Island Time VR is a survival game deprived of effective resources. Elements that should be in great supply—variability, actionable materials, and available real estate—are reduced to a minimum, instead depending on the novelty of virtual reality for sustenance. With PlayStation VR's incapacity for a proper room-scale experience, Island Time VR is left out to starve.
Sometimes there is nothing to do but sit and wait for death. I have knocked all of the coconuts off the palm tree and none will grow back in time. I can’t start a fire because I couldn’t reach the hunk of flint that washed up in the supply crate. I can’t push restart button because there is no in-game menu, and I can’t get up and find a controller because I am encased in a virtual reality headset. So I sit down and I wait. In a few minutes, I die and Island Time VR begins anew.
Island Time VR is Flight School Studio’s attempt to create an arcade-style survival game in virtual reality. After willingly ramming your ship into tiny deserted island, you become quick friends with a cheerful talking crab named Carl and are challenged to keep yourself alive. Certain items are within reach of your two virtual hands; bamboo poles, coconuts from the lone palm tree, a fire pit with a log, and some fish swimming near the shore. The heart on your watch measures your hunger and survival, and the time keeps track of how long you were able to persist.
Some light is shined on Island Time VR from the most unlikely of places; Kinda Funny’s Greg Miller. While not a trained voice actor, Miller lends his vocal talents to the island’s chipper crab, Carl. In addition to providing general direction, Carl’s sharp commentary on the absurdity of your predicament and the abundance of his enthusiasm makes him feel like your new best friend. Repeated performances (in my case, around my tenth attempt) quickly exhaust Carl’s cache of zingers and quips, but he glows inside of Island Time VR’s early moments.
The island’s available space is kept small in order to accommodate a room-scale virtual reality experience. In “real life,” the island would encompass a modest bathroom. I imagine this works neatly with an Oculus Rift or Vive, which are headsets designed to calculate movement and manage space in three dimensions. PlayStation VR certainly does not do this, which limits the player’s ability to properly engage with crucial aspects of Island Time VR.
Island Time VR has an odd relationship with movement. On both Move controllers, the X and O buttons are responsible for shifting the point of view in ninety-degree clips. With no option menu in sight, there is no method of transitioning this mechanic to smooth movement. There is also no means of basic movement, like point-and-shoot method embraced by Batman Arkham VR and Robinson: The Journey, which means to move you have to literally walk and move in real life. Worse, there is sometimes a weird drift that resets your initial starting position. Fine movement is out of the question, basic movement is compromised, and progressing through Island Time VR with any sort of accuracy is a matter of luck.
In addition to the meager resources provided by the island, a supply crate occasionally washes up on the shore. Popping off the top reveals items vital to survival, like additional rocks for sparking a flame or logs to burn in the fire pit. Had I been able to reach the supply crate—which I had ample room to do in my VR space—perhaps I could have used those items. Sometimes I was able to quickly “punch” one of the Move controllers into the space, and get lucky and grab it before the PlayStation Camera noticed I was off the grid. Generally, however, my supply crate washed away before this could occur and I was left with nothing.
Fidelity issues also crop up when attempting basic actions. After I made a spear, I wanted to set it down so I could spark another fire. Unfortunately, if an item fell off of my Setting Things Down Rock, it could never be reached again. When I was trying to manage all the items in my fire pit or basket, physics would sometimes bug out and toss my cooked-fish or flint rock off the side, gone forever. Part of Island Time VR’s intended challenge surely deals with the player’s ability to manage multiple objects in a mad scramble for survival, but the accompanying hardware’s inability to keep up made it feels ill-suited for the platform.
Even if its performance were solved, it is unclear if Island Time VR would be a better game. There is a satisfaction in developing the skill necessary dislodge coconuts from a tree and pluck them from their decent. Likewise, properly spearing a leaping-fish produces a sensation of accomplishment. The ability to combine certain items together—with examples I am reluctant to mention in order to preserve Island Time VR’s surprises—also creates some nice ah-ha and what the hell? moments. The sparse number of objects, however, puts a hard cap on available action. Once I had figured out what I needed to do, it only came down to whether or not I was capable of maintaining control of my equipment.
Too often, however, my luck would expire before my skill. A steady diet of coconuts, cooked fish, and prayer-grabs to the supply crate would inevitably buckle under the weight of aggressive physics and faulty virtual reality. My longest time alive was eleven minutes and thirty-eight seconds. It’s a shame, because with just a few more variables in-play and a tighter response from the game, Island Time VR really could have grown into an arcade high-score chase.
There is the outside chance that I read Island Time VR incorrectly. Perhaps the challenge isn’t about managing resources, but instead a Surgeon Simulator-inspired cacophony where fighting physics is as important as fighting systems. After all, a $15 price-tag and a dubious presence in virtual reality should account for more than lightweight survival game. Carl’s pretty funny, and maybe his affable presence was designed to complement Island Time VR‘s breezy hijinks.
At the same time; no. Fundamental measures like a pause button, comfort options, any kind of menu, and basic familiarity with the PlayStation VR hardware are all unaccounted for. When I dropped my spear into the abyss and waited for death to the melody of relaxing beach music and Carl’s interminable, repeating jabber, I accepted that my disembodied pair of hands and virtual presence deserved to die and never come back. Staying alive in Island Time VR was imprudent because I was dead before the ship even sank.
