Very intrigued by this particular offering! VU is exploring a persistent virtual world that allows to collect resources and skills. These can be applied to the economy of VU, via their platform native token, the VU. So far, they have a lot going for them:
Solid team/ experience levelThe team has been doing high level titles for quite some time now. There are guys from the Halo franchise, as well as Assassin's Creed. With well over a decade of experience specifically in this vertical, and a very clear concept on what they would like to achieve, I believe they will actually make it all the way to a gold release, more or less on time.
Solid conceptThe niche that the project is attempting to fill is very empty and desired. This particular style of game (something referred to as a RCE - real cash economy game - is a pretty rare bird. Since Project Entropia, the most notable one of these offerings, many companies have tried and failed to offer a platform like this. The closest we have seen implemented are the real money trade markets of games like Diablo 3. They were hugely successful, to the point of needing to be regulated due to abuse.
Working modelOne of my favorite aspects of this project is the fact that they have a demo that works! I don't have any VR equipment, so I have not taken the tour myself, but there are lots of demo videos with the devs and VR players to review. The environment (the desert canyon specifically) is really gorgeously rendered, and stylistically seems a lot better that art I have seen on much more developed titles. The game also feature a cool ai system where each living thing acts off a system of triggers. This allows the environment to interact with itself, making for a very realistic and natural seeming environment. If this was not VR at all, I would still be impressed with the level of artistic development that has gone into the project thus far.
The game mechanics seem to work just fine as well. Day/night effects, physics and locational sound seemed great, and there were no obvious bugs or obstacles to gameplay for guys just picking up the VR googles and entering the world.
Aggressive RoadmapThey plan to have this wrapped up pretty quickly after the sale, according to the roadmap. Besides the demo environment available on the guided tour, they should be releasing an alpha version in the upcoming months, and be wrapped with the project for the most part by the latter part of 2019. That's pretty huge in the gaming world, where projects take 4-8 years to develop that have a much smaller scope than this.
Overall, this is the most promising VR/blockchain offering that I have seen of late (I follow these). If Ready Player One is any indication, soon VR will be a huge craze. And the Afterworld Project, and well as Planet Calypso have shown that folks are willing to invest big bucks into games with real cash economies. Early birds tend to become future uber players on games like these
