A Love Letter to A Township Tale’s Mines

For those who prefer a Video/Audio experience. This article is also available on Youtube.

It all started innocently enough, a little foray into the dark for some sandstone. I only needed a little more to finish building the bridge to the woods. So I grabbed my torch and the complementary pick near the entrance. Then I descended for the first time.

Oh it was dark, scary, terrifying even. I heard the scraping of who knows what down in the tunnels. There I was, brand new to A Township Tale, expecting a light fantasy world of adventure and a fun crafting system. Instead I was cowering in a corner, glancing over my shoulder at the sound of every echoing scrape and hoping the wain light of my torch did not go out. I grabbed what I could and got the hell out of there. Off to greener pastures, but it wouldn’t be the forests that would hold my attention. It would be that dark, mean place.

As so often in RPGs, the reason was loot. The mines are full of loot, bursting with it. Crates, chests, all containing vital Blacksmithing molds and crafting recipes. The second time I went into the mines I only went down a single additional level, but I was hooked. The possibilities those recipes brought, the things I could make. I had to have more, MORE.

So I made a sword, hoisted my pick, readied my teleport potion, and so my addiction to delving in the dark began. Now I’m starting to understand dwarves a little better. Around every craggy corner is more potential for the shiny motherload, the next big find. Otherwise, the next big danger, and both of those possibilities are just as compelling.

If you want danger and loot in A Township Tale, then the Mines is your place. You can access it right from the beginning, though I wouldn’t recommend it without a weapon. A teleport potion is vital too, once I wandered up six levels in the dark, praying my food would hold up and the coal in my lantern wouldn’t burn out. All because I figured I would find one down in the depths, but never did before my sword was on the verge of shattering into pieces and I had to flee for my life.

There’s random loot and there’s ores, coal and crystals down in the mines. Mushrooms too. Probably other things I haven’t even found yet. Most of all there’s enemies. A lot of Turabadas, but I like to call them Rock Monsters. Wyrms too, which are pretty aptly named. Turabadas are great, they’ll drop stones and ores, both of which you’ll need in spades. Also these little grenades that are just GREAT for taking out their cousins. That’s cannibalized firepower, quite literally. Wyrms spit acid and pop up randomly out of the floor with a foreboding rumble. They’ll surprise you, but they’ll also surprise the Rock Monsters. Playing off their natural hatred of each other can make a tough fight a lot easier. Wyrms and Turabadas will fight each other to the death.

It seems dangerous at first, but really it’s all sunshine and unicorns up on the first few levels. Well, there’s no sunshine, but you know what I mean. The mushrooms aren’t even poisonous. The Turabadas are generally the little, adorable kind easily taken down with a few hits. Further down though, they get big and beefy. Unless you’ve got a few of those little grenades on you or some dynamite you better hope you block their giant craggy fists or you might find yourself back in town with all of your best gear sitting down in the pitch black somewhere. Sometimes you just have to call it quits and throw a teleport potion at your feet.

Get a little further down and you hit the crystal caverns. Wow are they are beautiful. There’s light in the darkness here, and I felt like I could see for miles. Still, it gets more dangerous the deeper you go. Crystal Wyrms, more big Rock Monsters. My heart was racing the first time I made it that far. All in the search of that sweet, sweet iron and gold. 

I was sweating. A Township Tale isn’t a particularly intense VR experience most of the time, but after an hour in the mines my headset was drenched. Partly from swinging swords and picks and partly from the excitement of it all. I got my iron. I got my gold. More awaits down in the depths. A seemingly infinite amount to be had in the darkness, and the thrill of acquiring it.

A Township Tale opens up to danger and adventure in the Mines, and making that sword you’ll need to keep the Wyrms off your back has special significance when it saves your life later on. It’s the beauty of any crafting system. Create the things you need to make your way to the hallmarks of victory. The Mines contain those hallmarks. Iron, gold, loot. All the things you want to make the things that will get you more of what you want.

More than anything I wanted some excitement, and I found that in the Mines. I will continue to find it as I delve deeper and deeper, always searching for the next big find. The next treasure always elusively a few floors down, guarded by whatever terrors lie in the depths.

How Does Onward’s Singleplayer Hold Up?

Want to watch this article instead of read it? Check the video version out on the Reality Remake Youtube Channel!

Onward is a slow paced tactical shooter by Downpour Interactive. Generally when you hear about Onward, you hear about the Multiplayer mode. Tense firefights where a single well placed shot can mean victory or demise. A great VOIP system done via local chat and an in game radio your entire team can hear. Small team combat where caution and quickness mean victory. Fun stuff for those so inclined, and if that is what you are looking for in a VR shooter then Onward is definitely your game. Especially on the Oculus Quest 2, with no cord to encumber the player, it is one hell of an experience when compared to shooters on more traditional platforms.

Onward does give you the ability to play against bot enemies on any of its Multiplayer maps. However, Onward’s Singleplayer mode is often overlooked. Why is that? Is Onward worthy of being considered a Singleplayer title as well as a Multiplayer one?

Oh, and in addition to the game modes listed here Onward recently added the Mercenary Game Mode!

Mode #1: Hunt

There are two Singleplayer modes in Onward, Hunt and Evac, which come in a range of difficulty modes. Hunt is straightforward. A certain amount of enemies, selected before the start button is pressed, are spawned on the map. Shoot them all to death to win.

Just as in a Multiplayer game of Onward you can select your loadout for the fight, but this time with a whopping 18 points to work with. Grab some night vision, body armor, all the attachments you could want. Go nuts. Singleplayer is a great place to have fun with equipment you might not try in Multiplayer, or to find out which weapons you like the most.

Hunt matches tend to follow a formula. Wander around for a little while until you encounter enemies, they always come in pairs of twos. Shoot them, and all of your AI opponents on the map are alerted to exactly what your position is, and will come straight for you. Here there are basically two options. Either hold your ground and try to shoot all of them before they overwhelm or flank you. Otherwise run away and try to ambush them while they close in on the last noise you made, rinse and repeat until either you lose a gunfight or all of the enemies are deceased.

Standing your ground is straightforward, and if all of the AI enemies come at you from one direction, can be awfully easy. Running and gunning is definitely more challenging, and it can be very fun to trick the AI by shooting from one position, scrambling to another, and shooting them in the back while they run to where they think you are.

All in all Hunt is straightforward. You can jack up the amount of enemies and put them on Rookie mode to have a fun time mowing them down in masses, or turn their difficulty to the maximum and see if you can outshoot them without dying instantly. Be careful if there are too few enemies on the map. You may end up wandering in circles trying to find where they spawned, and it is tedious.

Also be mindful of your ammunition. Onward doesn’t let you know how many bullets are left in a magazine, and when against a lot of enemies it is awfully easy to run out of rounds before they run out of bodies to throw at you. There are some stashes around the maps with spares, but not many.

Mode #2: Evac

Evac’s premise is much more interesting than Hunt. Where in Hunt you are meant to wipe out all of the enemies, in Evac they are infinite, and they are there to wipe out you. When starting an Evac game you will be placed in one of a few predetermined locations on the map, and after a brief minute pairs of enemies will spawn around you and immediately close in on your position.

Hold out for long enough and a Helicopter will fly in. Now enemies that spawn will run towards the Helicopter to cut you off. You need to change up your plan and run away from the defensible position you’ve been hiding in. Go too quickly and you might get shot down while in the open. Go too slowly and more enemies will spawn, making your trip that much harder.

Make it into the Helicopter to escape and win.

Evac definitely has more creativity to it than Hunt does. There are two distinct sections of the game, hold out, and then run to safety, with different ways of approaching them. Early on you can roam around as you might in Hunt, trying to hide more than fight, or hunker down in a good spot and let your opponents come at you. When running to the chopper you can try to make it there quickly, or carefully clear corners and methodically make your way there. Whether you are low on ammunition might also help this decision.

Either way it can all be over in an instant, so every move counts. In this way Onward’s Singleplayer is similar to its Multiplayer modes. The shooting is tense and over quickly, so quick shots and quick reflexes are King. The AI opponents, depending on their difficulty, can also not hit the broad side of a barn, or accurately give you a lobotomy at a thousand yards.

The AI

Speaking of that AI, they will see you extremely quickly, even when the whole map isn’t alerted after the first shots are fired. Onward’s Singleplayer is just as much as test of reflexes and shooting skill as in Multiplayer, the opponents are just much worse at taking cover and acting tactically. Generally they will just walk straight towards where they think you are, and stand still while firing once they see you. They’re not very clever, and often will just walk right to where you are clearly waiting in ambush.

Their strength is in their numbers and their ability to surprise you from behind, because you have nobody to watch your back. Their other strength is to occasionally shoot you with instant precision. It really depends, and sometimes feels a little cheap. All in all they show no tactics and coordination. Their weapons also vary, though any weapon can hit you reliably at any range. It comes down to the difficulty selection. Rookie is ridiculously easy, but even Experienced can cause instant death.

Maps

The experience of Singleplayer Onward can vary, just as in Multiplayer, on which map you pick. Some, like Downfall, will heavily emphasize long ranged fighting due to it being so large and with few sight obstacles.

Others, like Subway, Cargo, or Suburbia, are very claustrophobic and much more entertaining for quick and up close gunplay. Picking the right map for how you want to play the game is very important. Otherwise you might bring an MP5 to an SKS fight.

In Conclusion/TLDR

At the end of the day there’s some fun to be had in Onward’s Singleplayer modes, but that well dries up quickly. With only two modes to play and uninteresting AI opponents it has difficulty standing up on its own. On the other hand it is a great place to play with loadouts and possibly have a bit of Onward’s superb shooting when you don’t have the time or patience for Multiplayer. It’s also great practice for reflexes and shooting accurately.

Though at the end of the day it only really serves as practice for the core of the game, Multiplayer. Onward is a Multiplayer focused game and that is where it truly shines.

Having trouble sweating through your headset’s face cover? Try out new ones from VR Cover that repel sweat and are easy to swap in.

Onward is available on Steam as well as the Oculus Store for 24.99. Updates are often added to the game including new Maps and other options. Maybe one day there will be more to Singleplayer, but not for now.

A Township Tale: How To Play Solo

A Video version of this article can be found on the Reality Remake Youtube Channel.

A Township Tale, which recently released on the Oculus Quest, is meant to be a Mulitplayer RPG experience. The Developers say that it is meant to be played that way. The mechanics clearly show that a lot of hands are meant to work together to achieve the goals of a burgeoning town in a fantasy wilderness. Crafting items, cooking food, collecting resources, fighting monsters, all of these things are meant to be specialized roles that players can excel at. In the end it seems that the goal of the mechanics of A Township Tale is to create a specialized labor economy of sorts. A fun specialized labor economy, but specialized none the less. The experience system also lends itself to that. Do one thing more, get more perks and abilities that help to do that one thing.

What if that’s not your bag? What if you don’t like to play with others, or don’t know anyone you would like to play the game with, or would find the experience of exploring and building a town more relaxing on your own? Is A Township Tale simply not for you? If you’d like to find others to play the game with, just join a server, or look on the Reddit page. There are loads of people willing to teach you the game and have a fun time in it. For those who prefer solo play, we will answer those questions here, and possibly show you a path forward to a, if not bustling, at least well constructed Township.

Note that this article is for the Oculus Quest version of the game, which does not currently have the same features as the PCVR version.

The Learning Curve

As we have already covered here at Reality Remake, A Township Tale has horrible tutorials. A lot of what you need to know will be covered here, but if you ever get stuck on how to do anything and just can’t figure it out, do yourself a favor and watch a youtube video about it, or read the wiki. These resources are invaluable for figuring out the crafting professions. Gathering and fighting are much more intuitive, and relatable to other VR games.

If you would rather leave some mystery in the world, then we won’t spoil too much here.

A New World

So you spawn into your new world, wide eyed and bushy tailed. Ah the possibilities, the adventures in store for you. Nothing but you, the open world, an an experience to enjoy. There are sticks, stones, and pieces of flint littered about. All of the resources for basic tools are abundant. There are even pots and crates around, which you can smash open for more limited resources. It’s a great time to wander about and get your bearings. Oh, and watch out for the birds.

Soon enough you’ll have wandered through all of the buildings of your Township. You may even come across the mines, or blocked passages and unbuilt bridges. There seems to be so much to do, but where to start? Well, as much as you might dream of wandering into untamed wilderness right off the bat, there are things to be done first to acquire the proper tools in order to do so without death or worse, a serious lack of inventory slots to hold that sweet, sweet treasure.

Keep an eye out for any treasure chests you find, and visit them often. They can spawn useful items that you can’t make yourself yet. More importantly they also spawn book pages and metal molds to expand your crafting and gathering capabilities.

VR Survival, but still Survival

Early on in survival games there are two things which always limit a player and either make work much slower, or make areas harder or impossible to explore. Those two things are equipment and inventory slots. The grass backpack you begin with can hold six items, and your belt can hold 4 for a measly total of 10. If you’ve broken any of those pots while exploring your Township you will already feel the pain of leaving useful items scattered around, and needing to run back and forth to store them all. Without a team of other players, quickly cutting down on running around storing things is a top priority. Luckily one of the few recipes you begin with is to create a leather backpack, which holds 9 slots instead of 6.

Priority #1: Stay Fed

First things first though. You have a hunger bar and you need to eat. Time to rustle up some food. You might remember those birds from earlier. Well get your favorite rusty tool or rock on a stick and get to bashing.

The birds will drop meat, an easy way to get nutrients and a full belly. No need for cauldrons or pots, just toss those pieces of meat near an open flame until they smoke and eventually turn brown. Carry them with you, and eat anywhere on the go. Of course that will take an inventory slot, but now it’s time to lessen that particular problem.

Priority #2: A Better Backpack

While you’re walking around town, smashing pots and crates, there are a bevy of useful items that you cannot attain in any other way which you will find. The three you will need most of all to start with are metal buckles, leather straps, and the differently colored rolls of leather.

You will need at a minimum 2 leather rolls, 7 leather straps, and 11 metal buckles. Bring as many of these as you can find before you begin, especially the straps and buckles. You will probably break some of them. If you thought making the grass and sticks backpack in the tutorial was hard, then making this new backpack brings a whole new challenge. That is, not breaking pieces off of it when you are hammering in nails.

Hammering in nails is an art and a science. You must hit them directly. Not too hard, not too soft. Too hard and you damage the new piece that you are nailing in. Too soft and your blow will have no effect. If you make too many mistakes before hammering in a single nail you can always remove and re-add the piece to bring it up to full health. If you hammer in a single nail then you have to either hammer them all in successfully, wait for the piece to pop off by itself, or keep going until you either succeed or break it. Some of these pieces require a lot of nails, so being careful and precise is key. If you tend to hit too hard, use a rock on a stick. If you tend to hit too soft, then one of the many rusty hammers lying around may be easier. There should be plenty of the required pieces around town to make a single backpack.

You will want to save your old backpack in case you perish somewhere (for instance, deep in the mines) with your brand new one. Be careful just leaving it laying around as it may disappear.

With that done, what to do next? Well we’ll tell you.

Gating by Labor

A Township Tale gates off new areas not by requiring a certain item to progress, ala the Zelda series, or purely by placing enemies in your way which are difficult to progress past without better equipment. No, A Township Tale prevents your access to new areas via Labor. To build a bridge to a new zone you will need to add the materials necessary in order to build it. You will need a lot of these materials. Without anybody else to rely on to assist in getting them you will want to collect them as efficiently as possible. A piece of flint attached to a stick will work, but it will be slow. So naturally you will want to acquire better tools as quickly as possible, and the ability to make more when they break.

Priority #3: Better Tools

There are two buildings in the town that you cannot access right from the start. The Woodcutter’s hut and the Blacksmith. The Blacksmith is needed to make metal tools, though metal ore is freely available. Unfortunately, a whopping amount of wood is needed to build the stairs that lead to the Blacksmith.

So alright, just need to go cut down some trees and off we are to the world of advanced tools. Well no, there are only decorative trees in the town. The trees that can be chopped down in order to get such a large supply of wood are gated behind another labor wall. The first one you likely came across actually, a bridge to the forest near the starting spawn.

So it’s time to do some mining, and not for the stones you’ve been pulling out of the ground. You need white stones, also called sandstone, which are only found by mining nodes and occasionally some small amount in chests. Luckily you won’t need to do it all with a piece of flint on a stick. A fresh server will include a pick axe head and handle right next to the chest in front of the entrance to the mines. Just combine them and you’ve got the perfect tool to quickly acquire the white stone needed to build that bridge. You can also get some Copper and Coal while you’re at it. Saving any grey stones you find is also a good idea, as you will need a wagonload of those later on.

A good deal of all of these can be found without even entering the mine, just around the entrance. It is easier to break open a bunch of rocks at once, and then bend over and pick up all of the stones and ores in one swoop. If you thoroughly explore the entire overworld you can find all of the white stone needed to build the bridge, just barely. Otherwise you will need to stop down into the Mines. If you’d like to shake things up with a little adventure and danger, then definitely go into the Mines.

The Mines

The mines are very, very dark. Your torches will go out, and if you don’t like to put your torch on the ground while you’re swinging your pick, you can put a piece of dry grass on top of a flint on a stick and have light and mining capability in a single tool. Slow mining capability, but still. Since the way down is long and you may need a quick escape, you may want to bring one of the purple teleport potions if you’ve found one in your earlier exploration.

There is also a chest just inside the entrance, and as with all chests it is best to check it periodically for new items and recipes. If you want those sweet ores and white stones though, you’ll need to go down an ominous staircase to the first level of the mines.

The darkness swallows you in the depths. Sound echoes off of the walls. You will hear scraping coming from further within. Unless you’re really ready for a fight then don’t go too deep. The Rock Monsters hit like trucks and can take a beating. Gather the white stones first and foremost, and try to leave with your skin intact. There are also some chests and crates to be looted as well. If you have the stomach to go deeper, that is.

Off to be a Woodsman

When you have collected the white stones necessary to build the bridge, then congratulations. You’ve passed your first labor gate. It will get easier. Just put the rocks in the chest and watch as magic assembles your way forward.

Further in you will find the Woodcutter’s Hut, and a bevy of rusted tools laying about. Don’t bother with them. A proper axe is tucked into a log down the path. As with the pickaxe earlier this will make gathering a lot faster. You can see that some trees have different bark, and tend to stand up a little straighter than the decorative trees you’ve seen thus far. These can be chopped down just like the ones in the tutorial. Also make sure to bring a shield, as big a shield as you have found. Some of the trees will fight back.

The first big area containing a lot of harvestable trees will also have a large amount of these enemies. The first couple of trees can be harvested without attracting their attention, but the quickest way to get the lumber needed to access the Blacksmith is to take them out. Hope you brought your shield, because they like to shoot spores at you. Hold your shield up to block the spores, and whack them with your axe. Also, being made of wood, they will drop wood as well, along with some strange spores. Might as well take all of them. With the creatures gone and a few large trees chopped into wedges, you should have more than enough to build the staircase to the Blacksmith.

Congratulations once more! You’ve cleared the second labor gate and can now access every crafting building in the town. A world of new tools and weapons awaits you.

More to Come

Reality Remake isn’t done with A Township Tale yet. For the followup to this article we have another guide on How to Make Metal Weapons and Tools Solo as well. Now that you’ve gone through all of this effort to gain access to the Blacksmith, it’s time to make use of it.

Anyone who wants to follow this guide, but hasn’t played yet, can buy A Township Tale on Oculus Quest for 9.99 or play for free on PCVR.

A Township Tale: Fun Premise, Bad Tutorials

A New Dimension of Multiplayer Survival

A Township Tale is a new VR title from Alta, which just released on Oculus Quest. It has best been described as a sort of Runescape VR (for anyone who still plays or remembers that most venerable of graphical MUDS). While lacking in the “Massive Multiplayer” aspect of a game like Runescape or World of Warcraft as Orbus VR: Reborn attempts to emulate, A Township Tale focuses more on it’s systems and the ways in which a player can do things normally done in a Multiplayer RPG space, but in VR.

Take, for instance, lighting a fire. In a “Flat” game, aka a non-VR title using a mouse and keyboard, you would need fire lighting items in your in game inventory. Flint and Steel, and some wood. Then you either select a campfire to build from a menu, maneuver it’s hologram into position, and press a button to place it on the ground. Maybe you want to cook something on that fire, well you press a use key and a menu pops up and you can turn some uncooked meat into some cooked meat with another button press. All in all, pretty removed from the actual process of creating a fire and cooking meat. Even in a games market saturated with survival titles, the most basic aspects of survival must be abstracted away to suit the controls which a player can use.

In VR there are so many opportunities to take things a player can do and make them physical, almost make them close to the process of doing the actual thing, because you have virtual hands that can actually move objects like you can with your real hands. A Township Tale excels at this, where most VR games have totally ignored this potential.

Back to the fire. In A Township Tale there’s no menu saying “Here’s what you need for a fire then press this button". You need to know how to build a fire, or you need to intuit it. You place some grass on the ground and get some pieces of firewood ready. Then you get some flint and a stone and smack them together over the grass until the spark catches the kindling. Once the grass lights up you put the wood over it, and wait for the wood to catch and burn as well. Put on a few more pieces of wood, arrange them so that the flames touch each, and there you have it, a fire. All done by moving objects with your virtual/physical hands, while sitting on your actual floor. With a fire built, let’s say you want to cook some meat. You take some raw meat from your inventory and just… put it on the fire. Wait for it to smoke, and wait for it to turn into cooked meat. You watch it like you would actually watch meat cook. Note the change in color, take it off before it burns. Try not to burn yourself in the process. No menu, no list of ingredients. Well, there are some lists of ingredients for crafting, but those are in actual books you need to open and flip through the pages of, but more on that later.

Amazing, right? It feels… so real. It pulls you in, and makes the feeling of creating something where there was just raw materials so much truer to life and truer to form. That is what VR is best at, taking something already done in games and taking it closer to reality. However, here in A Township Tale, that’s also the problem. How do new players learn to do these things?

The Tutorial Island

Well, there is a tutorial. It’s not a very good one. When you first create your character and enter the game you are thrust into a little tutorial world, and there first come into contact with the way A Township Tale expects you to learn how to do things in its world. Billboards and Checklists.

Well the first one seems straightforward enough, complete all of the tutorials and the actual game begins. The woodcutting is easy. There are axes, chop a tree down, then chop that tree into smaller bits. Smaller and smaller until you’re left with some wood suitable for crafting or keeping a fire going.

Mining gets a little more complicated. This time you need to make your own tools. A flint pickaxe and a torch. There are checklist items for both. Though one is for the Crafting checklist and the other is for the Mining checklist. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, as you will need the flint pickaxe to mine anything. The “Craft flint and stick together” item really belongs on the mining checklist. God help you if you start bashing a rock with another rock. That might not make sense in the real world, but this is still a video game. Maybe you’d think that would work. Nope, you need flint on a stick.

Grab your piece of flint and a stick, and helpfully a little trail of green magic will show you where you can put it to finish creating your little pickaxe. The same goes for a torch. That was easy enough as well. You go into the mines, bash a few stones into smaller stones. Boom, mining complete. Congratulations. Now comes the hard part, crafting.

Crafting Starts Hard

Crafting feels like a skill, something you would need to learn just like you would in real life. There a knack to smashing in nails just right. There’s an order to where the pieces go. Clearly knowledge of the game helps a lot in crafting, so crafting something for the first time without that knowledge is confusing and often frustrating. The backpack you must make in the tutorial island is a great example of this.

A nearby sign helpfully states that you only need grass and sticks to make this backpack. Luckily there are a lot of both just outside of the building. It also states that you will need to hammer in some nails. Hopefully you can figure out that nails are automatically added and that you need a rock to hammer them in. At first you just add pieces, sticks and grass. When you pick up the right piece, where it should go is highlighted, but you don’t know what order they go on it. A lot of trial and error ensues. Maybe you notice when a nail should be hammered in before you can add the next piece, maybe you spend ten minutes trying to add the next piece before noticing that you needed to hammer in a nail before going forward. Maybe you figure out that the sticks in the frame need to go in before the grass does. Well you either figure it out yourself, or you take off your VR headset and turn to the internet for someone to show you exactly how its done. Also, hammering is hard. Just like chopping wood, there’s a knack to getting it just right, and sometimes when you hit a nail it seems like it should go in further and it doesn’t.

Getting caught on a single part that just doesn’t make sense is frustrating. There’s really nothing to turn to in game to help you figure it out. So you may just take your headset off and Youtube it, which is a failure of the game. Having to turn to Youtube to figure something out means that the tutorial is just insufficient. Not to mention, this backpack is the easy part. It’s the introduction. Maybe it’ll make sense to you, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to not run into a bug that makes this even harder. A nail that is required for the next section may not appear, or the place you need to put a part may not highlight. Sure A Township Tale still needs a lot of work put into it, but when you’re not sure what you should do next one of these bugs is a show stopper. Whenever you put the backpack together you’re ready for the open world, the true game.

Crafting Gets Harder

It’s going to feel like one long tutorial for a very long time. With so many more things to craft and do there’s a lot of figuring out ahead. Oh, and checklists, no tutorials, no how tos, just checklists.

Let’s take carpentry as an example. To make a lot of things you’re going to need wooden handles and other parts. They’re the base of a lot of useful items, like swords. The checklist seems simple. Add the ingredients to make a short wooden handle, 6 wood in this case. Select the recipe and add it to the bench, and then just chisel it out of the wood. In most games this would be sufficient. All accomplished in a few button presses. In A Township Tale, there’s a lot of details not handled in such a simple list. First of all there’s adding the wood to the bench. No, you don’t just place it on the bench.

You really need to place it between the two pincers on the let side of the bench, to hold them in place for chiseling later. Well nothing tells you that. You need to figure it out, and if you don’t you’re going to have to Youtube someone else doing it. See the trend? When you don’t get it naturally there’s nothing in game to help you out. Well there’s some arcane runes of some sort in the crafting recipe itself, helpfully sitting on a nearby pedestal, but good luck getting such minor, yet vital, details out of that.

So you’ve got the wood on the block, the next item is to add the recipe to the bench. Okay, there’s no obvious way to select a recipe. Maybe just placing the book on the bench will do something? No. Maybe putting the book in the slot on the side of the bench that seems to be just about the dimensions of the book will add it. No. What you need to do is rip a page of the recipe out of the book, and then put it in that little slot. You may have tried ripping the page out and just not ripped hard enough, because you weren’t sure that was the way to do it. So now the bit you need to chisel off first lights up. Okay, grab the nearby chisel and hammer, and whack at the back of the chisel like you would in real life. Intuitive. Oh, but make sure you whack it with a wide swing, and make sure the chisel is just about horizontal but not quite, or there will be absolutely no result.

There are so many places to get caught up the first time you do even the most basic recipe, and that is the crux of the problem. It is insanely easier and less frustrating to just stop playing the game and find a video of someone else doing the same thing, so you can get all of the minor details. Hopefully you don’t get bored or distracted on the way back to the game. There really should be something in game that tells you these gaps, the checklists provide some structure, but just aren’t sufficient.

Tutorials are a lot harder in VR, where the tasks are so physical and the guidance is more complicated than saying “press a button” or highlighting the button to press. A more elegant solution like a hologram that mimics what you need to do might be in order, but that is much harder to implement. Even more thorough text that tells you how to do these things would help. For instance, telling you that you need to rip out the crafting page instead of just saying “Add the Recipe to the Bench.” Games need an in game tutorial that doesn’t rely on exiting the game to watch a video in order to do basic crafting and tasks. Or do they?

In Conclusion

A Township Tale has a big emphasis on a community working together to achieve goals. Maybe the designers intended for players to rely on one another to teach them how to do these things. There’s definitely fun to be had there, and the joy in passing on skills earned to a junior player.

Crafting isn’t as simple as pushing a button, there is actual skill involved. The more you do it the better you get at it. Not by seeing a number go up, but by being physically more agile at performing the actions you need to perform to turn a chunks of wood into a useful handle, or raw meat and kindling into a fire and cooked meat. That is the magic of VR, but it also offers a big challenge to new players. Does this lack of proper in game tutorials make the barrier to entry high enough to discourage new players, or would it rather encourage them to seek help from others and build communities in the process? Feel free to comment below on what you think.

Anyone who wants to try out this in depth crafting system can buy A Township Tale on Oculus Quest for 9.99 or play for free on PCVR. The Oculus Quest Price tag does come with some cosmetic bonuses and in game currency. If you really want to get into the game fast, watch some tutorials on crafting before jumping in.

More to Come

Reality Remake isn’t done with A Township Tale yet. After figuring out the basics there is a lot more game to dig into. Join us at our server, named realityremake.com. More articles on this intriguing experience to come soon.

Sniper Elite VR Review

Preamble

World War 2 Shooters are one of the most prolific in the genre. For good reason too. Democracy stood against Autocracy. Freedom against Facism. A conflict that now is completely black and white. Nazis are bad, and so whenever you shoot a Nazi the joy of a shot well completed and a kill well scored is twice as sweet.

That is why it has been such a mystery that it has taken so long for a World War 2 Shooter like Sniper Elite: VR to appear on the Oculus Quest store. We’ve got a few modern shooters such as Contractors, which features an okay WW2 multiplayer mode, and Onward. Until now there has been no game completely set in and dedicated to this most classic of first person shooter subgenres. Of course now there is, and boy does VR, as always, put the “First” in First Person.

Sure, there’s the Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond too, but unless you’ve got a really good 5GHz router setup or want to chain your headset to an expensive computer, Sniper Elite:VR is what you’ve got now.

The Setup

You’re an old Italian man, an ex-Partisan. The frame for the story of the game is sitting at your father’s house, now yours, reminiscing on how hard you fought in the 1940s for the peace you now have in the 1980s. The player character’s voice is sweet and mellow with a charming accent. Get used to it, you’re going to hear it a lot.

In typical in medias res style, you are thrust into the first mission. You’re told how to pick up a rifle, how to load and chamber it. Shoot some targets though you’re supposedly in the middle of an active Partisan v. occupying Fascist force battle, and then go to the castle walls to get comfortable sniping the Wehrmacht. The controls are not the best, and sometimes you have to move your controllers uncomfortably close together to load or unload some weapons, like the first pistol you unlock, but time will get you used to them.

Between the missions you are brought back to the 1980s, watch your kids and grandkids play on a nice day, and go through your book of memories to access other missions. There’s more narration here as well. You’ll hear some every time to go back to the 1980s. Get used to it.

It’s a decent setup. There’s little emphasis on the actual strategy and goings-on of the war, though enough to provide some background. Mostly it’s just a series of scenarios with you, your weapons, and a lot of staring down scopes and popping the skulls off of the Wehrmacht. As mentioned, the narrator is talking almost constantly through all of this. Not even Morgan Freeman could pull off so much narration without getting a little annoying over time, but it’s not so bad.

The Controls

Controls are a huge sticking point in any VR title. Too floaty and it takes you out of the experience, too tight and you feel as though your arms are covered in molasses. Sniper Elite: VR definitely trends on the floaty side. Objects you hold, mostly weapons, don’t feel as if they have any weight when you move your hands. The slightest tremor can completely ruin your perfectly sighted shot. For a game as focused on precision shooting and sniping as Sniper Elite: VR this is often a problem. Sometimes even grabbing objects from the environment does not feel as responsive as it should. Future patches may fix this, but at the time of writing Sniper Elite: VR is barely passable in this respect.

There’s also some glitches with loading weapons as well. Often you need to pull a pin out of a grenade twice before it arms. These sorts of issues happen a lot with newly released VR titles, and when the patches come hopefully they will be fixed. Warhammer 40,000: Battle Sister also had a lot of issues like this at launch, and now they are almost nonexistent.

If you’re not good at sniper rifles in VR, well now’s your chance to practice. As the name implies the use of sniper rifles is heavily encouraged by the mechanics of Sniper Elite: VR. You’re often placed far away from enemies and are always outnumbered, so anything with a scope and large caliber is naturally the best option. Also there’s uh… well there’s the kill cam. Let’s talk about the kill cam.

The Kill Cam

When Sniper Elite came out as a PC title, one of it’s greatest back-of-the-box selling points was the kill cam. For those that don’t want to just see the Fascist soldier simply fall back, lifeless, after a good shot, but want to see their organs burst and the high speed bullet rip the life out of them with x-ray vision. Sniper Elite is all about how precise and well-aimed your shots are, after all.

This doesn’t port so well to VR, a medium all about total immersion into a new space. It’s a very weird feeling to suddenly be ripped off of your battlement or tower or sniper’s nest. It feels as though you are thrust, physically, in front of the soon to be dead opponent to watch their skull shatter and eyeballs turn into mist. Then you’re back to your post, as the player character once more. It’s jarring, it’s a bad idea for VR, and it’s a bit much. Especially since it triggers very often, even on the minimal setting. Luckily it can be turned off completely.

The Arsenal

Oh, but there is still a lot of fun to be had. VR Singleplayer titles tend to lack a large variety of weaponry, well not in Sniper Elite:VR. Over the course of the game you can use every conceivable weapon that could be found in Italy at the time. From Panzerfausts to M1911 Pistols. There is a wide array of not only sniper rifles, but sub machine guns, pistols, shotguns, and even high explosives to put to use against the forces of the Wehrmacht. Though you’ll be using the sniper rifles most of all.

Your player character can carry a large amount of artillery on them at any given moment, all on a fairly well implemented, though sometimes frustrating set of body points for storage. Two on the back for the big guns. Two for grenades, two for pistols, and two pistols or explosives. You could carry four pistols if you want to be a real desperado.

The various methods of loading, chambering, aiming, and firing each of these weapons is intuitive and highly varied. They are introduced at a good pace to keep things interesting. After you discover a weapon your favorites can be put into one of three loadouts to use your missions ahead. Though you’ll be using the sniper rifles more than anything else. There’s not much difference between those, though there are a lot of them. Sometimes it feels that the variety of weapons is a little wasted, but boy they are still fun.

Your enemies also vary their weapons, though not as much as you. You wouldn’t see a Nazi sniper using a Russian Mosin-Nagant after all, or a Fascist shocktrooper using a British Sten gun. They use german weapons, though their ammunition is compatible for the same weapon type. Over the course of the game you will see more and more elite enemies, which can absorb multiple shots before they are killed. Unless you aim for the face of course, the face is always the best place.

Pretty standard stuff, though what’s more interesting is their AI. Rather, what's more interesting is how uninteresting their AI is. Nazi troopers will generally spawn in, run to a predefined point, and shoot at you from the same spot. Maybe they’ll move around a little bit, or patrol the same path over and over. They’re not very smart, but there’s a lot of them.

Also, you are fragile, and the Nazis are pretty accurate at short range. Getting close to the Fascist Occupiers is hazardous to your health. You can die very quickly from a couple of bursts of an SMG. So you must take cover, which is fantastic in VR. No other type of game feels better to take cover in, physically crouching behind a wall, listening to bullets chip the rock as you steady your hands for the next time you pop out and take a shot. Sniper Elite: VR does this well, and it helps with its reliance on ranged combat.

Though if you would rather be throwing grenades and clearing trenches run and gun style, this game may not have enough of that for you. Like it says in the title, Sniper Elite: VR wants you to spend most of your time well… sniping.

Precision is Key

Some enemies can survive a sniper round to the body, head, legs, arms, but not the face. The face is where the points are, and where the satisfying instant kills are. Especially satisfying if you like the kill cam a lot. Sniper Elite: VR helpfully provides you the ability to “focus” your shots. Doing so gives you a little more zoom to your scope or iron sights, and highlights where you will hit. Also it slows down time, giving you plenty of time to line up the perfect kill. If you take your time, it’s pretty satisfying.

You get points for shooting certain organs or body parts, lungs, brains, et cetera. You get points for blowing up enemies. You get more points for killing enemies from stealth. If you like to see a nicer playthrough give you a bigger number, Sniper Elite: VR has that for you. There are also collectables hidden throughout the maps as well for any treasure hunters, and challenges to complete for every mission. Usually they are something like “Get so many points” or “Get X kills with X weapon.” Make sure you complete these, as a certain amount of objectives are needed to progress to later missions. Also there’s an experience bar for each weapon, though they don’t get you anything for filling it. Maybe if you collect all of them you’ll get… a golden gun? Please leave a comment if you’ve filled all of them.

While not as satisfying as getting a perfect playthrough on a game like Hitman, dispatching enemies in the most quiet and efficient way is definitely a form of satisfaction to be had here. The numbers will tell you how well you did so.

You can go back to previously completed missions at any time, so if you feel the need to perfect your playthrough, go nuts.

Stealth

Stealth is optional in Sniper Elite: VR, and that’s a good thing. Enemies spot you from very far away, which makes sense. You rarely have a chance to get into melee range. You’re meant to shoot them from afar with the silenced single shot pistol or sniper rifle. Unless you’re using the silenced rifle, found much later in the game. To shoot a Nazi guard stealthily with most sniper rifles you will need to wait for something to mask the sound of the shot. So you always know when you’re in a “stealth” section of the game, because some loud sound will constantly fill the top part of your screen with “Sound Masked”. If the “Sound Masked” icon is at the top of your screen, your gunshot can still be heard if the sound is not loud enough. You need to shoot at the very apex of the noise.

Other than not being heard, you also need to avoid being seen. This system is a little frustrating in VR, as you need to press the crouch button, rather than physically crouch, to enter stealth mode. Leave a comment if you’ve found a way around this, but physically crouching offers no stealth benefits. There is no hybrid method like in The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners, which allows you to physically crouch or press the button if you prefer to take it easy on your knees. Pressing the crouch button makes avoiding detection a lot easier. It’s also immersion breaking if you don’t prefer to use it.

The guards either seem to be completely oblivious or able to spot you from miles away. In general the stealth is alright, and not strictly necessary. If you’re looking for a Thief: Deadly Shadows VR this is not quite the game you’re looking for, but there’s some good sneaky gameplay to be had in some missions.

To Conclude/TLDR

The VR aspect of Sniper Elite: VR is not very new or revolutionary. Though for the Quest, which is starved for even decent Singleplayer shooters, it is a good addition. The mechanics are all about shooting accurately and carefully from range, though the VR physics are subpar and make this a bit more difficult than it needs to be. There are bugs, but only enough to annoy and frustrate occasionally.

If you like World War 2 Shooters, definitely get this game. There’s plenty of good Nazi killing to be had here. Shooting Nazis always makes for feel-good fun.