When most people think about the types of things that want to do in virtual reality, then they almost always think of experiences that are from the first-person perspective. But Lucky’s Tale proved to me that there are going to be a whole range of experiences that people don’t know that they want to have until they actually have them in VR. It also proved to a lot of VR developers that not only could a third-person perspective work, but that it could work so well as to be able to cause a fit of VR giggles for how surprisingly compelling and delightful it could be.
I talked with Playful Corp’s Paul Bettner in January about the decision to bundle Lucky’s Tale with every Oculus Rift, and I also had a chance to catch up with him again a few weeks ago at GDC for some pre-launch thoughts as he was showing off the final build of Lucky’s Tale.
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Having the camera in the third-person perspective with a finely tuned movement algorithms solves a lot of the problems of VR locomotion, but it also creates a very stimulating experience for your brain. Lucky’s Tale places all of of the action within the near-field sweet spot of VR, which feels like it’s about an arm’s-length worth of distance. This allows you to really see a lot of the stereoscopic effects that are the strength of VR, but it’s also really integrated within the gameplay of Lucky’s Tale in that it really wouldn’t work as well if you tried to play it in 2D.
I’ve been a huge fan of Lucky’s Tale since first playing it at GDC 2015 because it gave me that sense of nostalgic awe and wonder that I remember feeling from playing through Super Mario Bros as a kid. I had a chance to play a demo build of a single level of Lucky’s Tale back in September, and I ended up playing a single level over and over again for four hours trying to create my own self-created achievements. The final build of Lucky’s Tale will have at least a couple of different modes for playing each level, and Playful Corp wanted to provide different objectives to encourage players to revisit and continue to explore each level for either hidden coins or to find the fastest path to the end.
Lucky’s Tale is rated as Moderate in comfortability and is included as a bundled launch title for the Oculus Rift, which officially launches today.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:00.068] Kent Bye: My name is Kent Bye, and I host the Voices of VR podcast. And back in July of 2015, I quit my job to do this full time. I just love doing it. But I do need your support to help continue this podcast. I've got lots of great insights from GDC and a lot of other conferences that I want to travel to and kind of be the proxy of the virtual reality community. So if you do enjoy this podcast, then please do consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash voices of VR. The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:42.065] Paul Bettner: I'm Paul Bender. I'm the CEO of Playful. We make Lucky's Tale. We're here at Oculus Game Days, and we are just a scant few weeks away from the launch, finally, of this game we've been working on for several years.
[00:00:54.371] Kent Bye: Yeah, so what's some of the reactions been like, you know, as you're sitting here and showing people the game for the first time?
[00:00:59.212] Paul Bettner: Well my favorite reaction is from folks who have seen the game like on YouTube or they've read about it but they haven't played it at all yet because what we get is this universal reaction of like oh I saw it and I thought it was you know I yeah it just looks like a third-person platformer like I got it I didn't really see what the point of it in VR was and then they play it and they're just like total converts you know they They're like, now I understand why people are saying what they're saying about Lucky's Tale, because it's impossible to convey, but when you're in there and you experience it, you realize what an impact VR can have on this particular genre.
[00:01:36.006] Kent Bye: Also, this may actually be a lot of people's first time experience, and so talk a bit about this little cinematic experience that you did at the beginning in order to kind of introduce people to VR.
[00:01:44.720] Paul Bettner: So when we, you know, we showed Lucky's Tale a year ago and we had a lot of the levels working but we haven't really spent a lot of time on the story or any of the parts that we're going to showcase the story and what we kept hearing from people was, like, Lucky just seems like this character I'd really like to get to know and you're not letting me get to know him, like, you're just immediately going and getting all the coins and doing all the adventuring and I just really want to find out who he is and what his story is and so We added this part that is the first experience you have in the game and you're actually inside Lucky's home and you're looking around and he's there with his best friend and they're just kind of hanging out and, you know, I won't spoil the story necessarily, but you get to see why Lucky's going on his adventure, you get to see his personality, his courageousness. and he kind of invites you along on this adventure to save his best friend. And, you know, like you said, VR can give players all these different types of experiences. VR can give you the greatest sense of excitement you've ever felt, or adrenaline, or fear, or what have you. And as you mentioned, Lucky's Tale is going to be a lot of people's very first experience in VR, and we wanted them to feel happy. That was the feeling that we hope that they have for the first time they put on a VR headset.
[00:02:49.378] Kent Bye: So talk a bit about some of the special considerations with that in terms of pacing and being able to not just have everything just focused on fast-paced action, but allowing them to kind of enjoy the environments.
[00:03:01.578] Paul Bettner: So there's actually a lot of directorial sort of control that we've put into the design of the levels themselves to get that pacing because I mean it's one level obviously more relaxed than a very fast-paced action game because it's a platformer and you can sort of take your time at it but even then we see players can get very focused on You know, I gotta get all the coins, I gotta run, I gotta go. And we've actually taken and created several moments in the levels where you're forced, because, I mean, our favorite moment is when we're showing the game to somebody and they actually do stop to take their time. and they realize that they can look around and that that's one of the best things in VR is to just enjoy the place that you're in. So we've created those places in the level where, like for instance in the very first level, there's this place where you come through this tunnel and you sort of come out onto this little precipice and you can't see where you're supposed to go obviously, initially. And it looks almost like you've hit a dead end. And you're sort of forced to look up and look around the level and sort of look at the horizon. And the path is actually over to your right. There's a drawbridge there, but you can't see it initially. And 100% of players do that, because they sort of have no choice but to stop at that point. And then they realize, and that's very early on in the game, that that's maybe something they can do more often, and they can enjoy it, and they can have those moments. There's several times like that. You just played the level, the underwater level. There's a section in there where all you're doing is you're on this platform that's moving kind of slowly underneath these coral reefs and there's fish around your head and the music intentionally gets kind of quieter in that section and it's just about, it's this moment of just enjoy yourself, enjoy this world.
[00:04:36.110] Kent Bye: You're able to, you know, once you complete a level, you're able to have this book that you're kind of flipping through to choose a level, you know, previous levels or next level, and you have this diorama of the entire level, or at least a kind of art style of the entire level. And then you have a couple of play modes that you can do, either like speed runs or collecting coins. Maybe you could talk a bit about the different variations that you have with different ways that you could play the game.
[00:04:59.557] Paul Bettner: So we didn't have those initially. We had sort of linear levels that you would go from one end to the other and then you'd go on to the next level. And what we were feeling and I think our playtesters were feeling is like, man, I just kind of want to go back to that one level because it was so nice. But I just quick, I mean, it lasts 10 minutes and I go on to the next one and the next one, next one. So what we wanted to do was give a reason for players to go back into the level and re-experience it with a different set of objectives. And this has obviously been done in platformers before. Some of my favorites like Mario 64, you know, you'll go back in the same level six or seven times with different goals, different objectives. And that's ultimately where I'd like to go in the future with the franchise, because I think that's the most natural thing that happens in these levels in VR, is you get that feeling of, I really want to spend more time in there than just 10 minutes. You played that one level for four hours. You really get to soak up the environment when you do that. And so for Lucky's Tale, the game that we're shipping, There's two modes for every level. There's a red coin mode, where there's these pretty insidiously hidden red coins scattered. I mean, you're having to, like, get down under your chair and look for things and, I mean, just do all this stuff. And then there's a time trial mode, which is all about flowing through the level and kind of speed running it, seeing how fast you can do it. And I can't wait to see. I mean, some people, even our own internal play testers do, like, they just cheese the level horribly, you know? Like, how did you even? There's, like, a little crack through there and you, like, jumped all the way. And it's cool to see that stuff. But again, it just gives you another reason to go back into these levels and enjoy them.
[00:06:29.184] Kent Bye: Are there leaderboards or ways for people to compete globally?
[00:06:33.470] Paul Bettner: Good question. Not yet. That'd be really nice, though, wouldn't it?
[00:06:37.673] Kent Bye: I guess that kind of begs the question in terms of, you know, once you ship Lucky's Tale, is there going to be any way for you to push, like, updates? Because the levels are already there, and you could have other future missions that you may do. So is this something that you feel like you're going to be shipping and then moving on to the next projects, or something that you may actually be updating in the future?
[00:06:54.859] Paul Bettner: That's a really good question. I don't think we know yet, and I don't know what players' expectations are going to be in VR yet. I mean, certainly on platforms like the App Store and other places, that's what you expect, but not necessarily for VR. It might be more the X-Pac sort of model, back from the PC days, rather than a set of continuous updates. I'm not really sure yet, but we'll just try to meet players' expectations, or exceed them, I should say.
[00:07:20.391] Kent Bye: So now that you've had a chance to actually show it to some of the first people that had never either played it or seen it before, how are you feeling?
[00:07:29.766] Paul Bettner: I'm feeling like the most excited I've ever felt and probably also the most nervous because I mean from an excitement standpoint and really these two feelings go together because what's happened is we show the game over and over again to people that have never played it and they have this universally similar reaction of just like delight that not only delight from the experience itself but delight because it's so much more than they expected it to be. And so the tremendous excitement I have is if that translates to the way consumers react, then, oh my gosh, we've got the craziest hit ever on our hands. But you just never know. And if people's hearts react to Lucky the way that I hope they will, then that'll be the dream come true for us. Because we want, like I said, we want Lucky to be the first character you meet in VR, the one you first fall in love with, the worlds and story and the character. We think that's what we're trying to do. Just a few weeks now, we're going to find out if that is what happens.
[00:08:24.751] Kent Bye: Do you have any favorite stories of people playing Lucky's Tale that they've shared with you?
[00:08:29.193] Paul Bettner: You're my favorite story. Somebody playing the same level for four hours. That's dedication.
[00:08:38.100] Kent Bye: Yeah, I had gotten that demo build, and I just wanted to just do it every... I think people will start to do that, too. They'll start to create own challenges that aren't necessarily built into the game. Like, I wanted to go through not collecting any of the coins, and that's actually really difficult.
[00:08:54.073] Paul Bettner: So I think one of the experiences people are going to have is something that I've done is like the first level of the game, Lucky's home, you actually come right out of his front door and you're right kind of in front of his house and his mailbox. And it's kind of like where Lucky lives. And I think several players are just going to go there and then just like sit there. I'm just going to hang out here on Lucky's front step and just hang out with Lucky. You didn't get to see this, but if you kind of get close to him, he pays attention to you. He reacts. He watches you. He waves at you. He plays with you. And so I think that that is actually going to happen quite a bit. People are just going to want to spend time in Lucky's world, even when they're not playing.
[00:09:29.081] Kent Bye: What's your favorite moment in the game?
[00:09:31.192] Paul Bettner: My favorite moment in the game? Oh, that's a good question. I think it is when Lucky walks out of his front door and he waves at you. I think that is probably one of the, will be one of the defining moments in VR because it just feels so different than if something like that happened on a TV because he's there and he's with you and he recognizes you and he says hi and you just, it's the shocking moment. If you've never experienced this before, a character in VR, I think that that moment will stick with people and it's my favorite moment from the game.
[00:10:03.391] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thank you very much. And thank you for listening. If you'd like to support the Voices of VR podcast, then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash Voices of VR.
