Cozy Creativity: ‘ISLANDERS: VR Edition’ Adds Mixed Reality Update

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10 Nov 2023

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A critically acclaimed minimalist wonderland, ISLANDERS has been delighting players on PC, Mac, and console with its colorful low-poly aesthetic and chill vibes for years. It’s been less than a month since Coatsink partnered with Stage Clear and Grizzly Games to launch ISLANDERS: VR Edition, which lets you step inside the game world like never before. And now, you can bring your physical environment into the experience with a new mixed reality (MR) update!

We sat down with Coatsink Programmers John Peart and Richard Ashby to learn more.

How long was the MR update in development for all told? Any fun or interesting anecdotes from during that time that you can share?

John Peart: I believe the MR update took about three months all in all. I remember some of the feedback we got early on was that people enjoyed the little birds that fly around you, so we spent some time working out how to incorporate them into your virtual room. They do disappear when they hit a wall, but I’m sure they are perfectly fine on the other side wherever they end up!

Rich Ashby: Early in development, I found that I could slowly “push” the island under my physical floor, making my island effectively sink—obviously this is something you couldn’t do in the base version of the game, so the interactivity was a quirky thing I enjoyed.

Was MR always on the roadmap for ISLANDERS: VR Edition, or was it something you decided to add after the fact?

RA: MR was something we had been thinking of since the start of ISLANDERS; VR, but it wasn’t until Quest 3 started to become more of a reality when we started to really start exploring what we could do with it. When we got hands-on with the Quest 3 headset and could see for ourselves how effective things like full-color Passthrough were, that’s when it became our major focus.

What, if any, Presence Platform capabilities did you incorporate with the MR update? What was that process like?

RA: We looked at quite a few of the Presence Platform capabilities and actually managed to incorporate quite a lot: Scene to bring the players room into the world, Spatial Anchors to allow the player to pin their menus in physical space, spatial audio to bring the world’s sounds to give the player a sense of 3D, and full-color Passthrough to blend the game environment with the player’s physical environment.

Why did you decide to include an MR component for the game? What do you think MR adds to the overall experience of ISLANDERS: VR Edition?

RA: I think ISLANDERS holds a lot of similarities and evokes the same type of feeling as building a model world out of LEGO® bricks, and MR gave us the possibility of realizing this feeling in a physical space within our game.

JP: Passthrough mode is a lot of fun because you can place the island right on your bedroom floor and play it like a huge tabletop game. Also when your cat walks in, you can pretend you have a giant cat, which is fun until he lies right in the middle of the island.

What role do you think MR will play in gaming and the XR space more broadly in the years to come?

JP: I can’t predict the future, but I think if MR is to succeed, developers need to build games from the ground up that are designed to take place in the confines of the player’s living space. In some regards, VR is the opposite of MR: In VR, you can put the player anywhere in any situation, but MR brings physical-world surroundings into the game’s world, and some types of games do better than others in that regard. By the way, the base VR mode for ISLANDERS: VR is great for this purpose!

RA: I agree with John that in order for MR to really shine, games need to be designed with MR at the forefront. As technology advances and more features for MR become developed, I think MR as a whole will become top-of-mind for game developers.

Do you prefer playing ISLANDERS in fully immersive VR or a blended environment? Why?

RA: I’m a big fan of the original PC release, so I think I always prefer the immersive version over the blended environment—mostly for nostalgic reasons though.

JP: I think the main thing is that the player has choice over how they want to play the game. iSLANDERS: VR has a really fun sandbox-style gameplay that is immersive and relaxing, and the Passthrough mode allows you to bring the experience into your living space, making it more like one of those giant board games you find in the park or something. For me, it depends how messy my room is at any particular time and whether I want to be reminded of that 😉

What’s next for you? Anything exciting in the works that you can share?

RA: We have development going for a few other VR projects—some very exciting stuff, but nothing we can share details on at the moment!

JP: There’s always something exciting happening at Coatsink, but unfortunately I can’t say much more than that right now or else my boss will make me program in 6502 assembly until bedtime.

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

RA: Just a shoutout to all the other people who worked with us on ISLANDERS: VR—I would not have gotten as far without them. Also the original ISLANDERS devs: a huge kudos to them for making such a great game that formed the foundation for what we’ve been able to create.

JP: Yep, like Rich says, ISLANDERS: VR is just a lovely, relaxing game, and it makes such a nice change from all the spacey shooters I normally play. Congratulations to everyone involved!