AW: AW: AW: The cutest VR thing – EVER!
Today (Tuesday, August 8th) is the International Cat Day!
This day is made to celebrate our most beloved furballs. As not everyone has a cat at home, we’d like to put our eyes on a cat in virtual reality. The most hypoallergenic breed you’ve ever seen.
Konrad the Kitten is a small Tamagotchi-like game that makes you care about a little virtual kitten. Little Konrad wants to be cuddled, needs to eat, to sleep, to play and so on. You need to fulfill his wishes to make him love you and take care of his needs to keep him healthy and well-behaved. But as it is with every Tamagotchi, Konrad wants you to regularly care about him. During the time you are not playing, his energy and health recovers but his love towards you slowly vanishes. To deal with this, it’s best to look after him every day.
So far, Konrad the Kitten sounds like a typical Tamagotchi that is realized in a virtual environment. But there is a clever twist: You can play the game in so called “Plushy Mode”, which requires you to fix the VR Controller on the back of a plush toy. Yes, you read this right: The game wants you to use one of your plushies at home to transfer it into virtual reality. Inside the virtual world, the plush toy is then replaced with the little kitten and comes alive.
This unique concept sounds strange but really makes a difference in immersion. Especially cat lovers and children love the illusion of really having a soft kitten in their hands. The controls are both, simple and immersive at the same time. Just place the kitten at one of the objects, like the ball he wants to play with and the kitten starts to interact. The whole game is played without pressing buttons of the controller. Some actions are meant to be “cuddling actions”. They are done by holding the kitten upwards or flip it around and pet its belly. You can then even feel it purring via the rumble of the controllers.
Besides these actions, Konrad regularly wants to play minigames. This is a funny variety as the player needs to become active himself. During these minigames the player guides the Kitten through a set of colored rings without touching them, catches mice or throws dishes from a table. All of the games are quite simple but fun and always have a challenging component. By beating these minigames, so called “Paw Coins” can be collected and spent in a dress room. Inside the dress room, a big teddy bear has set up a shop and sells you different accessories to decorate your kitten. The game only uses the “Paw Coins” for this and has no intentions of involving real-money.
In total, the game provides 8 different areas (including the shop, settings and start areas) with 20 different active objects and 5 minigames. The game is still in Early Access and is updated frequently with new content. It just celebrated its one-year anniversary and plans to leave Early Access in autumn this year.
Finally, we must admit that a virtual pet will never be able to replace a real one but Konrad the Kitten seems currently to be the thing that comes closest to it.
Konrad the Kitten is available on Steam, Viveport and the Oculus Store.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KonradTheKitten
Twitter: @FusionPlayGames
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/510740/Konrad_the_Kitten__a_virtual_but_real_cat/
Oculus: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1132882333473147/
Viveport: https://www.viveport.com/apps/943d4b79-a1e9-407e-aabc-8d307d71bd77
