Posted on Dec 16, 2016

It turns out that you can see what it feels like to be the paddle in pong. Well, you can be a future dude on like a Spider-Man Green Goblin Glider in some sort of disc style pong arena. The game is called Ripcoil.

This game is crazy. At first, when I tried to play I was leaning my head which made me feel queezy for a minute. Pretty quickly I figured out how to get great control by bending my knees and leaning like I imagine a skier would. The moves in this game are to lean to float left and right, you can catch the disc in either hand, or you can charge your hand up and punch the disc back. The opponent can see this charging happen becuase your fist glows green. This is where VR gets interesting. The ability to use your body as a game mechnic is here with possibly unintended concequences. When I was charging my fist I figured I could hide my hand behind my back.

It worked! Hiding my hand behind my back made it so my opponent couldn't see my fist charge. Secret tactics just for VR games. This kind of thing opens up a whole new world of gameplay. Having to see if someone is hiding. Wow. I really hope they don't patch that out.

Here is a link to the full stream if you're interested in seeing the progression of the game as I played it, which was one practice and many online games.