Virtual Company Makes Virtual History

Around five months ago a meeting took place, the location for the meeting was online in a 'Zoom' room and the participants were based in various locations in the UK and Poland.

In that respect, the meeting was not untypical, over seven years the team at Showstorm have proved that it was not only possible for everyone in a company to work remotely but in fact Managing Director, Mark Bellinger believes it is the reason that other companies cannot even dream of competing with such a lean and dynamic operation such as his.

This meeting was notable however by nature of its audacious ambition, Showstorm's small team wanted make a Virtual Realty game for the HTC Vive, GamestormVR was born.

Whilst this team had a successful track record in making pioneering software tools for live entertainment, none of them had ever made a video game, let alone one for cutting edge VR, but as the saying goes, "Never under estimate the power of a dream" 

The Making of SteamHammerVR had started and from a few initial sketches and an idea, just ten weeks later their game SteamHammerVR had been given the Greenlight on Steam.

This week the team are excited to release their debut offering, SteamHammerVR 'The Demo' a completely free download giving owners of the HTC Vive more than 40 minutes of immersive gameplay as they travel back to Victorian London 1892.

Naturally, we hope people think SteamHammerVR is fantastic or at least the potential to be so, but we always maintained focus throughout our development to make something that we are proud of and make something that we would love to play.

We were also mindful that we are a team of six people and not a AAA developer with a massive budget, as such many of the design decisions were constrained by that, so we stayed focussed on making something that leant towards our strengths and kept within the realities of resources and time.

Obviously you have a vision of the game you would love to make but we had to make the game, we could actually make this year, first consideration was how to populate London...without populating London, see if you can spot the solution when you play it.

Your adventure takes place in Victorian London 1892. The dastardly Professor Rattwurm is attempting to enslave the fine English folk with his multitude of clockwork automatons! Armed with your steam powered weapons, can you save old London Town?

Once you have enjoyed playing the demo, the GamestormVR team have also hidden a few secrets to find, once these clues are gathered you will then have to solve the riddle that should give you just one word, the first person to tweet the secret word along with #SteamHammerVR and #SteamSecrets will win a copy of the full game and have their picture immortalised in the full game.

The team are looking forward to receiving lots of feedback from the community as they work towards full game release on the 9th December 2016 and keep your eyes peeled for announcements from the team and your opportunity to get involved and be part of game history.

SteamHammerVR 'The Demo' is available on Steam from 6th September 2016