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Remastered Edition: A Chair In A Room (VR horror game) - still an awesome experience!

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
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October 31 2018 the Remastered Edition of the game "A Chair In A Room" became available in the Oculus Store:

https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1338537909564174

https://youtu.be/0f2aVDmSuyE

Don't mind that there're just 4 reviews in the Oculus Store, it's a new game in there - the average rating on Steam is 9/10 based on more than 500 ratings. 

In terms of VR, this game is reeeeally old - I guess you all know the man who introduced the original Oculus version in the summer of 2014:

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So what's changed? 
  • Added free move to the locomotion options along with crouch and free rotation to accompany teleport and the original ‘flexible room scale’ locomotion option
  • Flexible room scale is now available on Oculus so if you have 3 cameras and 2.5m x 2.5m area you can play the whole game at 1:1 scale without additional locomotion required 
  • Completely reworked physics and interactions
  • Improved artwork, updated textures and added post processing
  • Remastered soundtrack
  • Improved SFX and a new audio engine
  • Additional cues and clues to help with guide through the puzzles and story
  • Huge optimisations for smoother gameplay and faster loading
  • Added achievements
  • Cloud saves
  • Bug fixes and planned post launch support
Some examples of changes:

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The graphics, although some (wooden) textures could still be better, are really second to none - here're a few examples from the remastered edition:

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More or less where you start - oh, there's a chair in the room too 😉 

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I would've preferred arms too, not just hands, but you've got nice Touch support and the most awesome hands. When the lighting is right, you can even see the ultra-tiny hairs covering your skin - really amazing! 

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Another room - it actually has a chair in it too - no, not the toilet 😉

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It's hard to show, but texture quality is very high, often Lone Echo quality. Holding a postcard felt real - even the surface of the postcard had been designed with special reflections so it looked genuinely old and worn - simply amazing.

The attention to details is great - even wall-mounted clocks are working in realtime.   

For those new to the game, and without spoiling too much, according to the devs the game is about:

"A Chair in a Room: Greenwater is a tense Virtual Reality horror game set in America’s Deep South. Drawing on elements of Southern Gothic and using settings of derelict towns, run-down motels and murky, decaying swamps, A Chair in a Room will take you through an investigation of institutional corruption, religious immorality and murder, which can only be unlocked by searching deep within your own psyche. 

A calibration room will allow you get comfortable in VR but once you call the elevator, you begin your story as patient no. 6079 in The Greenwater Institute, with no recollection of who you are or what you did to be here. Dark visions bring your lucidity into question and only the doctor’s supply of medication can suppress those who wish to haunt you. 

Gameplay is a seamless weave of interaction and narrative that wraps exploration and tense horror in rich environmental storytelling to create something that is unique to VR. 

The story is broken down into six chapters of around 20 to 30 minutes in length to allow for intervals in play while enjoying the story."

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I believe you can crank up super sampling to about 1.5 on a GTX 970 and still get solid 90 fps - and using a GTX 1080 or better you get solid 90 fps using super sampling 2.0. Holding a tiny model of the Eiffel Tower in my hand, and checking it thoroughly, the Rift CV1 resolution felt close to infinite - no I'm not joking. There're no in-game video settings, thus super sampling (using for example the Oculus Tray Tool) is more or less your only option to improve graphics. 

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I don't think this is a horror game, like Transference there're spooky moments but it's more about suspense than horror - maybe we could just call the game for a thriller...? 😉

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The light looks great

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Can't have a psychological thriller without a Rorschach test, right? 

Note that I did see one guy criticizing the game on Steam:

"I found the puzzles to either be dead-simple or very unintuitive. A lot of them also involved an object randomly showing up when it wasn't there before, which is lame. "

I don't think that critique is warranted - obviously that person didn't understand the game dynamics. You're a psychiatric patient, you're hallucinating, you're given medication - of course things suddenly change - that's exactly what hallucinations are about!

I've played the game for 2 hours, in some places you can feel that the design is slightly dated and levels of onscreen polys could be better, but this is an adventure game, and this one still stands as tall among it's nearest competitors as ever.

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

4 REPLIES 4

Anonymous
Not applicable
I bought this AGES ago on Steam but haven't got around to playing it yet.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

snowdog said:

I bought this AGES ago on Steam but haven't got around to playing it yet.



Lucky for you - then you're still an "A Chair In A Room"-virgin! You can now buy the remastered edition for just $20 and enjoy it to the fullest  o:)  😄

Btw, maybe $25 (or even $20 on sale right now) is a bit much for the game - $15 would probably be better. 2c. 

Another thing, I'm a bit stressed at work, and I kinda got stuck in the first room until I found out that you need to crouch to pick up things from the floor. But it was great being stuck in the room - I couldn't go anywhere - just be in the room - stare at the walls - it's a perfect place to spend time doing absolutely nothing, relaxing, listening to your inner thoughts!  ❤️  😉 (hmmm, I hope that didn't sound too .... weird  🙂 )

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

snowdog said:

I bought this AGES ago on Steam but haven't got around to playing it yet.



If you have the old (original) Steam version then you can update it for free to the remastered edition - so no need to buy it in the Oculus Store if you have the Steam version - more here:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/achairinaroom/announcements/detail/1705069396219837725

Also I forgot to mention the sound and voice acting in the first post - both are great too. The volume may be too loud at times, so one thing that would be an improvement is having volume controls in-game (instead of having to use Dash). 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
Maybe it's just me, but somehow the atmosphere in A Chair In A Room reminds me a lot of my favorite TV series of all time. Maybe it's the swamp and the desolation - and the killings - all working to underline a feeling of despair,  like the world is falling apart and there's little help nor comfort to find anywhere...

https://youtu.be/fVQUcaO4AvE

I'm greatly looking forward to play that game later tonight  ❤️  😄


Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"