While Meta, Apple and Valve are known as the bastions of virtual reality right now, there's no widely-known developer of VR games. While no VR studio has yet to become a household name, physics-based action game Blade and Sorcery is the closest any game—bar Beat Saber—has come to being the de-facto game for VR platforms, thanks to a successful early access period, countless hilarious YouTube videos, and staying power that has outlived even the biggest live-service games from veteran publishers.
It's almost a given that anyone who owns one of the best VR headsets has a copy of Blade and Sorcery in their library, whether that's the full version of the best PCVR game or Nomad, the standalone version of the physics-based game for Meta's Quest 2 and 3. As the dust settles after a huge 1.0 launch, we spoke with the face of Warpfrog's Blade and Sorcery, The Baron, about everything from the challenging development behind Crystal Hunt to a potential PSVR 2 port.
Six years on from the initial release of Blade and Sorcery, 1.0 has arrived with new weapons, maps and a full Crystal Hunt game mode. While the beating heart of Warpfrog’s VR sandbox is its arena-based combat, Crystal Hunt offers a true progression-based mode to the game, an addition that was a huge challenge for the game’s team.
"[Crystal Hunt] was a massive undertaking because we were creating an entire game mode and dropping it on top of a completely different game." The Baron told us, "The goal was to give a fresh feeling to the Blade and Sorcery sandbox game that players had become so familiar with in the past years and make it feel like a new experience."
"It was a crazy amount of work", The Baron calls it, "It's so much easier in ‘gamey games’, because you can do things like ‘this enemy is harder because he has twice the health’. So imagine removing that option, and now try to develop a game with progression and balance"
While vanilla Blade and Sorcery’s foundations have allowed it to live and evolve since its initial early access launch, the best Blade and Sorcery mods have continued to breathe new life into the game. As it stands, the game’s popularity is directly tied to its massive modding community with the biggest mods allowing players to become Kratos from God of War or fight with a huge arsenal of Star Wars weapons.
"I will give a shout out to Alex, the creator of The Outer Rim. His Star Wars mod gets a lot of love and rightly so, as he puts an absolute ton of effort into it." The Baron adds “Not only that, but [Alex] actually evolved and grew the mod in parallel with the game, adding new features to the mod as the main game did. That is super cool and in my opinion gives TOR its own legacy alongside Blade and Sorcery.”
It’s no surprise that a sword fighting game has an eager amount of people looking to mod Star Wars into it. However, Warpfrog’s eager approach to allowing modding for its game is something that many other publishers and developers should be inspired by. Not only has it given users countless gigabytes of extra content for free, but some of the most experienced modders now work in Warpfrog.
While PCVR players are currently enjoying the full version of Warpfrog’s VR vision, its standalone counterpart on Quest hasn’t received the same overhaul. Instead, the team is still hard at work to bring the full Blade and Sorcery 1.0 experience to the Nomad spin-off, but the limitations of Meta’s Quest headsets offer a number of hurdles developers have to jump through.
"A real pain factor that all VR devs are feeling right now is that the Quest 2 is massively the most popular headset, but not the most powerful headset." The Baron mentions. While the launch of the Quest 3 provides VR gamers with more powerful technology, the Quest 2's unparalleled success is something that most VR developers are forced to deal with.
"We were really blessed because we had success on the PCVR game and that allowed us to split off a parallel sister title with Nomad, which would be the made-for-Quest version of Blade and Sorcery; same content and game, but made specifically for Quest hardware."
On the other hand, The Baron adds that the popularity of the Quest 2 is almost an anchor for VR developers. "My dream is that as technology progresses, the hardware of standalone headsets improves majorly so that it is easier to make a title that can crossplay on both standalone headsets and PCVR in a way that does not compromise the developer ambitions."
However, while The Baron mentions that the Quest 3 is vastly superior in performance to its predecessor, it seems like Nomad isn't getting a Quest 3 upgrade anytime soon. "As much as I wish there could be a Quest 3 standalone version of Nomad with improved graphics and is something in between current Nomad and PCVR, it would be madness because then there would be three versions of Blade and Sorcery to upkeep."
The only way for a Nomad upgrade in the foreseeable future? Well, it “would require the Quest 2 to improve its hardware", but hopefully, the rumored launch of the Meta Quest 3S as a budget-friendly option will see the new headsets replicate the success of the 2020 VR device.
However, while the Quest 2 is keeping many developers back from the potential improvements with the Quest 3, Meta is proving to be a huge helping hand behind the scenes. "Meta often gets a ton of flak, but they are actually massive champions of VR behind the scenes that most people don't really see. They pour a ton of resources into VR development and offer some assistance for developers in the form of soft support."
While VR gaming used to require the need of the best graphics cards within a VR-ready PC, Meta has proven that standalone VR headsets aren't just a gimmick, but a viable option. Following rough initial sales, even the Quest 3 headset is climbing up sales charts. However, with Meta focusing on affordable hardware, The Baron believes that developers like Valve should focus on "[pursuing] funding or producing more high-quality VR games."
Despite Nomad’s success on Quest, Blade and Sorcery has curiously avoided the PlayStation VR platform in its entirety. While fans are waiting for a PSVR2 port of the game, the chances of a port continue to weaken with each passing day. Without even a single PSVR2 devkit given to the team, Warpfrog doesn’t know if a PlayStation 5 version is on the cards.
"I would love this and there is hope, but I cannot say for sure right now!" The Baron replies about a potential PSVR 2 version of the game. "This is on the ‘we will see’ list because we need to actually invest time into investigating this port and get hold of a devkit, etc. At the moment, we are so tied up with PCVR, and soon it will be the all-consuming Nomad port."
While there's questions about Sony's support of PSVR 2, with PlayStation seemingly cutting funding to PSVR 2 games in-house, there's another obstacle that may stop Blade and Sorcery coming to PlayStation: mod support. With mods already restricted in games like Skyrim: Special Edition and Fallout 4, a PS5 port could rid everything special about the VR game.
"One huge question mark however would be about mods,” The Baron told us. “I have no clue how we would approach this, so we would need to sit down and think of a plan, unless the PSVR2 version was to not have mods, but that would be sad."
In good news though, Warpfrog is already planning a new game after the success of Blade and Sorcery. While a future sequel is always on the developers’ minds, an all-new VR adventure is coming first.
"When Blade and Sorcery is all wrapped up we will be moving onto our next game which is going to be an entirely new title,” we were told.
Despite it not being a full-fledged sequel to Blade and Sorcery, much of the DNA will remain the same. "I can definitely say the next game, and all future Warpfrog games, will be supported by the same pillars of Warpfrog design; physics based, immersive simulation, non-gamey design, sandbox (in the sense play as you like, you are not forced into our vision of fun), and mods!"
The Baron is keen to add his thoughts and ideas behind a potential B&S sequel though, mentioning that: "I would love to see something like an open world where you could travel between places and have random encounters on the road. Or perhaps some mechanic such as being able to sail between the distant lands in Byeth."
If, or when, Blade and Sorcery 2 arrives, Warpfrog is keen to move past the human-only arenas and add tense battles against a variety of creatures. Teased in Blade and Sorcery’s Crystal Hunt mode, Warfrog is excited to give players a future where they’re taking on all manner of beasts with the studio’s iconic physics-based combat.
"Something I'd also love to see and wish we could have done in Blade and Sorcery is have creatures, such as monsters,” The Baron said. “This is something we touch on in the lore of Blade and Sorcery, so that would be incredible to expand on and have interesting creatures to fight using the physics simulation."
If you have yet to play one of the best VR titles available right now, make sure to check out our Blade and Sorcery 1.0 review, which goes into detail on how the early access title made waves with massive changes to the beloved game.