Defeat Your AI Overlords in ‘Of Lies and Rain’ on Meta Quest

When the developers at Castello Inc (the makers of ARK and ADE) set out to make Of Lies and Rain, they wanted to create something that players could fall into. Inspired by the dark cyberpunk movies of the ’80s and ’90s, they envisioned a narrative-driven adventure that would suck people into their grim neon world where nothing can be trusted and the remnants of humanity must fight for survival in the face of killer robots and AI overlords. For them, there was no other way to create an immersive story like this besides VR.

In Of Lies and Rain, you’re caught up in a 20-year war against a powerful AI called A.D.E., in a world where humans have been driven underground to survive. The game takes place between the digital and physical worlds, and you must use your ability to navigate both a shattered reality and the bright neon Dataworlds to uncover the truth behind those responsible for humanity’s downfall. This contrast extends to gameplay as well — in the physical world, the player is weak and must struggle to survive, but in the Dataworlds, they possess almost godlike powers.

Castello wanted to bring back the feeling that people remember from the first time people put on a VR headset: the sense of awe, that they had truly stepped into a different reality. They wanted people to feel the weight of a weapon in their hands and the fear of a killer robot lurking around the corner, as well as the impossible speed and power of their character in the Dataworld. They wanted to create the sort of eight- to 10-hour story-driven experience that would grip you right away and keep you immersed for the entire runtime.

Of Lies and Rain is out now for $29.99 USD, and you can get it here. We caught up with Castello Principal CEO Valerio Aversa to talk more about what it was like to make this cyberpunk dystopia.

VA: With Of Lies and Rain,we wanted to craft a memorable, worthwhile VR experience that players would cherish long after finishing it — an experience that would stand out by delivering the deep, story-driven adventures many loved from VR’s early times. With our tiny indie studio, we aimed to bring that magic back for a mature audience. We want players to dive in and feel truly immersed, to feel that sense of wonder of when they first put on a headset.

VA: Designing for VR is like a superpower really: You can actually design a game in a way that triggers physical reactions for your player, something that’s almost impossible to do on a flat screen. Interactions like the vertigo-inducing jumps and platforming in the Dataworlds are a good example. There’s a sense of height that simply wouldn’t land the same without VR’s immersion.

And, of course, Of Lies and Rain has a lot of physics interactions: grabbing, throwing, and fiddling with objects that have real weight, from smashable wooden crates to dual-wield guns where recoil dynamically shifts based on your grip.

VA: One of the biggest challenges in VR development is storytelling. You can’t just block the player for traditional cinematics like in flatscreen games, and you can’t make people read too much because VR is just not ideal for reading stuff (and we’re guilty of adding too much text). Instead, we had to use native VR techniques to push the narrative into the experience. That plus ensuring immersion never breaks is a little nightmare if you want to deliver a compelling eight- to 10-hour story.

VA: Half-Life: Alyx was a massive inspiration. It is the gold standard of VR for a good reason, and we wanted to learn from the best, channeling that immersive physics-driven FPS feel, crowbar included. Other inspirations were a lot of ’80s movies really. At Castello, we’re all in our 30s, so we do remember some ’80s and ’90s movies that shaped our imagination. We drew creature designs from Aliens, Tron’s glowing digital grids for the Dataworlds, The Matrix’s superhuman dataforms, and many others.

VA: Of Lies and Rain thrives on a stark dichotomy: There’s the physical world, a devastated wasteland where deadly AI machines will kill you at sight, where poisoned air will choke you and mercury rains down from the sky, leaving players feeling profoundly lonely, abandoned, and hopeless. On the other side, the Dataworlds transform you into a godlike entity, jumping 30 to 40 meters high with dataform powers, and everything here goes at light speed. This split creates an alternating rhythm of tension and exhilaration, our core atmosphere and gameplay.

Get Of Lies and Rain today, or check out the demo to try before you buy.