Eye of the Temple is a VR game that lets you explore a vast and treacherous temple using your own feet. Keep your balance as you step from one moving block to another, dodging traps and solving puzzles with your torch and whip in hand. As you explore the Temple complex and its past, you might just uncover the mystery of the Eye, and find yourself becoming part of its legend.
Eye of the Temple makes unique use of room-scale VR and delivers the experience of exploring a vast environment. Lose yourself in the depths of the temple without teleportation, artificial locomotion, or other distractions taking you out of the immersion.
You can buy the game here:
Get Eye of the Temple for Meta Quest
Get Eye of the Temple for SteamVR
I also made this website:
Eye of the Temple official website
There's media and info for journalists etc. here:
See the presskit for the game
Credits:
See credits for the PC SteamVR version at mobygames.com.
I worked with Salmi Games to adapt the game from PC to Meta Quest in collaboration with them.
Trailers
Here are the three most important trailers for Eye of the Temple, starting with the newest. More trailers can be seen on my YouTube channel.
After the positive reception of the Quest version, I made an accolades trailer by integrating review quotes into the scenes of the Quest launch trailer. I used tracking functionality in the video editor to make the text appear positioned in 3D space.
For the release of the Quest version of the game, we had a new trailer produced. The footage was once again recorded by Anaburn, just like in the original PC VR trailer. This trailer focused on a single player for simplicity, and did away with the narrator voice.
The launch trailer for the original PC VR version of the game featured mixed reality footage recorded by Anaburn, and a narrator voice setting the mood. Since playtesting had shown the game had wide appeal, I wanted to emphasize that it's a game that can be played by anyone, and for this reason arranged with Anaburn to have clips recorded with three different actors / adventurers.
Since the way you play Eye of the Temple using your own body is so unique, I knew I had to show the player's body in the trailer, and could not rely on first-person footage. For this reason, all trailers for the game predominantly use mixed-reality footage, where camera footage of the person playing the game is combined with recordings of the virtual environment they're in.
A brief history
After positive reception of the 2016 VR game jam game Chrysalis Pyramid, I decided to create a more ambitious spiritual successor. Keeping only the core mechanic of stepping from one moving block to another, development of Eye of the Temple began in the spring of 2016, where I worked on it on a part time basis.
A whole different aesthetic and environment was chosen for Eye of the Temple, focusing on the atmosphere of treacherous temples from classic action adventure films. After much research and development, a physically simulated whip was added as a new core mechanic in 2017.
At the end of 2020 I quit my day job at Unity Technologies to pursue indie game development full-time. I spent my time in 2021 wrapping up Eye of the Temple and on October 14th 2021 it finally shipped.
In 2022 I partnered with Salmi Games to bring the game to Meta Quest 2 in collaboration with them, and it shipped on the Oculus Store on April 27th 2023.
Recognition
When the Quest 2 version launched, UploadVR called it an essential VR experience, and gave their review the title:
"A Triumphant Room-Scale Adventure"
Eye of the Temple won the Design Award for Excellence in Locomotion in Road to VR's 2021 Game of the Year Awards.
"The amount of intention that went into designing the entire game is actually pretty mindboggling."
Eye of the Temple was included in UploadVR's 10 Best PC VR Games of 2021.
"A great reminder of just how powerfully immersive VR can really be."
Eye of the Temple got 9.3/10 in a review by Worthplaying.
"It's rare to jump into a new VR game and feel like it's something giddy and exciting that you haven't experienced before. Eye of the Temple is that game for me."
Eye of the Temple was #3 in Ben Plays VR's top 10 SteamVR games of 2021.
"I couldn't stop playing until I finished it."
Apart from that, Eye of the Temple got a very positive user review score on Steam, and many of the reviews are highly enthusiastic. Capturing the essence of over 100 reviews is no easy task but I've put together the following summary, with links back to 27 of the original reviews.
Nothing else like it
A slew of reviews highlight the uniqueness of the game, saying it's "a refreshing change to see a new game form in VR", that there's "nothing like this in VR", and that it's an "instant classic". Others write that it's "some of the most creative VR gameplay of any VR game", that it's "nothing short of genius", and that "this dev is some sort of mad genius". Some write that it's "a revolution in Virtual Reality" because "the motion system is completely revolutionary" and that it has the "potential to create a whole new genre in VR-Games".
Immersion level off the chart
According to the reviewers, what makes it so innovative is that "being able to actually walk through the entire game in your play space is just mind boggling and super immersive", making it "one of those rare mind-blowing VR experiences". Some say that the game "does otherworldly things with your mental perception" that "makes you forget you are in VR" and that as a result, "the immersion level is off the chart" and it "takes vr immersion to a new level".
The closest thing to being Indiana Jones
For some reviewers, that level of immersion made this VR adventure the "most ingenious and thrilling VR game", speculating that "if Steven Spielberg or George Lucas made VR games instead of movies ... this is the VR game they would come up with" because it "captures perfectly the whole Indiana Jones vibe", so that "if you want to feel like Indiana Jones, this is the closest you could ever get".
One of the best VR games
Overall, lots of reviewers say it's "one of the best VR experiences" and "one of the greatest VR experiences of all time". Several focus on room-scale, calling it "the best Roomscale VR Game" they've played and "the best room scale experience out there". Some say it's the "2nd best roomscale game" next to Half-Life: Alyx and that they "haven't had this much fun since playing Half Life Alyx". Others think Eye of the Temple surpasses it and is simply the "best VR game". One reviewer didn't limit it to VR and said: "I've been playing video games for 30+ years, and finding ALL the secrets in Eye of the Temple was easily the most satisfying moment I've ever had in a game!".
It's almost hard for me to believe how positively these reviews describe the game. I'm blown away and humbled by the response here.
17 blog posts related to Eye of the Temple
Behind the design of Eye of the Temple, out on Quest 2
My VR adventure Eye of the Temple, that I've been working on since 2016, has landed on the Meta Quest 2! It was released last week on April 27th. Get Eye of the Temple for Quest 2 on the Oculus Store Originally released for SteamVR in October 2021, so many people have asked for it to be brought to the Quest 2 as a native app, so I'm happy it's finally a reality. The Quest 2 version was co-developed with Salmi Games and it took all our combined and complimentary skills to bring the game to life at target framerate on the Quest 2 mobile hardware. ...
One year later...
Today is the one year anniversary of the release of my VR adventure Eye of the Temple on Steam! It's currently 40% off to celebrate. I thought I'd take a moment to talk about what I've been up to since the release, both related to Eye of the Temple and other projects. Eye of the Temple updates In the months after the release I worked on various fixes and updates to the game. In December I added ...
Launching Eye of the Temple - this was my experience
My VR adventure Eye of the Temple, that I've been working on for the past five years, has finally shipped! It was released last month on October 14th. Naturally this was a huge milestone for me after having worked on it for so long. And while I've released some smaller games for free in the past, Eye of the Temple is my commercial debut game. I actually did it! Wow, I say, patting myself on the back. ...
Eye of the Temple in 2019
I've completely failed to keep up the posting in 2019, but it's not too late to write at least one post this year! Here's (almost) everything that happened with the development of Eye of the Temple in 2019! But first, let's look at what happened in the last part of 2018 after the previous post. Fall 2018 In September 2018 the game got a proper looking in-game menu replacing the old debug UI. ...
Creaking Gorge and The Cauldron
Since my last post in July where I finally got a vision down for the level design in Eye of the Temple, I've been feeling super productive adding new areas and features to the game. In August I added two new areas and in September I've been revamping the in-game UI and the speedrun mode. Only problem is I haven't kept up with these blog posts. To avoid this post getting too long, I'll cover the new areas here and save the UI work for a later post. ...
Level design workflows
Let me talk a bit about my workflows for doing level design in Eye of the Temple since I recently had some progress in that area. I've been in something akin to a level design writer's block for a long time, being able to rework individual small areas, but unable to start the major world redesign that I've been intending for over a year. Maybe calling it writer's block is pretentious - the fact is that I've never done this sort of work before, so I may just not have developed the necessary workflows to deal with it. Anyway, I think I might have finally cracked the nut. ...
New pots feature, mixed reality, Discord server, Yonderplay event
It's time for a new update on the development of Eye of the Temple. Events GDC in March is well behind us and I had a great time there. Among other things, I got to show off Eye of the Temple at the European Game Showcase (and saw a lot of other cool games too). This was a private event for specially invited people from the network of the organizers. Now, Eye of the Temple has been selected for ...
New trailer, public Steam page and Eye of the Temple in the press!
Last week I took a dive into the world of PR with Eye of the Temple. There is a new trailer you can see on the website eyeofthetemple.com or right here below. And Eye of the Temple now has a Steam page: Eye of the Temple on Steam If you have a Vive or Oculus Rift, and think Eye of the Temple looks interesting, you can totally add it to your wishlist on Steam now! ;) After that I took my first stab at contacting the press with a press release. The story got picked up by ...
January 2018 update
It seems like I didn't blog since July. How scandalous! Well, here's an update on what I worked on for Eye of the Temple since then. Presented as a series of tweets, because that's what I have time for. Note: Add blockers seem to sometimes randomly block some of the embedded tweets for some reason. Prettier background environment The cold snowy mountains didn't give the feeling I was aiming for. Failing to find anything ready-made that fit the bill, I created my own lush, mountainous environment. ...
July update: Trials and triumphs of whips and levers
Here's the latest updates on the development of my Vive VR game Eye of the Temple. For the past several months I've been working on improving the whip I prototyped last year. In the last post, I showed how it could grab levers, but there were a lot of issues and the whip and lever didn't exactly look pretty. Now see what it looks like now: This feels really good to use now. It didn't get to this point without a lot of issues on the way though. ...
June update: Verticality, puzzles, whip
Here's the latest updates on the development of my Vive VR game Eye of the Temple. For the past month I've been mainly working on improving the whip I prototyped last year. It can now be used to grab levers at a distance, and then you can yank the whip backwards to activate the lever. Testing whip and lever in Eye of the Temple. Still some way to go, but getting there. #gamedev #indiedev #vr #HTCvive ...
April update: Fire, blades, speedrun mode
Here's the latest updates on the development of my Vive VR game Eye of the Temple. New additions: Fire! One challenge tunnel now has fire hazards. Blades! One challenge tunnel now has swinging blades. Speedrun mode! A more challenging way to play the game. More notes below. Hat! You're now wearing a hat. Hope you like hat. Experimental spectator camera. 3rd person view. More notes below. ...
February update: Gems
Here's the latest updates on the development of my Vive VR game Eye of the Temple. New features: There are now gems throughout the temple that you can collect. Moving platforms have glowing symbols on them. Visuals: Intro area has some red stones and some of the dungeons have grittier gray stones and spikes. The way the platforms move has been tweaked, hopefully to further reduce potential for dizziness. ...
January update: Visuals, usability and early testing
For a while, my focus for my Vive VR game Eye of the Temple have been to not expand more on gameplay right now but rather on improving what I've got in order to make it as presentable as possible. That has meant: Improving visuals. Addressing usability issues found in play-testing. (If anybody wonder what happened to the Whip Arena spin-off game, I put that on hold after it become clear it only worked well with a quite large physical VR space, which very few people have available.) ...
The quest for automatic smooth edges for 3d models
I'm currently learning simple 3D modeling so I can make some models for my game. I'm using Blender for modeling. The models I need to make are fairly simple shapes depicting man-made objects made of stone and metal (though until I get it textured it will look more like plastic). There are a lot of flat surfaces. The end result I want is these simple shapes with flat surfaces - and smooth edges. In the real world, almost no objects have completely sharp edges, and so 3d models without smooth edges tend to look like they're made of paper, like this: ...
Spin-off game: Whip Arena
I've spend the past few days at Exile (like a game jam but not a jam this year). I've envisioned having a whip in Eye of the Temple for a long time, and at Exile I began developing this whip mechanic. In the main game, the whip is meant to be just one element in the gameplay, aiding in puzzles, like being able to grab and switch levers from a distance, and grabbing objects to pull towards you. However, for now I started out making a little self-contained game based just around the whip, so that I could focus on getting the feel right first. ...
Announcing Eye of the Temple
I've been working on a VR game for the past months. It's called Eye of the Temple and it's a Vive game quite unlike any other. Here's a pre-alpha trailer for it! That's the first time I've made a trailer by the way. Quite challenging but also fun! It's got some placeholder models in it and it's made from playtest footage rather than clips made specifically for this trailer, but I tried to make the best of what I got. ...