The American Dream is an upcoming VR game that puts you in a retro-look VR world of 1950s America where all your everyday needs are evolved around guns. A sarcastic virtual reality trip to the 1950s World Fair where you learn how to live your life with guns.
Players adventure through a huge construction formed by a group of the largest gun manufacturers trying to show the world the ways guns are used by man for doing all their daily tasks and improve their everyday lifestyle. Everything that you do in the game, whether interact with the toys in the children's room, eating your food, driving a car, doing your job at the bagel factory (shooting holes in bagels, LOL) — all is done while you holding guns in your hands.
As you can see, this is not your ordinary first-person shooter VR game, its developer, Samurai Punk came up with a crazy idea, but you have to admit that they really approach the game from a completely different perspective. Th game imitates the 50s Worlds Fair, showing people a tour of how the future looks like, showing that everything that you'll do in the future will be with a gun.
You start as a three years old baby learning how to use a gun for the first time and follow the story through your adult life, while everything you do, any interaction, is done with the wielding guns.
In the press image, you could see a family doing a barbecue in their backyard, while a man and its two little children are carrying guns. A mesmerizing picture, but it does have its saying nevertheless about America's obsession with weapons.
The game was announced back in March 2016, and it caught the attention of the media due to its provocative yet sarcastic theme. Well, if you watch the gameplay trailer, you can see that The American Dream game doesn't take itself too seriously, but you can certainly understand that there is a statement behind it, showing a concern about the gun culture in America. The trailer starts with a horror music showcasing someone holding wielded pistols inside a children's room. A few seconds later the music changes to a nostalgic American music and the way that the narrator speaks clearly shows the humorous approach of portraying this sensitive subject.
Putting aside the satirical aspect of the game for a moment, it looks like a really fun game to play. I've heard an interview with one of the developers, and he mentioned that they didn't want to integrate any tutorials, and just put the players in that world and let them understand the interactions. It's not designed to be a complicated game, more like a linear shooting gallery style game with an explicit narrative, an easy game that you can pick up an enjoy. I wanted to say "everyone can pick up and enjoy", buy obviously this game isn't for every age.
I'm sure many people you'll find the theme of the game hilarious and fun to watch and play. We usually don't get to see a lot of games with a hidden statement, but I have to admit that just was done in a very creative way. From what I've read, the whole game should take around two to three hours to complete, but you should going to have a very enjoyable ride.
In the interviews, the developer mentioned the emphasize on immersion and how they want to create a game that is easy to pick up, yet done right so it immersed the player in the best possible way. Those who played seemed they enjoyed it a lot. To me, the game belongs to a category of games in the same genre as Job Simulator, Accounting and Rick and Morty Simulator. They are hilarious and very enjoyable playing in virtual reality both because of the natural interaction with the tracking motion controllers with objects in the virtual world and because of the humoristic approach to the gameplay experience.
The American Dream is aimed for 2017 release for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and later on for PlayStation VR.
Image credit: Samurai Punk.