Today we released the cinematic trailer for Round Table. Round Table is a fun action game for everyone with a virtual reality headset. It is a casual game that is only available in VR. You cannot play it on a regular computer.
We are very happy to finally show some of our VR work to everyone, and to make it available. Our main software engineer has been working on this quietly for a long time. Finally the world gets to see the results of his work.
At this point some of you may wonder why Gramm, a company mostly, and pretty much only known for its 3D printing activities, might release a VR app, and a game at that. Why would we do this? Well, let me tell you.
I am myself quite a bit of a gamer, and have been all my life. I always enjoyed games that take me to places that do not exist in the world, particularly when the gameplay is good. Games like Starcraft, World of Warcraft, Dark Souls and lately Elden Ring have been a part of my life, and I cherish the experiences that I made traversing those worlds, exploring them, and doing unique things that I could not do in the real world. Casting frostbolts for instance is something that my undead frost mage can do easily whether he is in the Eastern Plaguelands or in Ashenvale, but I am having a lot of trouble casting them while going for a walk on a Sunday afternoon. I play games to interact with worlds that can only exist in the digital world.
Some time a few weeks ago, during one of our regular meetings for our top secret VR app that is still in development, Martin showed me a little project he had been working on during his spare time. That little project is the throne room that is the main, and currently only, level of Round Table. I was very excited to walk around in that room, and was in awe of the great level design. The place felt great and exciting. We have to do something with this, I said to Martin. And this is where my gamer mindset comes in: I immediately imagined myself doing sword fights, real sword fights in VR in this throne room, not the button controlled imitation that I know from console games. Luckily, Martin was on board, and we got to work.
Since we had been working on another, more complex app for over a year by now, we were quite familiar with coding the movement set of the player avatar, and adding interaction to the initially static game world. Work progressed quite fast, and soon we were able to playtest the first builds. And guess what: the game was fun! Over time, I caught myself substituting "work" for my gaming sessions, leaving my AAA games on my PS5 while running around whacking training dummies on wheels (we call them 'Einradfahrer') in Round Table. I had fun! Every product has a critical feature. I think with games, the critical feature is fun. You can have the fanciest graphics, you can have the most detailed enemy models, you can have the largest game world: if the game is not fun, it was all for naught. We believed in this from the start: the game can be simple, but as long as it's fun, people will like it. Well, Round Table is a lot of fun for us, and we cannot wait for everyone else to try it out, and give us feedback.
You can pre-order the game already here on our web site. Once the game releases, you can still buy it here, but you can also get it on Steam. And since we are a 3D printing company, you can pre-order special editions of the game in our store where you get not only the game, but also some 3D printed copies of ingame items.
Round Table is not a quick release on the side. I love this kind of gameplay, and I am committed to taking it further and deepening it. Check out the development roadmap on the official page for Round Table to see that we have long term plans for Round table.
The special editions of Round Table that include those 3D printed items may also give you some idea of why having a digital presence in native 3D may make a lot of sense for a 3D printing company. You might want to follow our posts here on this website and on social media to be among the first to hear about our other VR app that we are currently developing, that takes the fusion of the digital and physical world to another level. Until then, happy swordplay!
Round Table is scheduled for release in June of 2022. Pre-Order now to reserve your copy!
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