The Riese Project

This is the level of design that I wish all VR games were made. Beautifully modelled and designed to reflect the landscape of the Owl mountains in Poland and location of the Nazi Riese project complex from the 1940's. The game has a light hearted feel to it as illustrated by Annie's comical and endearing dialogue, the game's lead character, but hints at darker undertones regarding her Grandfather, the past and locations yet to be found. With elements of exploration and puzzle solving the game is clearly leading us towards something that has not really been revealed at this stage in the game's evolution. The use of some of the latest features of Unreal Engine 5 makes this a demanding game for VR players from a hardware point of view but a rewarding experience if you have the hardware for it. Thoroughly enjoyed it so far and am very much looking forward to seeing where the developer takes this.

Important: The game now works with the Valve Index. Still my favorite hmd for this game is the Rift CV1, as the game looks more blurry using lcd hmds. This is due to the game forcing TAA or DLSS for antialiasing. The game has performance issues and uses the Unreal Engine 5 for some great lighting and shadows, but do not bother unless you have an RTX 3090, 4070 Ti, 5070 or faster. Using Index, res 200% will limit the blurriness - and activating motion smoothing can be a great help. After waiting 2.5 years - what has changed? This still is a favorite VR game, but having finished both the Prologue and the early access versions, I'm not sure I detect much of a difference. I was expecting a lot more after 2.5 years. Apart from adding 2D support, which means nothing to VR players, it feels much like a standstill. Sure there are more cakes and dolls/toys in the house, and the hidden room in the attic looks a lot better - and the house surroundings look better - but all this is not important. - Important will be adding more locations and many more puzzles. For now it's hard to recommend the early access over the Prologue, unless some persons want to support the game devs financially…

A really good game with a great atmosphere and some interesting mechanics. I wish I had a VR headset to fully immerse myself in the story, but playing without one is fine too.

This game (...in development) immediately reminds me of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter VR, which I loved (it was one of the first games to use photogrammetry and realistic lighting), but here you will have VR hands. The Lumen lighting has significantly improved the visuals and offers real-time lighting; the environments are convincing and pleasant to explore. The intro successfully sets a "creepy" and intriguing mood that made me want to uncover the mystery of this place... The gameplay is still in its early stages, but the solo Dev is working hard to improve every aspect and has shown a willingness to listen to our feedback. So I encourage and recommend supporting him in that matter!

The game makes a good impression so far. It has great graphics. And it's exciting without being hectic. I think it's great idea that you can use a cell phone in the game.

Performance is poor despite 9800x3d and 9070xt. Voice acting is fine but an option to have the Polish with subtitles would have been preferable to the VAs clear second language issues. I like puzzle games but even the little time I spent with it was confusing and disorientating. There was no logic to the puzzles I encountered, instead this was more fumbling around. I can't recommend this at this time, may be when it's finished.