Hot off the release of Esper 2 late last year, UK-based indie developer Coatsink Software is working on a port of the original title, Esper, from its original home on the Gear VR mobile-based virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD), to the Oculus Rift on PC. The team is updating the project with new control options, some updated visuals and, of course, the inclusion of positional tracking, which wasn’t possible in the original edition. When it comes to price, then, Coatsink Software hopes that these additions will allow it to ‘charge a bit more’ for the PC release.
CEO Tom Beardsmore said as much to VRFocus in an interview that will be published later this week. “I mean, there is an expectation, isn’t there, for a mobile game, that it will be cheap?” he explained. “Because people see it as lower production values, worse graphics, and all that kind of thing. I think that we have put more time and development efforts into the Rift version than we did into the Gear VR version. Just in terms of up rezzing everything, it’s taken more time and a lot more expense. So we would hope to charge a bit more for it, I think. And, hopefully, the consumers will see the value in that through the visual upgrades.”
This is one of the rare cases of a Gear VR title coming to the Oculus Rift seen thus far. Gunfire Games’ Herobound: Spirit Champion will be making the transition to the PC-based HMD too, as will Dead Secret from Robot Invader. It’s not yet clear how those releases will differ from the originals, nor how much the developers will charge. Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey has also said in the past that it’s up to developers as to if they offer titles that appear on both Gear VR and Oculus Rift as a sort of cross-buy promotion.
Esper itself is a first-person puzzle title in which players use telekinetic abilities to solve a variety of challenges. On top of this series, Coatsink Software is also bringing Boneloaf’s Gang Beasts to the Oculus Rift.
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