The 'Modbox' VR Trailer Reminds Me Of 'The Construct'

By Kevin Carbotte
published

Alientrap Games has released the first trailer for its upcoming debut VR experience, Modbox, and it sure looks interesting. Rather than build a game with a deep storyline with many intricacies, the developers at Alientrap took a decidedly less defined approach to gameplay.

Without knowing much about the game itself, the trailer does a remarkable job showing some of the possibilities of not just this game, but what VR can really be like. Everyone who wants VR to be successful has dreamed of playing around in “The Construct” room from The Matrix. The setting of Modbox is remarkably reminiscent of that blank white space within which you can do anything.

Modbox appears to be the same sort of room. You start off with nothing, and using a menu system accessed with HTC’s Vive VR wand controllers, you can spawn different items to play around with. The trailer shows a wide variety of toys and objects you can create in the physics-based world. There are building blocks, basketballs, bowling balls, dominoes, hand guns with targets, swords, and even a chainsaw. You get the sense that you’ll be able to do anything you want within the game. It was even shown with multiple players in the same space, so it’s very similar to the Oculus Toybox demo.

Modbox will be coming to SteamVR in early 2016 and is being designed specifically for the HTV Vive VR HMD.

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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. 

2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • d_kuhn
    I've seen quite a few tech demo's with the high degree of interactivity that we're seeing here (which is cool enough I can live with the terrible graphics), I'd like to see a developer like the Minecraft team (who proved that terrible graphics don't matter if the game is awesome) tease how they're going to add those interactive elements to their fully formed game. Seems like either we get a tech demonstrator like this one or a ported game... not someone fusing the two worlds.
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  • kcarbotte
    I've seen quite a few tech demo's with the high degree of interactivity that we're seeing here (which is cool enough I can live with the terrible graphics), I'd like to see a developer like the Minecraft team (who proved that terrible graphics don't matter if the game is awesome) tease how they're going to add those interactive elements to their fully formed game. Seems like either we get a tech demonstrator like this one or a ported game... not someone fusing the two worlds.

    VR is very much in the teething stages. Developers are just trying things out do see what works.
    We already know that added VR elements to already formed games doesn't work. Games for VR have to made from the ground up for VR of they tend to really cause motion sickness (VR sickness).

    This type of sandbox where you spawn what you want can actually prove to be very compelling. Take a look at the success of Gary's Mod for example.
    It lets the player create the game that they want to play. Like a kid with a room full of toys.

    We'll see some very impressive things in the coming years, but we'll see a lot more experimentation before we see a fullscale game that incorporates all the interactive ideas that VR is breeding.
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