Last week, we attended the Playsnak & Friends VR Web Summit in Berlin. A 3 day meeting of the minds, the summit brought together a hand picked selection of some extremely talented VR content creators and developers to talk shop, share and pitch their projects. Investors from K Cube Ventures, Seahorn Capital and Stonebridge Capital were also in attendance.
Day 1 – Playsnak Day
On the first day, Playsnak presented their company and their upcoming VR game projects. This included a very insightful VR market report, their publishing strategy, R&D and prototyping culture approach, and their VR Investment strategy, both today & into the future.
Upcoming Playsnak Games
- Spirit Hunter – Set in a world of eternal winter, you play a Shaman Hunter that is trying to bring balance back to nature by ridding the land of evil spirits that have taken over the wildlife. With the ability to change animal shapes and move around the open world, you must eventually find and defeat the Great White Stag who has been infected, bringing nature back in balance, thus ending the eternal winter.
- Neon Seoul – A fast-paced hoverbike game set in a neon cyber-punk universe, where the player is trying to weave through through the cities highways to deliver a package for the mob. In your way is the Seoul City Cops trying to stop you dead in your tracks.
- Escher: A mind-bending 1-2 Player Co-Op puzzle game where one player manipulates the world in VR while another player with a gamepad, outside of VR, tries to platform their way to the escape zone.
We will share more info about these games as it becomes available. All we can say for now is that they look AMAZING!
Day 2 – Friends Day
On the second day, we had a chance to hear presentations from:
Reality Reflection
Reality Reflection is a VR studio located in Seoul, South Korea. They are currently working on a number of VR games as well as a collaborative project called Private Concert, where they scan popular musicians (Kpop star HiNi) into 3D and recreate an interactive private VR concert.
booomVR
booomVR is a virtual reality web browser and content aggregation platform. This is a project that I am personally involved in and it was great to get a chance to show it off to a room full of VR industry professionals. We received some great feedback and lots of news will be coming soon!
Innerspace VR
InnerspaceVR is a VR development studio based in Los Angeles, CA, with production offices in Paris, France- They are focused on creating premium VR entertainment and we had a chance to see a demo of some of their really beautiful VR experiences including Firebird, a Fantasia-inspired musical franchise as well as their new Dollhouse Development Framework
Untold Games
Untold Games, which is based out of Italy presented some upcoming games, including a really twisted but slick looking mystery / film noir adventure where you play both detective and killer. The video below is from their last year’s VR release of Loading Human.
Stratosphere Games
Stratosphere Games is a Berlin based AAA mobile development studio. They gave us a preview of some of their most recent games, including Warzone and Nemesis. Although their games are currently mobile, they mentioned that they are experimenting with VR. More news when that becomes available.
Wonderlamp Industries
Wonderlamp Industries gave us a demonstration of their new software App for Gear VR called DJINNI. Based on it’s patented CINE-ENGINE® technology it is designed to make Virtual Reality (VR) content production available to anyone. The App puts you in a virtual world and lets you direct virtual actors inside this virtual setting without having to be an animation expert.
Booster Space
Booster Space is an event-specialist and brand-builder based in Berlin with a global network of partners and contacts. They gave us a preview of their upcoming VR game Duel VR.
apelab
apelab creates interactive, story-driven VR and AR content and development tools. We were given a preview of some of their amazing looking cinematic VR experiences as well as an overview of their upcoming SpatialStories development platform, for creating story driven concepts easily in VR.
MiriquidFilm
MiriquidFilm (Couldn’t find a link) presented an interactive 360 VR film concept for HTC VIVE where the user takes a “choose your own adventure” approach during WWII Germany. The concept will mix 360 video, 3D and video capture into an interesting historical adventure. We will definitely share more when it is available.
Day 3 – Fraunhofer Institute Visit Day
On Day 3 we had a tour of Berlin’s Fraunhofer Institute of Technology, including and overview of their immersive technologies, volumetric video and a demo of their OmniCam which is a mirror based panoramic camera.
We also had a visit to their TIME-Lab which is a stunning 180° cinema experience. The TIME-Lab videos were shot with their OmniCam, which is impressive enough in itself, but wow… the audio in this room is amazing.
Official Dinner – (Korean BBQ!)
Of course, we had to top off the summit with an official dinner at Arirang Berlin. I’m still full! In summary, we had a great time, saw some amazing upcoming VR projects, and met a lot of talented people.
A special thanks to Playsnak for the invitation and their hospitality! We are definitely looking forward to next year’s summit and will keep you updated if we hear any news.
About Playsnak
Founded in 2015, Playsnak is a global Next-Generation game company based in Berlin, Germany & Los Angeles, California. Playsnak is targeting to systematically building a true global next-gen game company in the time of maturing global mobile gaming market and shift to VR & AR immersive gaming market. Playsnak focuses on publishing 3rd party mobile games from Asia in the Western market and developing high-quality VR games to become a leading next-generation game company. For more information, visit http://playsnak.com.
About K Cube Ventures
Playsnak is funded by K Cube Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, founded in April 2012, with the vision of harnessing the power of startups to change our world. As an investment arm of Kakao Corporation, K Cube Ventures has focused on investing in promising ICT/SW startups, primarily in mobile, tech, and game categories, between $100,000 and $2 million per startup. K Cube Ventures believes that early-stage startups not only need financial support, but they also need experienced mentors. With this in mind, K Cube Ventures assists startups in the areas of business development, networking, team building, strategy consulting, investment and financial affairs, HR and PR, and management. K Cube Ventures will continue to contribute to the creation of the virtuous circulation of venture ecology by permanently supporting various resource projects as well as financial support to portfolio companies. For more information, visit http://kcubeventures.co.kr/en.
For press inquiries: contact@playsnak.com
Sean Earley is the Executive Editor of AR/VR Magazine & co-founder of RobotSpaceship Podcast Network. He is the Director of New Biz Development and Publishing at KEMWEB, a musician, producer & consultant. He loves guitars, VR and coffee.
