MYR launches Shootout multiplayer VR title on Meta Quest

MYR is launching its Shootout virtual reality multiplayer shooter today on the Meta Quest VR headsets.

The multiplayer shooter lets players explore a variety of weapons and modifiers to discover over
1,000 unique combinations and abilities to build the loadout that players want to play.

The San Mateo, California-based company said the game has a completely new take on hero shooters where players build their own weapons and can adapt to any playstyle and role quickly.

MYR said the game lets players arm themselves with a vast and endless arsenal of weapons and modifiers, each with unique attributes and customization options by combining weapon components to create over 1,000 unique weapons and abilities.

The devs hope to evolve both the VR games industry and the hero shooter genre by creating gameplay that leverages the unique affordances of Virtual Reality. This kind of needs to exist in VR first before it can exist in any other medium.

Players sharpen their skills and devise tactics to outsmart opponents, making every encounter a test of wits. And they can explore hand-crafted virtual arenas in 3v3 multiplayer combat.

“Shootout started off as a minigame idea where players are asked to assemble a traditional weapon and shoot others before getting shot,” said Hamza Siddiqui, CEO of MYR, in a statement. “That first prototype made us realize that building like this in VR is fun and can be used to evolve our favorite genre of games, MOBAs and hero shooters.”

Siddiqui added, “One of the key challenges has been to allow for creativity but also make sure the game doesn’t feel overwhelming and too hard to get. VR allows for heightened context based awareness, where vision and hearing is heightened compared to pancake (non-VR games). We found that reinforcing an
ability with color and shapes went a long way towards players identifying what ability their opponents have. You cant know which hero is the other character but you can know exactly what parts they have by observing their trail, projectile color and effect.”

In an email to GamesBeat, Siddiqui said the company has been building social VR games since 2014.

“I started off by bringing familiar games to VR like Poker but in VR,” Siddiqui said. “Early VR game design focused a lot on Skeuomorphism. Eventually, games need to start inventing VR-centric mechanics and we wanted to explore that. While exploring we figured out using your hands to combine things feels very satisfying and then from there extending that mechanic to build hero shooters like abilities felt like a natural extension. We kept building and play testing and the playtests kept telling us that this could be the next evolution of hero shooters.”

The company has 12 people and it has raised $2.1 million to date.

As to what makes it unique, Siddiqui said, “Modular weapons and hero shooters/MOBAs have been done before but they haven’t been combined like this in any other game VR or otherwise. In Shootout, you build a weapon or ability by combining parts over your arms and you are one part swap away from changing your role.”

He added, “For example, imagine you have a laser and combine it with fire, upon impact you would be lit on fire and that fire does DPS. Put in heal in this build and the same fire turns green and starts healing instead of doing damage. Now, replace heal with ice (laser + ice + fire) then ice and fire can generate steam that gives thrust with the laser and you are flying around like Iron Man.”