MixRift Crit Attack has launched a free-to-play mixed reality shooter game.
Wave Shooter is the third game from the mixed reality startup and it’s a lot of fun.
I played a prototype of the game in a café, wearing a Meta Quest 3 headset. It was cool to be able to see part of the café wall fall away, revealing the attacking creatures. I had a gun in each hand and had to shoot as fast as I could to dispatch the creatures before they reached me.
Bobby Voyko, CEO MixRiftsaid in an interview that the game was designed for three generations of family members – grandparents, parents and children – so that they can all play something together. The game is available today on PlayStation VR 2, Meta Quest, and Steam.
Just in time for the holiday season, the game is easy and free to play, and compatible with Meta Quest 3, 3S, Pro, and 2.
The game makes money through in-app purchases such as upgrades and extra lives, available to make the most of your play session. But players can also win it by playing the game longer.
Your mission is to defend your living room or office from a wave of monsters. The combination of game mechanics (an arcade wave shooter), graphics and ease of picking up makes Crit Attack unique in the Meta Store, where the focus is on longer, story-driven multiplayer sessions. Between waves, you can enhance your weapons so you can deal more damage or withstand more attacks. As time goes by, you acquire better and better weapons.
Buoyed by growing market feedback for more “family friendly” games and less intense or graphic violence, nostalgia for 80s and 90s games and entertainment brought to the present day, Crit Attack is a simple, casual game that anyone can intuitively understand. Use and play, said Voicu.
“By listening to our audience, we noticed a trend of nostalgia, driven by TV series like Stranger Things or games like Stardew Valley and Minecraft with pixelated graphics,” Voyko said. “This enables the whole family to enjoy our games – the generation that first played games in arcades, the generation that played on early consoles, and finally Generation Z and Alpha who can use their mixed reality devices in competitive and fun gameplay.”
The launch of Crit Attack underscores the company’s vision of driving widespread adoption of mixed reality and making gaming accessible to everyone by developing games that are easy for anyone to play and are highly immersive. It’s the perfect gift for the whole family to enjoy – what better way to spend Christmas than uniting to fight a wave of monsters, Fuyko said.
The MR shooter has a more “friendly” look and feel. Arcade wave shooter games are often combined with the type of graphics that the whole family can play. The monsters are cute and annoying rather than scary, and appear in waves – making for a very fun experience for everyone.
It’s an accessible, simple and easy user experience. I picked it up and played within seconds, shooting enemies and then reloading the weapon by dropping my hand down and then raising the gun again. Simply point the crosshairs at the monsters and pull the trigger.
It inspires that kind of “once again” experience. The surf shooting mechanic makes it an ideal game for short gaming sessions that players want to experience “again” according to user feedback, as every time they understand what they have to do to destroy more monster waves.
Unlike many VR games, it requires a short time commitment to play – a casual experience where you can play for half an hour or less.
There is also a Hall of Fame leaderboard. It tracks performance globally to show the best players in the world, creating the beginnings of a real gaming community.
There are different strategies to play. Within VR, you can move near the portal in the wall and shoot creatures up close at first. Then, as they get more intense, you can back away from the wall and have more time to get them out, Voyko said. When you sit down, they approach you faster because that is the easiest position to bring them down. When you meet a boss, he will do much more damage to you.
After a certain number of waves, the battle changes and becomes an infinite battle.
“We’re basically developing prototypes to see if the game mechanics are interesting or not. If people come without us putting in any retention mechanics, and if they like the actual game mechanics, then the game is worth developing further,” Voicu said. “We developed this game because players sent us messages saying they really wanted to play the final game.”
Origins
Voicu started believing in mixed reality a while ago when he saw a demo that had a crack in the ceiling that became a hole in the wall. He knew in his head that it was real, but it seemed so real that he was caught off guard in that moment.
Voicu said MixRift believes in the power of mixed reality to transform the gaming landscape, making it more interactive, accessible, and fun for gamers around the world. The company’s games are designed to be intuitive, allowing seamless integration into players’ daily lives ensuring that every adventure is just another reality.
The company’s developers have a background in mobile gaming where rapid development was key. Voicu sold his mobile gaming company and later moved into virtual reality. Voicu said the company worked on Crit Attack for months. The team was ready to release an early version, but decided to redesign it to make it more family-friendly after receiving feedback.
Voicu said MixRift’s unique approach is centered around game mechanics, developing and releasing games that resonate with audiences, and releasing them quickly rather than investing years in a single title.
“While demand for mixed reality experiences continues to grow, driven largely by tech giants like Meta and Apple, there is a clear shortage of high-quality mixed reality games,” Voicu said. “We’re ideally positioned to tackle this because our flexibility allows us to dive into unique game mechanics designed specifically for MRI. We’re not just making games, we’re pushing boundaries to create new types of interactive experiences, changing the way we engage with this technology in our lives.” Daily.
MixRift has been at the forefront of the MR/XR revolution since its inception, pushing the boundaries of seamless integration between physical and digital worlds to create wow moments for gamers, Voicu said.
The company made the game with six developers. They are spread in different places in Europe.
In August, MixRift raised $1.6 millionprimarily geared toward accelerating game development efforts. The company’s additional games Hell Horde (MR Survival) and Fractured (MR 3D puzzle) are available on Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest. MixRift has an ambitious roadmap ahead, including an exciting new gaming title for Q1 2025.
In the long term, Voicu expects mixed reality glasses to hit the market that look like regular glasses. That’s when the huge mixed reality gaming market is expected to take off.
“I really think we are very close, in the next three years, to where we will see the first glasses that look like front-facing display glasses,” he said. “I think this will be really compelling for game developers.”
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