The last announced Oculus Rift exclusive title, Lone Echo II, will launch on August 24 for $39.99 and it will be playable on Quest from a VR-ready PC via Oculus Link or Air Link.
Lone Echo’s impressive single-player campaign in 2017 was one of consumer VR’s early standouts for hand-controlled interaction and the original game will be priced $9.99 until the release of Lone Echo II. So if you haven’t already experienced the compelling story of Liv and her artificially intelligent companion Jack, now is a great time to get caught up on the mechanics of zero-g gameplay before the launch of the sequel. We’ll have to test it when Lone Echo II launches, but many Rift platform games are playable on other PC VR headsets via hacks like Revive.
Lone Echo likely represents a swan song for Facebook’s Rift platform and effectively marks a finale to one of its first efforts in consumer VR. Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014 and funded a series of PC VR games as it learned through trial and error that players enjoyed VR games with tracked hand controls over those played with traditional gamepad. Facebook’s efforts in PC VR ran parallel to those in mobile VR, which won favor with consumers as Facebook progressed from Samsung’s Gear VR phone-powered headset to the underpowered Oculus Go and finally to Oculus Quest, which combined the room-scale and tracked hand controls that made Rift compelling with a standalone wireless form factor.
People who buy Lone Echo II will get a new Jack-themed chassis for their avatars in Echo VR. Last year Facebook acquired Ready At Dawn, the developer of all the Echo games, after the studio adapted the zero-g mechanics it pioneered in Lone Echo into a competitive sport that also ran on Oculus Quest. The free-to-play game is one of VR’s best competitive sports titles. Facebook provided the render below showing the VEGA X-3 chassis players will get for purchasing the game.
Facebook teases that players will get “a new assortment of tools to overcome complex challenges and startling discoveries of deep space in the far future” in Lone Echo II.
Will you be playing Lone Echo II when it launches in August? Let us know in the comments below.
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