We went hands-on once again. We went hands-on once again.
Announced in April,
from Just Add Water and Wired Productions feels like the power-digging equivalent of DIG VR. The game involves digging up different areas in Diglington using a minidigger, various attachments and other tools before unlocking new ones. We took a look at PowerWash Simulator VR again in trailer after the first time. It was a much more polished presentation, and I tested out the thumbstick controls. When simultaneously pressing the left- and right-sticks, they switch between arm and vehicle movement. This is a great alternative to full-motion controls, but I still prefer their physicality. The tutorial was surprisingly the same as my last demo. You can find out more about my previous impressions below. Also, I detailed the in-game audio options, core gameplay, and difficulty settings. My latest preview is focused on the Sandbox Mode, which we hadn’t explored before. It takes a while to explore because of the small play area. Just Add Water’s mini-games are a creative way to bring familiar games into a new light. They work surprisingly well. The absurd premise behind bowling is to attach a ball to a rope and then swing the ball around to strike different pins. The game is a fun, novel take on an old sport. I had trouble at first judging the movements required to control the ball’s motion. Billy’s Ball Pit has you scooping blue balls out of a pit in a certain time frame. You earn more points if you grab smaller balls. It was a little tricky to control the controls when trying to grab the smaller balls, but rewarding when you succeeded. The game also penalizes you for picking up the red balls. This requires finesse. The goal is to use your digger bucket and grab as many ducks as possible, while only the ones wearing cowboy hats count. Seeing a digger used for carnival games is quite amusing, grabbing ducks wasn’t too challenging, and the online leaderboards mean I can see this getting competitive at launch.UploadVR Summer ShowcaseFinally, I also tried the ‘Lost Treasures’ mode, and that’s basically a treasure hunt. The bucket of your digger acts as a detector, which beeps more and louder the closer you are to hidden treasure. It’s not guaranteed that you will find any treasure as the boxes may contain trash. It’s a fun idea that nicely builds upon the carnival games approach to DIG VR’s side content.Quest 3Beyond the core campaign, DIG VR’s mini games show that the game isn’t taking itself too seriously in a good way. This is a fun balance between arcade games and a lighter simulator like PowerWash Simulator. Just Add Water is currently a winner. We do not have a release date, but it’s a formula that works.