VROOM: Galleon

I like the experiences created in the early days of VR. I love that when they still look good and are perfectly playable.

I played this first back at release, in 2016. It's now 2021 and it has never been updated or fixed up in any way. Controls are designed first for mouse and keyboard, so if you want smooth locomotion, you can kind of get it at your desk, but you need the VR controllers to interact with objects. If using only VR controls, you will be stuck with only teleport, and it's a very slow, finnicky teleport mechanic. You *can* escape the ship by teleporting, but in order to get to the island, you have to switch levels by pulling a lever toward the back half of the middle of the ship, which was apparently easy to miss because I missed it until my third play of this experience. The ship has a lot of interactive elements, but you cannot sail the ship. You can, however, and to the surprise of myself, control a bird from the back of the ship and fly it all over the level, which is cool but very nauseating. The bird controls are pretty bad but also pretty immersive in a way. If I didn't get nauseated from it, I'd probably enjoy it... briefly. Anyway, there are also shootable cannons and lots of treasure to stare at. There are also a few rooms on the ship and a looking scope, which doesn't seem to …

While I would recommend this VR environmental experience, I have to say that the total lack of a tutorial is bothersome. It is not clear how to interact with the environment and therefore it can become boring quickly. As a little pirate cove, some characters to interact with would also be nice.

couldn't stand more than a minute in this stupidity

no oculus quest controller support the game is unplayable

This VR experience looks very pretty. However, it suffers from poor optimization and polish. With an RTX 2080 and an i9 processor, I was getting terrible frame rate issues into the 40s. And there are no graphical settings at all that I could find with the Valve Index or the HTC Vive. You also have no hands, it just shows the controllers. And perhaps due to the frame rate or the rocking of the water, I experienced a great deal of nausea to the point where I had to stop. Overall, there is simply no reason at all to own this software. I would not recommend it.