I’m going to keep this review short and sweet because honestly, you need to be playing Hurl VR rather than reading about me having played it. Available for the HTC Vive (sorry Rift owners),this wonderfully unique game blurs the lines of sports and puzzle game where realistic physics and your own ability to “hurl” a ball will determine just how successful you are at this game.
Once loaded, you find your disembodied self standing on a platform suspended in a void, your two Vive controllers floating in front of you. Go ahead and ditch one of them, as you only need one to play the game, which makes this a great option for lefties or righties. Squeezing the trigger summons a virtual ball from thin air that you can intuitively throw by making the appropriate swinging motion and releasing the trigger.
You can throw overhanded or lob the ball underhanded. You choose, and that is where Hurl VR finds its own distinct level of skill and challenge. At first you simply toss the ball into the orange target to advance to the first stage, but from then on you are going to be bouncing these balls off increasing numbers of platforms; some flat, some on angles, some with boost abilities, and some that even lead to teleportation portals. Your initial speed/force of the throw along with that first angle of deflection will all chain react into what will eventually become some truly remarkable puzzle solutions that play out in 360-degrees of delightful satisfaction.
Hurl VR has three stages with ten levels per stage, so it’s quite easy to complete the game in under an hour. While all thirty puzzles have obvious solutions the real challenge lies in your ability to find that perfect angle and amount of force to make that ball bounce and arc from platform to platform all the way to the goal. And don’t look for shortcuts because each platform is a trigger that must be lit before the goal opens up.
There are a few assists that you can enable for short amounts of time like turning on a guidance line to show you where to throw or turning on a vortex around the goal to suck in a ball that gets “close enough”. I didn’t find these terribly useful. Actually they may make things tougher. Once I turned on the vortex I started paying more attention to the timer that was ticking down and started rushing my shots, so the ball never even made it close to the suction area.
There is a fantastic set of Achievements that will keep you playing long after you solve all thirty puzzles. You’ll want to use all the assists at least once then win the game without using any. There are also rewards for solving all the puzzles with minimal attempts. While this might sound easy once you know the “secret” to each level, there is still that painful reality of physics and skill. While the Vive controller is remarkably suited to translating your physical movement into gameplay input, there is always a certain level of unpredictability. By design you’ll want to play Hurl VR standing up since you’ll want to experiment with various heights and distances when throwing the ball toward that first platform.
The presentation for Hurl VR is simplistic eloquence with visuals reminiscent of TRON, as bits and pieces of the game world float around and reassemble between each level. Sound and music are spot on, and the level of 3D immersion in this world is surprisingly engaging. There was one level where a ball was arcing towards me on the player platform and I instinctively ducked in real life. The ball trail that remained was this glowing line of what appeared to be pulsating plasma that looked dangerous to touch. A pop-up menu grants you access to various game options as well as level selection and assist toggles.
Hurl VR is only $5, and while that might sound salty for a game that you can finish in 30-45 minutes, there is a lot of replayability lurking within this surprisingly addictive and challenging game, especially if you are on a quest to unlock all of those achievements. That’s going to take several hours of perfecting your lines and throwing technique, but rest assured, every minute you spend playing Hurl VR is delightfully fun and totally satisfying.
