Panoptic Review – PC VR

First, my apologies for the tardiness of this review, but for many of the reasons this review is late are also the same reasons why you might not have even considered Panoptic; a fascinating and frankly super-original VR/screen multiplayer game that released to Steam last October.  VR games are traditionally a solo affair, so when you add in that element of cooperative play it can certainly make things interesting unless the multiplayer is local only and you find yourself in the middle of a pandemic with no one to play with.  But after five months of isolation I was finally able to get another staff member to sit in the same room with me and we took turns playing as the Challenger and the Overseer.

Back in 2016 when I got my first Oculus Rift there was this demo called Mythos of the World Axis.  It’s still FREE and in the Oculus store so go check it out.  This was one of the first things I played on my Rift, and I was blown away by the concept that I was this giant being overlooking this detailed miniature world.  It’s a feeling that’s been replicated with various degrees of success in games like Moss, The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets, and A Fisherman’s Tale, and my love of scale models has once again been realized in Team Panoptes latest VR experience, Panoptic.

Panoptic is basically the ultimate game of hide-and-seek where one person puts on the VR headset and becomes the Overseer (basically the Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings) and the other person uses a controller (or mouse/keyboard) to play as the Challenger in a traditional first-person view on the screen.  It’s up to the Overseer to find and destroy the Challenger before they can reach a series of glowing orbs.  If the Challenger can extinguish the orbs before they are detected and disintegrated they win.

There are a few other gameplay nuances that factor into the experience.  The Challenger is just one of dozens of other identical masked beings walking around the complex 3D levels, allowing you to blend into the crowd and even perform various actions to blend in.  You can even call over other NPC’s to create a crowd to get lost in.  Meanwhile, the Overseer has a special lens they can use to reveal a smoky trail of where the Challenger has been recently then use their powerful laser eye to disintegrate any prospective targets.  There’s no penalty for shooting NPC’s but the laser does have a lengthy power-up cycle so you can’t just go shooting everyone.  Meanwhile, the Challenger can see the giant “eye in the sky” and hide within the environment or attempt to blend in with the masses as they make their way toward the energy orbs.

While Panoptic is a great experience it isn’t much of a game.  There’s no scoring or leaderboards, but there is a lengthy list of achievements to knock out.  There’s no incentive for finding the Challenger faster, so you could be tempted to “camp out” at the orbs and zap anyone who approaches.  The levels are impressively large and complex, but I would have liked a few more.  It was cool to switch between VR and non-VR and see the world from within as well as this intricately detailed model with tiny guys bustling about.

I played Panoptic on both the Vive and the Rift S and the experience was virtually identical with two exceptions.  The game is pretty dark which means there is plenty of screen door fuzziness on the Vive that you won’t see on the Rift S.  The Touch controls also seem better suited for playing the game than the Vive wands.  The game supports room-scale, but you won’t need to move around, although standing is recommended.  As the Overseer you will be in the center of this 3D world that surrounds you on all sides, allowing you to spin around to see all four walls.  You can also use the motion controller to pan and move the room around your position; useful on some of the levels with lots of stairs and partially concealed passages.

There is a short and useful tutorial for each of the players as well as an intuitive front-end menu with easy access to recalibrate the play area.  The gamepad doesn’t seem to work within the menu, so the Challenger will need to make any selection with the mouse, but once in the game the controller works fine.

I had a blast with Panoptic playing both sides of the game.  There was this tension I hadn’t experienced since the days of multiplayer Assassin’s Creed where you would try to blend into the NPC crowd until you could get close enough to your target, meanwhile as the Overseer you don’t want to reveal that you are close to finding your target so you deceptively scan other parts of the level to give the Challenger a false sense of safety.

It’s worth noting that Panoptic does support Remote Play Anywhere, so technically you don’t have to have someone in the same room.  The Challenger doesn’t even need to own the game.  But much of the charm of Panoptic lies in the real-time interactions between players; something that is lost in the voice chat, plus you don’t have the ability to switch sides and let the hunter become the hunted.  For only $17, Panoptic is a must-own VR game, especially if you have frequent opportunities for local multiplayer or a friend who is willing to play only as the Challenger remotely.  The game rounds are relatively short making this a great pass-the-headset party game, once we’re allowed to have parties again.  I totally recommend this game and look forward to what fresh ideas Team Panoptes has for us next.

Author: Mark Smith
I've been an avid gamer since I stumbled upon ZORK running in my local Radio Shack in 1980. Ten years later I was working for Sierra Online. Since then I've owned nearly every game system and most of the games to go with them. Not sure if 40+ years of gaming qualifies me to write reviews, but I do it anyway.

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