Quick Draw is a really cool wild west gunslinger VR game for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. There are quite a few gunslinger type VR games out there, but most of them are just single-player shooting gallery games, whether Quick Draw features four game modes, including both single-player and multiplayer. Some of the modes play like a shooting gallery, while others are versus an AI or real player which can also shoot you back as well.
The new online 1-vs-1 duel mode was introduced on January 11, the day the game was fully released. According to the developer notes on Steam, the online multiplayer mode allow gamers to host private (via invite code) or public matches (via online lobby), adds VoIP support, adds Oculus Rift Touch support (for those of you who have the Oculus Tough and wonder if the game support them) and more features. The developer also mentioned that he intends to add more features in upcoming updates which is a great way to show a continuous support for the game and the enthusiasm of the developer to deliver a great gaming experience.
Quick Draw is a room-scale VR game which was designed from the ground up for VR with support for tracked motion controllers. So you need to be agile and accurate to quickly take the target (or targets) down before they shoot you. It plays like Lethal VR but played as 'fast draw' rather than a traditional shooting gallery. It's great the developer has decided to add a competitive multiplayer, which definitely adds replay value and make the game much more social and fun this way.
In the game, you control two pistols, one and each hand. Of course, you can only draw your guns when a sound of the eagle signals to draw the guns, which is a really cool Idea. Quick Draw is a room-scale VR game, and it was nice to find an option which allows the play to adjust his holster height so that you can quickly reach it and perform better when playing the game. That attention to the little things is very important and it's great to see the developer implementing them in the game.
In single-player you have three modes: Defend the Town, Blind time Trials and time Trials.
In Time Trials you need to shoot down targets that pop up in front of you. In each round the game will show you how much time it took you to take down the target(s) - measured in thousand of a second accuracy (e.g. 1.68 sec). You total score is the overall accumulated time that took you to shoot down the targets in each round. Make sure you hit the target because missing targets will force you to reload the gun, which obviously consumes a lot of precious time and this game is all about how fast and accurate your are. After six rounds you get to see your total score. In that sense, it feels like the Olympics and I'm pretty sure that people will play it over and over again just to improve over their previous score and climb up the global leaderboard.
In Blind Time Trials, you don't get to see where the targets are. You are with your back to the target and when you hear the sound of the eagle, you need to quickly turn around and shoot down the target, the same as you did in the regular Time Trials game mode.
Defend the Town mode is a wave-based shooting gallery mode where you challenged by ruffians. The catch here is that you need to keep your hand off your weapons until it's time to draw. The flight of the eagle signals the start of the round. Unlike the Time Trial modes where you just shoot down targets, here the targets (other cowboys) can shoot you down as well, so you nee to be very fast and accurate. Remember, there is not moving in this game, you are completely stationary.
I really love the Wild West settings, and the game has a nice atmosphere with matching ballistics and ambient sound effects. The character design is cartoony rather than on the realistic side, so does the overall design of the game, but I like it because it makes things more humoristic and less serious if you know what I mean, which definitely fits the theme of the game.
By the way, the January patch added VoIP in multiplayer matches, which makes the match even more social, engaging and immersive. You can really see that the developer, Playing With Matches, is working hard to deliver an exceptions gaming experience with no compromises, and I admire the developer for that.
So overall, it's really a great idea for a room-scale VR game, and kudos to the developer for supporting the Oculus Touch controllers, adding a multiplayer mode and planning to deliver free updates and supporting new VR platforms when they are released.