Carbon Studio’s ‘The Wizards’ Makes You A Powerful Spellcaster In VR

By Derek Forrest
published

Carbon Studios, one of the fifteen developers that Razer handpicked to be the first recipients of its OSVR Developer Fund, announced a new virtual reality (VR) project called The Wizards. As you can surmise from the title, it has the potential to be quite the magical experience.

The Wizards is Carbon’s second foray into the still-infantile VR gaming market, with the company using its awarded seed money to develop Alice VR, which was released for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and OSVR in October 2016. The concept for The Wizards emerged from an Nvidia and Epic Games-sponsored event called VR Funhouse Game Jam, where the Carbon Studio team created a prototype of a spellcasting first-person shooter game that relies on motion controllers.

The new game’s concept is simple: You’re a conjurer of spells that must defend a land against a horde of incoming combatants, using motion controllers to whip up some fireballs and/or lightning (basically, anything elemental) to take them out. Carbon also said that the game will have a story mode (there’s some mention of time travel and heroic battles), character development, and a “Fate Cards” system designed to provide increased replay value to The Wizards by altering the gameplay, although it’s not currently known to what extent.

Curiously, OSVR is not among the supported platforms in the company’s press release, with only PC, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift listed as applicable devices. Considering Carbon got its legs for its first VR game with OSVR Developer Fund money, we’re surprised at the absence of the less-expensive VR device. However, with the Vive and Rift offering retail versions of the HMD with motion controllers--and the OSVR still a developer kit with optional motion tracking--we can understand the (current) lack of support for the Razer-developed VR device.

The Wizards is set to arrive sometime in 2017, but the exact release date is currently unknown. If we had to guess, based on the lack of proper gameplay footage in the teaser trailer below, it will likely arrive at the tail-end of the year.

Derek Forrest
Derek Forrest
Derek Forrest is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes hardware news and reviews gaming desktops and laptops.
5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Jeff Fx
    >Considering Carbon got its legs for its first VR game with OSVR Developer Fund money, we’re surprised at the absence of the less-expensive VR device.

    Does OSVR have an equivalent of the Vive wands and OR touch controllers? If not, they simply can't support it because the controllers are missing. If so, I'd expect the game to work on OSVR, and assume they just don't want to support the not ready for retail OSVR platform.
    Reply
  • anbello262
    I would love a VR game similar to "In verbis Virtus", in which you have to say the spells out loud with the correct pronunciation. Even better if you have to make a specific hand movement as well. Creating/combining spells would be great too!
    Reply
  • d_kuhn
    Trailer with no in-game footage... usually a very bad sign but it's pretty early still if the game is planned for winter release.
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    19182048 said:
    I would love a VR game similar to "In verbis Virtus", in which you have to say the spells out loud with the correct pronunciation. Even better if you have to make a specific hand movement as well. Creating/combining spells would be great too!
    Will it be online?

    FabFizban: "Man do you ever screw up any spell ever?"
    WizChummer: "I'm totally not cheating."
    FabFizban: "Whoa, uh, I never said... wait are you cheating??"
    WizChummer: "YOU CAN'T PROVE ANYTHING! LIGHTNING BOLT, LIGHTNING BOLT!"
    Reply
  • alidan
    19182048 said:
    I would love a VR game similar to "In verbis Virtus", in which you have to say the spells out loud with the correct pronunciation. Even better if you have to make a specific hand movement as well. Creating/combining spells would be great too!

    i can't bring myself to play voice games.
    Using speech to text software, recognition has gotten good, but not 100%, to the point that even saying words right will fail words, till that's fixed, voice can't be the major draw for the game.

    and if you cant think of a way to make hand recognition work on a controller, especially something like a steam controller, you have failed profoundly as a game developer, You put a sticker on the box that says 'best played with x' and make a compatible setup with y.

    Lightgun games are perfectly playable with a controller, though admittedly not enjoyably played, had 2 years where I had no light gun, so I had to use a controller.
    Reply