Bohemia Interactive today announced Project Lucie, an experimental VR puzzle game for Oculus Rift, which is also playable with classic mouse and keyboard controls. Project Lucie is the latest free addition to Bohemia Incubator, a label for experimental games that are made available to the public. The launch follows the graduation of another Incubator title, Ylands, which entered Steam Early Access last week.
In Project Lucie, players take on the role of Lucie, an 8 year old kid with a big imagination, and follow her story by completing puzzles that come to life! Beyond Lucie’s story, an Editor mode invites players to explore their own imagination by building their very own puzzles. While it’s playable on PC with a mouse and keyboard, the game is built to support Oculus Rift and Touch controllers – to fully immerse players in a Virtual Reality environment, and provide a complete gameplay experience: full physical simulation, and complete presence within Lucie’s world and imagination. A Pre-Alpha version of Project Lucie is now available to play for free via the Bohemia Store.
“Project Lucie is at a very early stage of development” explains Project Lead, Laurent Lavigne, in his Welcome Blog. “It includes just one of Lucie’s stories, together with a creative sandbox and editor mode. We hope this ‘slice’ of features presents the core of what the game’s about. As part of Bohemia Incubator, our intention is to let players try our game, and share with us their feedback, comments and recommendations.”
Project Lucie is the third game to be made available under the Bohemia Incubator label. This Incubator release enables a small but dedicated team at Bohemia Interactive to test game concepts and validate design decisions, as well as to guide the development of supporting technologies and services. In addition, it is a way to learn more about different areas of game development, game genres, and platforms.
While there are similarities between Bohemia Incubator and Steam Early Access, a key difference is that Incubator games can be much more basic, experimental, and rough. Moreover, Bohemia Interactive might even decide to cancel or stop supporting an Incubator game. To reflect this, people will often be able to play the games for free while they are part of Bohemia Incubator.
