play these awesome games right when it comes out because you got tricked into buying crappy PSVR hardware don't mean we all should suffer! They can probably port it to other consoles or system at a later date. Even if they dont port it, it does not hurt the landscape, at the very least there are developers now that have more experience building VR stuff like FROM OTHER SUNS that can work on future projects. Also its better that they have exclusive VR games then no VR game at all!
    Reply
  • pabloxmena
    @IRONSIDE69 Oculus is the reason the push to VR got so much development in the past few years. Without their push a few years back and sight of the future to come , we would have never got so many companies involved in 2017. This companies created competition and further development on this platform. They are also the ones responsable for making it cheaper and cheaper to consumers. Mad respect to their way of thinking and perhaps the main reason VR is what it is now. The future holds just better things. ;)
    Reply
  • thegreenteaman
    Were it not for Oculus funds, some amazing VR games would never have been made. Paying for exclusivity is bad, but paying to get a game made that wouldn't otherwise, then making that game exclusive isn't.
    Reply