Project Hail Mary VR Game Puts Rocky at the Center of an Untold Chapter
Maze Theory built the game around the player's relationship with Rocky, describing it as single-player co-op, and chose mixed reality specifically so Rocky feels present in the player's own space.
Reporting from 1 source: Game Spark.
Maze Theory is developing Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars, a mixed reality game based on Andy Weir's novel. Weir wrote a new chapter for the game that appears in neither the book nor the film. Players take the role of Ryland Grace and work with the alien Rocky to repair the Hail Mary. The studio demoed the game at gamescom in Cologne, which ran August 26-30.
The playable demo opened in the Hail Mary cockpit, a zero-gravity space where a cap, a pen, and a mug float within reach. Players can grab the objects, put the cap on, and pull the control lever to push the ship forward. Rocky then appears, speaking in a mechanical English voice, and the studio says he will mimic the player's movements as in the novel's first contact scene. The demo ended when a window was damaged.
Maze Theory said the central design goal was the player-Rocky relationship, described as single-player co-op. Hand tracking lets players fist bump Rocky with their own hands. The studio chose mixed reality over standard VR because it makes Rocky feel physically present and because seeing the real room around the headset largely removes motion sickness.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.