Unfinished: EX: SuperHyperCube 08/31/2016

I'm so glad to see that Phil Fish is making games again. I hope he makes Fez 2 at some point.

Yes! Phil Fish! :)

Glad to know Phil's doing alright. Game looks dope.

MUR

MAH

Played this at a Gamestop PSVR demo and it convinced me to keep my preorder. Super rad.

Great unfinished!...Game looks awesome, glad Phil is feeling posi again, the dude is really talented.

This instantly reminds me of Block Out, played a monochrome shareware version of that labeled as "3D Tetris" like 20+ years ago. Controls/perspective had been half the struggle back then, VR seems like a sensible solution to that.

Holy shit Phil Fish is making games? Awesome! Seriously glad he's back making games.

EDIT: Also 18:09 made me burst out in laughter

Actually this was solved on the Kinect with Dance Central. The problem is no one else adapted it. "Hovering directly over for <X> seconds with a timer" sucks because it introduces a mandatory minimum time to interact with something and if a mistake is made, you have to reset that timer.

Dance Central challenged this by saying, "what if we used relative movement and looked at which hand you were using and changed interactions based on that?"

So in that game, you move your right hand up and down to cycle through each menu item, regardless of where your hand starts (the current relative motion direction of the user's hand changed the selection rather than having to hover over the item in simulated real space with your hand as its detected by the Kinect) and swipe left with your right hand to select menu items (which also animate to the left to further hammer the action visually as to what's going on) and simply swipe right with the left hand regardless of where that hand was.

If that sounds confusing, watch this to see what I mean. See in the upper right corner how the user moves his hand up and down and the menu selection changes based on that relative motion as opposed to the hand's absolute position? Then he just swipes to the left relative to that position to select the item. He doesn't have to hover over the item, he just has to make sure he moves his hand up or down until he's on the item he wants, then quickly slap it to choose it. It was BRILLIANT and the single greatest UX achievement made on the Kinect platform... that most people didn't appreciate or follow their lead with.

The Wii was not really a problem with how it handled control - not for the most part at least on 1st party titles. Smart interaction designers made sure that they allowed you to either use the remote as a pointer OR to flip the controller, holding it more like a traditional controller and just use the D-Pad to make selections. Not all did this, but Nintendo did it even on their main screen so anyone who didn't was lazy (but that was the name of the game with most 3rd party Wii development anyway #BringBackWiiWareJeffSegment).

In VR, pure "gaze" based control sucks, because, like with the Kinect games that weren't Dance Central, it means introduction of a mandatory minimum time of 2-3 seconds before being able to progress through a game menu. And it's even worse with VR because you inherently look at things when trying to decide what that thing means, so if you are deciding what button to press and are looking at it, but after looking at one of the buttons for 3 seconds, it gets "selected" anyway, it feels really frustrating.

On devices like Google Cardboard, this is a problem, because it has no other way to interact unless the application not only supports some external controller (99% don't) but also overrides gaze-based control.

It's less of an issue on Gear VR because it has a touch pad which is great because then you can just use gaze to look at an object, but still allow the user to tap to select. You can even introduce concepts such as swiping and scrolling with the pad. In the application I've primarily worked on for the past few years, Samsung VR (formerly Milk VR) [Android platform non-VR component][The Oculus Store VR component of the application can be found in their store on Android if you have a Gear VR's firmware installed on your Samsung mobile device], I fought to get touch-pad swiping and fast-scrolling in and make it relative to the user's face, so swiping or fast-scroll-dragging a certain direction correlated with scrolling movement direction in VR.

Same with the Rift and especially the Vive. Valve's "Big Picture VR" mode is an excellent interface that allows for multiple ways to select items, type, and interact using the positionally tracked controllers. My favorite experience is still The Lab, Valve's own sort of "Wii Sports" of VR.

phil fish still makes video games? and fez got a recent update? What does it all mean

Nice to see Phil.

omg im dead

Looks cool!

I hope that Phil continues to make more games.

Alright this looks neat

This is just Virtual Boy Tetris but 20 years late

The oblivious irony of this statement is astounding.

Wow, never thought he'd show his face around these parts again. I knew he wouldn't really be able to stay away from video games for too long though, they're fun.

Just wanted to take the time to acknowledge a well thought out post. Thanks, Duder.

@hassun: Thanks a bunch :D
@rox360: That's probably one of the best worded comments i've seen on the issue, thanks for that.

@magmamud: I think he said something along the lines of "suck on my dick, choke on it" to some schmoe on twitter who baited his ego. So it's a little gross, definitely a lot puerile, I'm sure he'd think of a better comeback in hindsight that wasn't so crass. If it were anybody else, just one more vaguely chauvinistic comment gets lost in the sea of misogynistic shit upon which we are buoyed aloft daily. But this dude made a really cool videogame, got sorta e-famous, Internet loves to overreact to stuff, especially to celebrities of its own crafting, and there you go. No Fez 2. I hope he circles back around to Fez at some point, it's easily the comfiest game that stretches your brain in the most ludicrous ways.

Wasn't expecting Phil Fish to randomly be in this video but alright cool :D

Looks tubular!

Why hasn't Sony shown more of this game? To me this is way cooler then anything else Sony has shown to try to hype up PSVR.

Game looks kinda boring and would definitely cause me to throw up.

I still don't see anything that is worth getting into VR. Especially considering the massive initial cost of a headset.

@carlos707: PC is for spreadsheets, not games. But if/when he does release it on PC, he knows you PC nerds won't boycott hard enough for it to matter.

I can't determine if I am more disappointed with the game itself, or that this is what compelled Fish to return to development.

@magmamud: vidya is srs business

@heavyweather said:

Best description of Fez I've ever read.

seconded, it's not just you. except i'd say you can't leave the "tool" aspect completely out of the equation. i can enjoy tom cruise movies for what they are, but i don't love them. and the records metallica have put out over the last 20+ years are not entirely terrible, but not great either.

@andrewjplant: Hope so, for everyone sake.

Love fish! Great guy!

I want this for Vive!

Teleporting Virtual Jeff is best Jeff!

Going to echo the sentiment that I am super happy to see Phil again and that he is making games still!

Even though I have a PC that is "VR Ready", I find the PS VR to be the most appealing option currently. I am looking to Giantbomb's coverage of the launch. If it got a handful of games that look as good as this, then I might get one this year.

Wait, so Phil Fish is back in game development? I thought after the Fez 2 thing, he quit a couple years ago or so and that was that. Not only is he back, but so is Polytron it seems? If so, nice to see them back.

@colourful_hippie: the blink in was perfect. GB should do the new star trek series

My pleasure! Thanks for reading!

So Phil Fish is really into rotating things huh?

This looks neat. Can't wait to see multiple people speedrunning this against eachother.

Oh god, Phil Fish...

Would've been nice if they had asked how much this will cost.

So this is ketzal's corridors?

Awesome! I was ust thinking about Phil Fish, actually, as I am wont to do. Dude is entertaining to have around, and the game looks cool as hell too. Can't wait to see it on the Rift/Vive.

"Phil Fish is here" is not a headline I ever expected to read again. Great to see him back in the game.

How'd you manage to figure that out? Did I miss a reference? I don't like missing references.

looks cool

Phil Fish!

I always want to spell his name Phil Phish. I can't be the only one.

The thing about the people who hate Phil Fish is that they didn't make Fez, so I tend to like Phil Fish more than I like them.

This is maybe the first time I've actually seen SuperHyperCube. I somehow thought it was related to Super Hexagon. Seems real cool.

Yay Phil Fish! Love Fez.

@drgreatjob: "Rum Ham".