So that's what we'll be covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. This high agency exploration game that is unlike anything else that I've experienced in virtual reality before. How can you express your agency? How can you explore through the world? How can you locomote? And these are the types of things that I think the Killing Floor Incursion is really exploring. There's the mental and social presence, emotional presence, embodied presence, but also active presence.

So we really talk about a lot of the other game design components within Killing Floor Incursions because within virtual reality, there are these four major types of presence. So I'm just like asking one of the lead designers of this game like, okay, what's going on here? Kind of breaking down for me. They go into these types of horror experiences. And I've personally tended to shy away from a lot of these types of experiences but at GDC this year I had an opportunity to play this super gory game called Killing Floor Incursions and this was an interesting experience because first of all it was on the one hand very disgusting with a lot of the blood and the gore and that within itself has kind of stuck with me But then there's the whole kind of sociology behind it and the visceral nature of it. If there's any one genre that is particularly visceral and intense within virtual reality, it's the horror genre. My name is Kent Bye and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. Ultimately it seems to be about power - specifically giving the player the power to complete the task, and assaulting them heavily to see if they can handle it.ĭonate to the Voices of VR Podcast Patreonįacebook Twitter Reddit Email Rough Transcript He says that this is not an experience about rainbows and happiness, but rather one that’s gory & dark with a dash of quirky humor. Scali admits that they’re treading a fine line of it being funny or amusing versus taking it too far, and so it’ll be interesting to see how VR gamers and the larger media react to this experience as it could be a catalyst to larger discussions about the impact embodied experiences of gory violence within virtual reality. I had a chance to talk with project lead Leland Scali about the horror genre in VR, pushing the boundaries of how far to take gore within immersive VR, and their deeper game design process of creating an experience within their Killing Floor universe. The mechanics of beating enemies with their dismembered limbs had an extreme amount of blood splattering that it was a mix of being at the same time grossly disturbing and ridiculously comic.

I had a chance to play a demo at GDC, and I can say that it’s definitely an experience has stuck with me. Killing Floor: Incursion is a horror game featuring lots of gore that is sure to evoke visceral reactions in players.

Killing floor vr