System: Valve Index & HTC Vive
Price at Time Of Review: £18.99
Comfort Rating: Green (No Movement)
Genre: Interactive Experience
Input: Tracked Motion Controllers
Best Playing Position: Sitting
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG
Description: The crime… is murder. Our story takes place in a court trial, set in a futuristic world where most humans have cyberbrains. The defendant on trial is an agent who coordinates with artists to create the data for cyberbrains to interact with people’s emotions. The victim is a girl artist named Lux. The jury has to investigate what really happened by reliving the memory data of the defendant.
From the creative mind behind the WORLD END ECONOMiCA series, this title is Spicy Tail’s new adventure adopting HMD in a VR space. Project LUX is a “story-oriented” work for VR, in contrast to recent VR works, which can described as “experience-oriented.” Born from an idea upon reading Dr. Naotaka Fujii’s book, “Kakuchō Suru Nō” (Expanding Brain) in 2014, Project LUX is a VR animated story that puts you in the perspective of the agent as he interacts with Lux. What will be revealed from reliving the agent’s memory data of what transpired…?
Review: From the creative minds behind the “WORLD END ECONOMiCA” series, this title is Spicy Tail’s new adventure and all played out in VR. Project LUX is a “story-oriented” work for VR, in contrast to recent VR works, which can be described as “experience-oriented.” Born from an idea upon reading Dr Naotaka Fujii’s book, “Kakuchō Suru Nō” (Expanding Brain) in 2014, Project LUX is a VR animated story that puts you in the perspective of the agent as he interacts with Lux. What will be revealed from reliving the agent’s memory data of what transpired…?
Project Lux features five “episodes” that bring this VR adventure to life, featuring the voice talents of Aimi Tanaka as Lux and Teruaki Ogawa as the agent. Lux is brought to life with the beautiful character designs of illustrator Luna Tsukigami and the motion capture performed by Aimi Tanaka herself. This is an innovative new way of presenting a visual novel experience, but be warned it is very heavy on dialogue so you will be reading an awful lot.
Let me start off by saying how Project LUX is a beautifully animated experience that features a deeply engaging storyline. Now that small amount of praise is out of the way, let me tell you what I don’t like about it…
Not only is there very little interaction with the storyline, but there is also very little in the choice of paths you can take. But I am feeling generous so I can excuse that because of the deeply complex, emotional and thought-provoking storyline that they are trying to get across. What I can’t excuse is the fast-moving text that makes this app pretty unplayable unless you fluently understand Japanese! There is no “Click Next” to read the next part of the text so it zooms by often to the point where you are missing giant chunks of the storyline. A simple change could make this app more enjoyable, but without it, this is only for people who understand Japanese.
