Synthesis Universe -Episode 00-

Woot! This is clearly a lobour of love! Super saturated colour, trippy sounds and musical epicness. SU is a peek into the future and its awesome! Can't wait for more from this creator. Games are trying to cross the chasm to mainstream and art driven offerings like Synthesis Universe are a great step in that direction! Great Job Olivier!

I would call this an interactive immersive VR music experience. I felt like I was stepping into an art installation from the future with a dose of nostalgia reminiscent of Tron with a gorgeous glowing pallete of neon, sci-fi vibe and a classic synth soundtrack that fully takes advantage of awesome Index speakers. I immediately appreciated that it was built to take advantage of gaze and physical position of the user...making this a true VR experience. To even progress requires the understanding of this. I gotta say that I spent a good 10 minutes with grin on my face playing with the audio which would change as I slowed and sped up time via the positioning of my body. You can tell a lot of love went into this. With the title 'Episode 00' I was a expecting this to be a sort of intro to a greater story so was ok with the shorter length which provided a welcomed trip into an interesting world of sight and sound. Sidenote....bump this baby up to 120/144hz if you can.

Synthesis Universe is a beautiful transformative experience. The stylized art and the music go hand in hand and create a wonderful environment I can't wait to see more of. I have first seen a preview of this many years ago at Oculus Connect 1 and it has not lost its magic. The design and mysterious world building hint at so much more. Looking forward to the next one! There aren't a lot of arty VR experiences, so this one is definitely worth your attention.

Very pretty and out of the box experience ! It's not a game, not long if you rush it but let it take some time to work on you, it is actually quite intruiging. Pass, if you just want some ordinary, more of the same entertainment stuff, but pick it up if you want to expand your VR horizon. To cite a line from the lyrics of the B-side version of an old Prince song (Alphabet Street): "this is not music, this is a trip" Well done !

[h1]Experienced on the Meta Quest 2[/h1] You can view my review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/IAIZnvVtLS0 [u]This is a neutral recommendation.[/u] I personally didn't vibe with this experience at all. It's about a 30 minute, experimental, artistic music video for VR with mostly gaze-based interactions. While you can play this seated, it is better played standing with some room to move as you will be looking around 360 for some of the gaze-based interactions where you do have to look at a specific spot. The music is mostly electronic, synthesizer based music. The art is pretty minimalistic with mostly simple shapes and patterns to the few objects on screen with mostly basic colors. The music also has simple beats. The art didn't really speak to me. However, it seems others enjoyed this more than I did based on the Steam reviews. However, it does feel like this was an unfinished experience and this was just the start of a much bigger intended experience that never came to fruition. Game is running on the Unreal Engine. On my RTX 3080, I was getting a steady 90 fps. There were no settings available. I did not experience any serious issues or bugs. Overall, I did not enjoy this at all. I didn't really see the artistic merit myself. I think the gaze-based interactions are now very dated for 2022 VR. However, art & music are very subjective. You may enjoy this more than I did. [b]Rate 5/10.[/b] [quote]If you enjoyed my review, please consider joining my Steam Curator Group. You can join here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Oculus_WMR [/quote]

It's only a short preview of what's to come, but already very cool. The way that the music interacts with where you're looking is really neat. Cool minimalist visuals. It's a simple and powerful music experience.

A surreal and unique experience, albeit very very short right now. Looking forward to future updates and some deeper interactivity.