‘VEX MAGE’ is a Fast-Paced Spellcaster Inspired by Quake, Out Now On Meta Quest

The ocean is a powerful force. It can grind mountains into sand, transform a light breeze into a storm, and — in the hands of a wizard — allow you to rocket jump Quake-style into the stratosphere.

VEX MAGE releases today, a new movement-centric “shooter” from developer Nervous Systems. Instead of guns, you channel the elements through your hands, casting (and combining) the powers of magma, lightning, and the ocean itself to fend off hordes of hostile enemies. Taking inspiration from fast-paced shooters like the aforementioned Quake, VEX MAGE is all about momentum — about strafing enemies, zipping around the arena at breakneck speed, and (yes) catapulting yourself into the air using the ocean’s distinctly rocket-like spells.

We spoke with Justin Link, Co-Founder of Nervous Systems, to talk about the genesis of the project, lessons learned while working on SWARM, broader influences (including cult hit Devil Daggers), and more.

Read on for the full interview, or head on over to the Meta Horizon Store to pick up VEX MAGE today.

Justin Link: Yeah, VEX MAGE is our studio’s first game. The concept and core mechanics really came from a lot of things Austin [East, Co-Founder] and I learned when we were working on our last game SWARM with Greensky Games.

At the time, moving fast in VR was mostly unheard of, and a lot of people avoided it because they thought fast motion induced motion sickness. We learned a lot about what makes you sick and what doesn’t, and kind-of proved that it was possible to do fast motion in VR and still have a comfortable experience.

So we took that and started prototyping what would become VEX MAGE, really wanting to continue with that momentum but make something that could work in both VR and flat modes. One of our core goals this time around with VEX MAGE was to prove that VR players could compete alongside flat/PC players, and even outcompete them in certain ways.

It’s still yet to be seen how that will play out, but in our own testing the playing field is pretty even!

Did you run into any challenges developing a game for both VR and traditional mouse-and-keyboard play?

JL: Surprisingly no. There was of course some additional effort we had to do to accommodate flat mode — for example, standard FPS things like rendering hands separately, and consideration for different types of menu/UI interactions — but in general most of the stuff from our VR setup just worked. In fairness though we did set up our XR rig and player controller in a way early on that it could easily be used in a flat context. That was a lesson we pulled from SWARM development.

I haven’t seen a lot of VR developers talk about this, but developing for VR has the unique challenge that in order to test, you have to put the headset on. This naturally blocks use of the PC you’re developing on, which creates all sorts of barriers to the normal testing flow you have when developing pretty much anything else. So for us, flat mode was also a way to iterate more quickly on all our different systems, and it worked out that there really wasn’t much difference mechanically between the two modes.

Can you talk about some of your influences? Something like Heretic or Amid Evil seems like an obvious pull, but I feel like there’s maybe some Devil Daggers in VEX MAGE as well?

JL: There’s definitely a lot of Devil Daggers inspiration. More accurately: HYPER DEMON, Sorath’s followup game, is what we were really looking at the most when designing and developing. We just really love how tight the experience is, and how the depth of the gameplay is packed into player ability as opposed to a bunch of content in levels, skills, abilities, and such.

In general the ethos of the design was a boomer shooter, so a lot of stuff like Heretic, Turok, Quake, and others were top-of-mind during development.

Visually though the style is very much our artist Keegan’s personal flavor, a lot of which he drew from his hikes in the northwest.

What’s your favorite spell (or spell combination) in VEX MAGE and why?

JL: Personally I default to Oceanic + Oceanic simply because I like the movement style those spells — Hydropod (our game’s grenades) and Ectoburst (our game’s rockets) — afford. Rocket jumping is something I love doing, and in VEX MAGE we made sure that our explosion forces had a healthy amount of propulsion for players. They also position you nicely above the arena, which gives you a good vantage point for raining projectiles down on enemies.

That said, I really like switching to Eye of Destruction, the explosive shotgun, for getting up close and personal. It also has a nice missile volley on release that is really satisfying.

What’s next for you post-launch? Anything exciting in the works?

JL: Post-launch we will be releasing a new Survival game mode, which lets players play an endless style game in each of the levels from the Ascension game mode. There are leaderboards for each level and for going in with one, two, or three players, so we think it will add a lot more replayability to the existing game. It’s also a nice way to practice a specific level and refine your strategy when playing through the Ascension game mode.

Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

JL: We designed VEX MAGE for players who love mastering movement and perfecting their skills without all the usual barriers and hand-holding found in modern games. Our goal was to create something that respects players’ time and delivers a complete experience in a short session — something we’ve been calling “popcorn-style” gameplay. We’re excited to finally get it into players’ hands and see what kinds of strategies and clips come out of it!

VEX MAGE is available now on the Meta Horizon Store.