What’s up with OrbusVR, the blocky indie VR sandbox that breezed through its quickie Kickstarter to raise $34,000 last month — 340% of its goal? Quite a bit, it turns out! Ad Alternum has been quite busy — in fact, it says it’s already put the Kickstarter dough to use hiring two new employees, one working on quests and one working on art. The studio is plotting a 48-hour alpha test beginning on April 20th, with five more coming over the next couple of months and the beta fixed to July 2017. Would-be testers who didn’t back the Kickstarter can create accounts and purchase upgrades that include alpha access.
Founder Riley Dutton has also posted that the game now has an official wiki, a form of group voice chat, a proper naming policy, and progress toward the character customization effort, including hair, skin tone, faces, and eyes.
“The addition of the faces really adds a lot to the player model, so we’re super excited to play with that the next time we get you all in-game with us,” he writes. “We’re also working on a system so that the expressions of the player’s character change when they are speaking, and hopefully it can do some pitch detection and other tricks to show expressions as well.”
