One of the more intriguing projects coming to VR is Jon Favreau and Jake Rowell’s Gnomes & Goblins, and now they’ve released the first trailer for the anticipated game. The trailer whisks you away to a whimsical world full of adorable Goblins, and there is an endearing magic to the game’s visual style and soundtrack. We also see how you’ll be interacting with the environment, helping out the citizens of this village with tasks like farming and their other daily activities, and the enchanted forest itself is quite expansive, so you’ll have lots of sights and interesting things to take in when you finally put on the headset. You can check out the gameplay for yourself in the trailer above.
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Gnomes & Goblins is an original indie production from Wevr, MWM, and Golem Creations, and the world was created by Favreau (The Lion King, The Jungle Book, Iron Man) in collaboration with VR Director Jake Rowell (theBlu, Call of Duty, Superman Returns).
Both Favreau and Rowell wanted to put an emphasis on exploration and connection and make it so that a new player could just jump in and get lost in the world, and you can see that vision in the initial trailer.
“This project was one where I felt like there had to be a lot of room for exploration,” Favreau said. “It wasn’t one where I wanted to know where we were going when we started. The appeal is to have somebody who is not a gamer and never had a VR experience, be able to enjoy this without feeling that they need to have a certain skillset, but we also don’t want it to be passive cinematic experience where people just sit and enjoy it like a ride. It needs to be something where you engage in the way that you would in life. It should feel like you’re developing a relationship with these characters.”
“Just like with people, the first level of connection with our character are the eyes,” Rowell said. “We spent a lot of time discussing the ideas of lucid dreaming, enchanted moments, having a storybook feel, and how can we capture these moments in VR. The scale of the forest, the leaves blowing just the right way with the right sound all help to create the correct mood for the player. The physics are slightly stylized, and we included features like touching the grass to release the fireflies. It’s a heightened sense of things, enough to feel like you’re in a dream.”
Gnomes & Goblins hits Steam, Oculus, and Vive on September 23rd.
