This VR Mosh Pit Simulator game is fascinating and horrifying
Video game designer Sos Sosowski has been working on his Mosh Pit Simulator game since 2016. Here's the official game description:
Mosh Pit Simulator is a VR game about a world that is overrun by brainless boneless humanoid creatures due to a terrible accident. They're like zombies but less gross and pretty harmless and just want to live normal lives. So even tho they don't have brains or bones, they still try to go shopping, drive cars, or go to dates, not necessarily doing a good job at that. But there's one person who is not OK with that. YOU! So you decide to save the world from these weird creatures. But there's nobody else left in the world but them so you end up just getting in their way for giggles.... or do you?
Basically, the premise is: "What if you moshed by yourself using Oculus Rift?" And the earliest 3D model testing clips are like a glorious car crash that you just can't look away from:
I wanted to make a mosh pit simulator but it turned out really creepy! pic.twitter.com/CiTL8mZ6y0
- Sos Sosowski (@Sosowski) April 13, 2016
My moshpit sim seems to be getting somewhere after all :) pic.twitter.com/hFeFZge1kW
- Sos Sosowski (@Sosowski) April 14, 2016
Sosowski explains the background of this weird experiment:
This game was created by accident. The development began in April 2016, when I got my hands on the Vive Development Kit. After playing some games, I decided to give it a shot and create something. I used a human model I have created back in October 2015, and since I had no AI and wanted to interact with the humans quick, I added a simple AI algorithm: if chest is below 1m, bump chest up. This is the AI that drives all the humans in the game even now. I started punching the humans around but it was no fun, so I cranked up the punch strength, albeit a bit too high and ended up producing a GIF of me punching these humans that promptly went viral. When I woke up next morning I realised that this is the game I have to make now.
I have no idea what I'm doing. pic.twitter.com/lPZIbKf4db
- Sos Sosowski (@Sosowski) April 14, 2016
I'm pretty sure they're all sentient by now. pic.twitter.com/MwCk2sx8AY
- Sos Sosowski (@Sosowski) April 14, 2016
The game improved from these initial designs, of course. But even in its finished form, it's still meant to be a kind of absurdist art piece of a game. As Sosowki explains, "There are many VR games out there and every time I try to play one, the first thing I try to do is destroy everything around me, and most of the titles are rigged to prevent me from doing that, and to keep me focused on the actual point of the game. Thus, I decided to create a game that will let you destroy everything. "
If you want to try it yourself, you can download it from Steam or Oculus.