If you’re a fairly consummate gamer, the name Patrick O’Luanaigh likely means something to you. A former director with Eidos and Codemasters, he was responsible for titles such as those from the Tomb Raider series like Tomb Raider: Legend and Micro Machines V3. Back in 2006, he formed a new studio, known as nDreams. nDreams went on to work on a number of titles of varying scope, including an alternate reality and virtual world side-by-side game for the now-defunct PlayStation Home, along with various other games, events, custom assets and custom items for the Sony Playstation 3’s best kept secret. Ever since 2013, they’ve committed to working exclusively on VR content, going on to become the UK’s largest VR-focused studio. One of their titles, Perfect Beach, is already available on Google Cardboard, along with Gunner for the Samsung Gear VR, SkyDIEving for the Oculus Rift and upcoming story-driven first person shooter The Assembly scheduled to hit the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR. With all of this under their belt and a celebrity director at the helm, people were understandably excited to hear that nDreams has two titles in the works for Google’s Daydream VR platform.
nDreams’ press release, put out just in time to coincide with the torrent of news coming from Google I/O, was sparse on details, saying that more information about the types of titles that are coming to Daydream and other information about the two productions will be kept secret until they’re a bit closer to release. The fact that the firm managed to score £3.75 million in recent fundraising rounds speaks to both their past experiences and the fact that they must have something truly unique stowed away. Given their current catalog of immersive experiences, the unique nature of Google’s new Daydream platform and what seems to be a penchant for alternate reality games, some guesses can be ventured, but the press release did not contain enough information about the new titles in particular to surmise their nature.
Speaking on the matter in the press release, O’Luanaigh said, “I’m thrilled that nDreams is one of the first studios to support Daydream. With this new platform’s announcement, it’s that much easier to envisage a time where everyone always has access to high-quality mobile VR entertainment and it’s exciting to be collaborating with Google on that ambition.” Their VP of development, Tom Gillo, weighed in as well, saying of offering support for Daydream, “Having already had great success with Perfect Beach for Google Cardboard, it’s incredibly exciting to be creating high-performance experiences for Google’s new mobile VR platform. We can’t wait to share the first details about our innovative and captivating apps for Daydream in the near future.”