Vive Report

EARLY ACCESS UPDATE: QuiVr is now available for purchase as an Early Access title. The game has changed drastically, with improvements across the board and plenty of new features. We will post a new review soon, but for now check out QuiVr Early Access on Steam for $19.99

Review below is based on original alpha that was free to play and is no longer available.

Quivr is a slightly unexpected blast! I only say unexpected because currently, it comes in the form of a free demo on Steam, and even in its current state I would be happy to be pay a few bucks for the privilege. It’s a simple, straightforward wave based archery game, consisting of Skeleton Wights, Goblins, Spiders and Trolls! Oh my! Plus other middle earth-like monsters making their way towards your gate to turn it to rubble. For the time being, this is the closest you will get to living out your Legolas fantasy. But unfortunately, there is no sliding down an Oliphaunt’s trunk, or insane CGI matrix like melee moves, so I look at this as more of a standing Legolas simulator. Perhaps he was captured and had his legs tied down?

In the past, you protected a Rune Stone, but the developer dropped a pretty huge update recently with an entirely new location, better graphics, and a more polished experience protecting your gate from the baddies. There are now 4 different locations you can move to by shooting your arrow through a big circle above the location. This allows you to quickly jump between different spots to take out your enemies, as at some angles you won’t be able to shoot certain enemies. Being able to quickly move to to the top of the gate, or a high tower to the left or right of the scene, allows you a different perspective/angle to take down the oncoming monsters.

The new location also adds falling snow, which is rather relaxing and visually pleasing. Plus there are fires in which you can light your arrows ablaze before launching them into a big ugly trolls face or the weird little stingray-like creatures (which I despise).

There is multiplayer as well; it’s in an experimental phase, but does work. And as happenstance would have it, just so happens the dev, Blueteak (super kewl d00d), released a new patch this morning, July 22, 2016. The update adds multiplayer leaderboards so you can track who is getting the most headshots out of your group, or who has the most kills in general. I have included the dev’s patch notes at the bottom of the article.

My only gripe with this game, is that the dev is giving it away free! Even in its current state I feel it’s worth at least a 5$ entry fee. From what I’ve read Blueteak looks to release the full version late 2016 to early 2017 and I just hope competition doesn’t come around prior to his launch and grab up all his customers. So I would jump in while the demo is still up for free and see for yourself. Plus the dev is really responsive and constantly working on the game, they even listened to my suggestion for exploding arrows, which I hope to see implemented in the actual game soon.

All in all, I highly recommend.

Take a look at the QuiVr Demo page on Steam, download and give it a shot.

– dgtlhrt

Patch notes from Dev:

Alpha 0.5d
JULY 22 – BLUETEAK
Huge CPU performance boost in multiplayer and a much requested feature!

Performance Boost
Apparently the UI text for the number of players (Players: 3/4) and connection status (joined) were taking up 3ms of the CPU time (11ms budget for 90fps), over 1/4 of the entire frame budget! This has now been changed and only takes 0.02ms, so the buffer room should be much better for lower end CPUs.

Multiplayer Score Board
A multiplayer scoreboard has been added that tracks hits and headshots, so you can now track your progress against the other players in your game. It should be sorted high -> low, but I’m unable to test the MP on my own computer today so just let me know if it’s opposite and I’ll invert it!

As always, thanks for the continued feedback!