about engine organic

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We were all working in the VR industry in 2019 and decided to set out to make a fun VR game in our spare time. We kicked things off by making SweetTooth, a comical unicorn game for the Oculus Rift and Oculus Go, which was a massive learning experience in how tough it is to make a game from start to finish. While we enjoyed making SweetTooth, we are much more passionate about shooters, so in April 2020 we transitioned to making HAX for the Oculus Quest.

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We were really excited about the Oculus Quest, and the opportunity to make 6dof mobile VR games, so we started brainstorming ideas. The idea for HAX came about during one of these sessions while we were discussing the problems of fast-paced VR games with cumbersome inventory systems. The idea for the HAX mags was so exciting, we built everything around that one idea - theme, art style, gun meta, everything. It took almost a year for us to get the real validation of how good the idea was, when over two thousand people played the demo in the first five days of release.

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Why mobile VR? We really believe that VR is going to live (and hopefully not die) on mobile, that's why we're targeting the Quest platform now. Why a shooter? Shooters are one of the most popular game types, and our personal favorite. We also think that VR has had a tendency to rely too heavily on the novelty of VR when it comes to gameplay, especially with shooters. We want to make a video game that is good regardless of the fact that it's in VR.

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Part of our DNA and background in VR comes from the time we all spent making VR training simulators, so we know and respect the challenges of making something intuitive and easy-to-learn. VR offers enough challenges to first time users without complex controls and non-existent tutorials. Our goal with HAX and future games is to make them exciting and challenging while making them approachable and easy-to-learn. It's not enough to rely on the intrinsic immersion of VR in games anymore. VR games need to be just that, "games," and that's what we intend to make here at Engine Organic.

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