“Tower Defense-inspired” VR FPS Home A Drone is set to release in Early Access on Steam and Viveport this Thursday.

Home A Drone will allow players to fight off invading swarms of enemies by placing structures that automatically target and shoot at whatever approaches, similar to other tower defense-style games like Defense Grid 2. Unlike traditional tower defense titles, however, Home A Drone will invoke the power of VR by allowing players to jump directly into the action with their own handheld weapons, much like in any conventional shooting game.

Image courtesy Construct Studio

Developer Construct Studio says that the title’s narrative beats center around DroneCorp, an overzealous corporation bent on monopolizing all forms of artificial intelligence. In an attempt to defend Scrappy, the player’s home-built drone that DroneCorp appears obsessed with reclaiming for its own purposes, players will set traps and wield weapons, such as the “Battery Blaster, the Saw Sniper, and the Football Flinger,” against an invading army of DroneCorp drones.

The studio pitches the following on the game’s Steam page:

  • Arcade and Tower Defense-inspired gameplay, built from the ground up for VR! Balance your preferred gameplay style against your resources during fun, fast paced action!
  • Play Offensively or Defensively… Should you use skill with weapons to fight back the DroneCorp onslaught, or should you use strategy to place traps to most effectively stop the drones in their tracks? Why not both? In Home A Drone, you decide how you should play!
  • DIY-inspired creations like the Battery Blaster, the Saw Sniper, and the Football Flinger are your instruments of battle.
    Upgrade your weapons and traps with the Scrap from each drone you defeat, making them more powerful and changing their characteristics.
  • Fight for friendship, and discover the truth about DroneCorp and Scrappy!
  • Flamingos!

Home A Drone is headed to Steam and Viveport this Thursday, September 19th, priced at $10. The game will be released in Early Access and only with official support for the HTC Vive, though the developer says that support for the Rift is expected “really soon.”

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Image courtesy Construct Studio

Construct Studio also developed The Price of Freedom VR (2016). Downloaded just over 85,000 times, in 2017 it was nominated for the ‘Best Narrative VR’ and ‘Narrative Achievement Award’ at Unity VR/AR Vision Summit and was featured at the Sundance Film Festival by HTC.

Aside from developing games, the studio also designed VERA, a plugin system that’s meant to smoothen the direct integration of 3D model data into a game engine like Unity.

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Gabriel Moss

  • mehhh… Just hearing “tower defense” is a huge turn-off. Tower defense games are best played on a cellphone with simple touch controls while doing something else like watching TV. They aren’t engaging enough to make a good VR game. When I tried Kittypocalypse, it was just so BORING. Standing there with nothing to do but watch and see if your setup worked or not, then getting to watch it again if it didn’t work, over and over until you get the right formula… It was something like watching paint dry, but with less assurance that the outcome would be what you were hoping for.

    Bad idea, IMO.

  • gothicvillas

    I am massive vr enthusiast and I wish I knew how to make vr games. Tower defense games would be banned in my company.

  • thgc

    @gothicvillas:disqus what would you like to see more of on VR? I wanna make simple yet fun VR games, and yeah, TDs are lame for VR

    • Sign me up! I want to make something for the Quest. *Technically* I already have, but there’s hard limits to what 1 man can do. I need like-minded associates.

  • Peyton Lind

    What a useless trailer. I am so sick of game trailers (especially those of VR games) that show no gameplay.

  • MosBen

    There’s a PC tower defense game called Toy Soldiers. The game itself is supposed to be ok, but they somehow managed to get licenses to incorporate skins for Masters of the Universe and some other 80s properties. I’d really like to see something like that in VR. Being able to interact with life sized versions of the toys of my youth is pretty intriguing.