A pair of newly announced VR games are scheduled for release in 2027 from Flat2VR Studios — System Shock and High On Life.
System Shock was the influential precursor to BioShock, first released in 1994 and re-released in 2023 by Nightdive. The remake is getting the full Flat2VR treatment alongside the VR version of humor-shooter High On Life from Squanch Games, where the gun you hold is a live alien commentating as you shoot your way through the world.
The two games were announced during the latest VR Games Showcase put together by Jamie Feltham, with a Trombone Champ DLC partnered with Disney joining the announcements from Flat2VR. I scheduled a call with Eric Masher, COO at Flat2VR, for a full rundown of the announcements and to get his view on the state of the VR market. He called in from the airport as he’s heading out to Gamescom where he’ll be taking meetings that might lead to VR games for release in 2029 and beyond.
“I tried a DK1,” Masher recalls of his introduction to the medium. “It literally changed things for me at that point. It rekindled what I think gaming could be as an immersive platform. I remember getting out of the headset and talking to my wife and I’m like, this is a life changing moment for me. And it sounds cliche, but I remember and she even remembers like me saying … I need to figure out how I do something in this medium.”
Be sure to pair the conversation with the previous episode chatting with Flat2VR Studios CEO Jasmine Uniza for a fuller picture of the efforts at the studio. The discussion with Masher covers the difficulty facing VR developers building for a niche within a niche as several manufacturers ship headsets tuned for hand tracking, often selling controllers as separate accessories. Flat2VR is focused on controllers and the studio’s latest announcements join a slowly growing list of gaming projects for VR headsets that require tracked controllers.
“Every game that we have focused on for 2027, 2028, and even beyond stuff that we’re preparing to get started for 2029 and beyond are going to be controller focused,” Masher said. “I would not be doing that if I didn’t believe that most of the gaming headsets would be in some way controller focused. The games that we make and what we focus on as Flat2VR Studios cannot be done hand-tracked.”
We spoke for just over 30 minutes on the podcast platform Riverside and I edited the conversation down to under 25 minutes.
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