Judge's comments:

World class. Pushing the technology with gorgeous aesthetics and engaging narrative so even non-gamers want to be involved. Rich story-telling that comes across as an interactive movie. This is phenomenal.

Description:

Wanderer is a beautiful story driven time travel adventure game - built from the ground up for VR.

Created via a partnership between two Auckland studios, Oddboy and M-Theory, the game has been so successful the two have now merged to become Mighty Eyes. A Virtual Reality powerhouse producing the highest quality VR adventures.

Virtual reality is an interesting medium, still a fledgling industry trying to find its feet, the current market sorely lacks in premium content (though change is happening). We knew players craved better content, exciting stories, longer campaigns, richer, more immersive worlds and tactile hands-on gameplay. Backed with support from Sony Interactive Entertainment we took on the challenge of building the VR game we dreamed of.

Wanderer was a game imagined many years ago and took nearly 4 years to develop. It started with the idea of time travel - imagine if you could go back and revisit some of the greatest events and moments from history. What if you weren't just a fly on the wall but became part of the story, your role integral to the outcomes of the eras you visit.

Not only that, we could also tap into the wealth of content history provides - characters, settings, and iconic moments! And so we set to work creating the next generation of adventure game for VR.

Wanderer sees you step back into history to experience beautifully detailed worlds that come to life with realistic and innovative physics-based interactions. It combines a unique blend of escape room style puzzles and hands-on action sequences, where you bring together objects and events from various time periods in sometimes unlikely and inventive ways.

Experiment alongside frenzied inventors, play to an endless crowd of hippies, defend ancient civilizations from invasion, decode covert messages in the midst of war and uncover the secrets of the space race - will you follow what you know to be true or are there forces at play beyond your control?

Since launching in January 2022, Wanderer has been lauded as one of the best games ever published on this generation of PlayStation VR. It consistently scores between 80-90/100 and its Steam reviews between 85% and 90% (“Very positive”). The success has allowed us to focus on the next phase for our studio and will see us expanding and evolving the Wanderer IP.