System: Valve Index & HTC Vive
Price at Time Of Review: £10.99
Comfort Rating: Green (No Movement)
Genre: Puzzle
Input: Tracked Motion Controllers
Best Playing Position: Standing
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG
Description: An ancient tower stands in a barren land – ascend it and discover its mysterious powers. Symphony of the Machine is a meditative spatial puzzle game made specifically for virtual reality. Enter a beautiful but dead world and begin to breathe life back into it. With the help of your robot companion, use a variety of tools to manipulate an ancient machine that can control the weather. By manipulating a laser, you can create unique weather patterns needed to start regrowing the land. Watch as the landscape around you shifts and changes based on your interactions with the machine.
Review: Symphony of the Machine sees you tasked with the job of terraforming an alien planet. You have various seeds to grow and a giant weather machine. With a little help from a robot helper who will bring you all the things you need. Sadly there is only one beam of light to power all the various types of weather so you will have to bend and redirect that beam to the various weather machines.
Things soon get more and more complicated with 2, 3 even 4 types of weather needed at once. While the puzzles do get harder the game looks better and better as time passes. With the ever-changing alien environment that looks amazing and the pretty straightforward controls with the Oculus Touch, this is a game that will keep you out of your real-world garden for several hours on end.
While it isn’t the most straightforward of games I did find my way around it in the end and once I got the hang of things I was seriously enjoying myself. To be honest growing plants on an alien planet has never been so much fun! It also has to be said that this is a gorgeous looking game and with each changing weather pattern seeing the ever-changing environment is a joy. Games like this make VR a joy to play, just don’t expect too much for your money and do expect it to get repetitive very quickly.
