Vision Pro Gaming Weekly #6 - Thrash and Dash

🔘Press Start

Thrasher (App Store)

From the makes of the game THUMPER, Brian and Mike of Puddle, comes another sensory overload game! Fast Fun, challenging, simple to learn, difficult to master. Really nice game and one of the prettier games on AVP now. I will say though that the controls point at exactly why Apple chose to make a device with gaze and pinch. the pointer controls require you to constantly hold your arm up and move your arm around. VERY tiring. Maybe I’m just spoiled by VisionOS. Regardless, this is a really well made game and can be fun for player!

Table of Contents

• 🔘Press Start

  • Thrasher (App Store)

• 🔥Let the Games Begin!

• 🆕 New Games!

  • I Lots My Marbles! (App Store)

  • Fun with Physics! (App Store)

  • I believe I can Fly (App Store)

  • Island Defender (App Store)

• 🗞️News

  • Kojima in Vision Pro! (x)

  • Controlling Gorillas? (YouTube)

  • Aumentors better than Simulators? (YouTube)

  • Apple Allow for user created gestures (www)

  • Reality Quest enters Beta (Reddit)

• 🧑‍💻Developer Corner

  • VisionOS 2, etter Hand Tracking (YouTube)

  • First View of Polyspatial for VisionOS 2 (x)

  • Thrasher Dev Interview (Voices of VR)

  • Punching Bag Augmentor! (reddit)

  • Bubbles in Vision Pro? (YouTube)

  • Soccer Augmentor? (X)

• 🏆 VPGW Top 10 Games for Apple Vision Pro 🏆

🔥Let the Games Begin!

The big news this week is the start of the Olympic Games! I hope everyone enjoys the games and cheers on their favorite athletes. And let’s not forget to appreciate the incredible human achievement! As someone who’s not a professional athlete, I’ve always felt a bit sad that developers don’t get as much recognition as athletes. We know the names of every player on our favorite teams, but we barely know the names of any of the developers on our favorite games!

There are so many games on Apple Vision Pro that no one’s heard of yet. If you’re a developer and need some feedback or distribution, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]. I’m always happy to try out a game and give my honest opinion! We also include almost every game we see in our newsletter.

This week I’m taking a break from our game of the week and instead releasing my current TOP 10 GAMES for Apple Vision Pro! Read to the end for the list!

🆕 New Games!

I Lots My Marbles! (App Store)

Just tried this game before writing this weeks episode. The is really intersting actually. It involves taking marble contraption pieces and stringing them together and running the physics simulation. The pieces are all very pretty and the simulation can be mesmerizing! The game has potential so check it out if you like Rube Goldberg or Mousetrap type experiences!

Fun with Physics! (App Store)

This app is too fun! Amazing job by developer Daniel Tyler Perry. Especially since this is FREE this is a must download for everyone! Check out how amazing AVP’s scene reconstruction is and be amazed at the dynamic reflections!

I believe I can Fly (App Store)

Thanks to the developer VirZOOM for sharing this with us!! It’s exactly what it says it is. A way to fly around Google Maps! the controls are intuitive and it’s simply amazing to be flying all around the world from your home! Imagine how much this technology will only be getting better and better as Google Maps improves the quality of their maps or if Apple Maps opens up their API!

Island Defender (App Store)

Neat little cannonball game. Has anyone tried it?

🗞️News

Kojima in Vision Pro! (x)

Legendary Game Designer Hideo Kojima was shown trying Apple Vision Pro! Could he be making a new Vision Pro game! We can only pray! 🙏

🙇Kojima-San, please contact me and I’ll move to Japan to help you build your Vision Pro game

Controlling Gorillas? (YouTube)

Surreal Touch has controllers coming to Vision Pro. Currently they are showing it off by playing PC VR streamed apps on AVP which is what this is, Gorilla Tag being one of the most popular steam VR games now. We’ve talked to Surreal though and they said a SDK is coming soon which will allow Vision Pro native games to use the controllers directly!

Aumentors better than Simulators? (YouTube)

Introducing "Real Pet Augmentor"! A game in by our friend @MR_BenMA on x. We love the concept and have made us realize that Simulator type games seem to be a better fit for VR and MAYBE the hit style of game on AVP will be “Augmentor” games! Keep going ben!

Apple Allow for user created gestures (www)

Looks like apple is working for a system where uses can create custom gestures of their own and attach them to different types of OS commands. Similar to creating you own shortcuts or keyboard shortcuts in MacOS! Will there be an API where this system can be used by games too? Can developers just expose actions and VisionOS will allow users to tie custom gestures to these actions?

Reality Quest enters Beta (Reddit)

This multiplayer RPG is looking for beta testers. If you love trying new games and helping developers here’s a good chance!

🧑‍💻Developer Corner

VisionOS 2, etter Hand Tracking (YouTube)

I was working on some feature for my game studio and we wanted to try out the new Predicted Hand Tracking in VisionOS 2. So here was the results! What do you think? Is it better? Devs hurry up and give it a try!

First View of Polyspatial for VisionOS 2 (x)

Developer Sadao Tokuyama showed off the sample app for Unity Polyspatial and its newest features supporting VisionOS 2! The most exciting is the support for metal shaders with Passthrough! This should mean a lot of existing Unity games being able to be ported to run with passthrough , and more Uniity developers being able to make passthrough games with all the same shader pipeline they’ve already been using!

Thrasher Dev Interview (Voices of VR)

Great dev interview by Voices of VR. The highlight for me was listening to them take pleasure and embracing Hand Tracking as the primary input for AVP. Some dev’s fight it and lament about not having controllers and other dev’s embrace it and just work on making the best game they can for the platform. I have to admit I was disappointed in the lagginess of the hand tracking with VisionOS 1, but with the new predicted hand tracking it seems Apple is listening to dev’s and working to improve the platform for games!

Punching Bag Augmentor! (reddit)

This redder showed off his work in progress and this got us hyped for augmenting workouts!

Bubbles in Vision Pro? (YouTube)

YouTuber Sarang Borude is starting to make some really cool tutorials on how to do some awesome effects for Vision Pro! Keep an eye on his channel!

Soccer Augmentor? (X)

This post just blew my mind away!! Another Augmentor!! Object tracking really isn’t ready for real time fast paced tracking like a soccer ball but the concept is still valid to make the activity more fun!! We’d never really though of tracking large objects like a soccer goal before too!

🏆 VPGW Top 10 Games for Apple Vision Pro 🏆

Here’s my List! What do you think? What games did I miss?

First off, let me explain the criteria used to determine this list. I based it on which games bring the most profound and fun experience to the player. Which games did I want to recommend people try if they want to get the best of Apple Vision Pro? Let me know where you disagree, please! We’ll be updating this list periodically and maybe expanding it to 20 next time! 

The trends I noticed:

• Music Rhythm games seem to have been the easier to deliver fun so far. Makes sense as Beat Saber is still the most popular XR game ever.

• There’s a real future in creating Spatial Digital versions of Table Top games!

• VR games ported to Vision Pro aren’t always fun. Dev’s should put more time and think it through and make sure the game works WELL on AVP. Vacation Simulator was the biggest example of this where we ran into multiple instances where the game just wasn’t playable.

• iOS ports to windowed games on Vision Pro can actually be really good if the Dev’s take time and convert more of the UI Spatial and make sure their experience is fun and good

And now here’s the list! Watch the video to hear more about my thinking and to see the games in action!

That’s it for this week! More Vision Pro Gaming news next week! Game on!

Contact us at [email protected] for anything you may need, or to just to say hi!

If you’re a developer that needs feedback or distribution feel free to contact us and drop us a link or promo code 🙂 Promise to try your game and give feedback!