Hong Kong start-up releases first locally-made virtual reality games

A Hong Kong developer has released the city’s first locally-developed virtual reality (VR) games - but interested consumers can’t buy them yet.

Victor Dao, director of Meridian Digital Entertainment, teamed up with MTR mall Popcorn to showcase its latest virtual reality games to consumers. Titled “Treasure Diving” and “Sky-Walker”, Dao aims to work with businesses to help more people experience virtual reality.

“Virtual reality is still not trendy yet, and it’s expensive technology. Not many people will have this technology at home,” Dao said. “So we want to start with a business-to-business model to first raise public awareness about virtual reality technology.”

The company’s “Treasure Diving” is a first-person perspective game which can be played sitting down while wearing a VR headset. In the game, the player is swimming underwater, and navigates by turning his head in the direction he wants to swim. The aim of the game is to collect as many jewels as possible to rack up points.

In contrast, “Sky-walker” is a more interactive game, since it works with a HTC Vive headset that allows users to walk around within the game itself. Players are given a hand-held control, which serves as a gun in the game. They have to balance themselves on a glass bridge in the game and use the gun to shoot down balloons as they float by.