Flipy's Tesla! Let's Invent the Future - Competitive Impressions

"Most of the Virtual Reality games are intended for young adults and older adults," said Enrique Pérez Vergara - better known as Flipy - the father of new game Flipy's Tesla! Let's Invent the Future, a PSVR title designed to be educational. The game is the outcome of a collaboration between 100 Balas, Mediapro, Sony Interactive Entertainment Spain, and Animatoon Studio, and focuses on educational side of games while also being entertaining at the same time.

To start with the studio told us what their ideas and objectives were in the Brains International School Maria Lombillo in Madrid, where they could convey the concepts behind the project. Then we were given a try in front of secondary school students who didn't hesitate to show their skills when facing the old brains of the journalists.

Flipy's Tesla is a traditional adventure that invites players to perform experiments in a virtual school while they talk to other characters and solve riddles that make up the main mystery of the game. The player will experience everything from a first-person view and explore a fully-realised 3D world featuring a colourful western cartoon visual style. As soon as you enter the Tesla School you'll meet Flipy, Bio, and their pet Ziggy, who will then guide you through the plot and the puzzles, with full voice over too.

The co-writer said that the title applies gamification and entertainment to education, and by doing this they're able to make a virtual laboratory or a classroom out of a console. They wanted to do more than one mini-game after another, though, and felt the need for a narrative, since "there is mystery, there is comedy, but the main objective is to arouse curiosity."

It was also essential to make the adventure as fun as games can be, which they made clear to Animatoon Studio during the development process. From the section we have played, it seems to have good pace and appears to be nicely laid out, and when you finish the initial conversation a floating screen will appear to explain the controls, which are pretty much standard for a VR game. Your character moves by teleportation (since walking may cause dizziness) and to make things even easier, the place where you have to go has a blue beam of light on it. You still have the freedom to move around before going to your objective though, and there's always a translucent icon that will show you where the front is, just in case you get confused by turning your head; a simple detail more games should have.

Another person involved in the creative process was Javier Santaolalla, a doctor of particle physics and researcher at CERN, better known in Spain as a YouTuber who makes science easy to understand. Santaolalla also attended the event, as did M. Carmen Fernández Tallón, Mediapro's director of digital projects. The scientist said that his European colleagues agreed that education through games was really productive. "We learn by playing, by taking the lead and making the young an active subject", he declared. Furthermore, he considers the use of VR technology "a great ally in order to unite [parents], teachers, and students," three elements that don't always match well.

We can attest to the fact that the kids picked it up quickly because when the presentation was over there was a team challenge: press vs. students. Who would be the fastest to solve the wind turbine puzzle? Each of the move controllers served as a hand, and you could use them to work with the objects in the game. The response to this little challenge was quite good, but we weren't as quick as the students. The tasks included looking at blueprints, identifying the components, and finding out where they fit. It took us 22 seconds to build the wind generator, and we got absolutely outperformed by the student we faced who only needed 11 seconds.

Before the game was finished it went through a demonstration and testing phase that has paid off. Adding to the improvements you'd typically expect, the team will also create an app that'll link with to game, providing further detailed information about certain experiments and the scientific theories behind them. These won't be a swamp of words though, as the creator said long-winded explanations would spoil the fun.

Flipy's Tesla!'s first chapter has been available for some weeks already on the PlayStation Store, with the full version released on February 15, and the team expects that "this could become a community of young scientists who love playing video games." Flipy himself recognised that the genre may not have the same success as horror or first-person action in terms of sales when talking about the VR genres, but "we are trying to be pioneers." Roberto Yeste, senior new business development manager at PlayStation Iberia, who attended the presentation to show the company's support for the idea, brought good news though: the game had surpassed 50,000 downloads in its first month.

Virtual Reality aspires to become part of people's lives, and that means looking beyond video games. Flipy's Tesla! Let's Invent the Future is pushing these boundaries, and at the same time, it looks to be a landmark for other areas such as family fun or even education. They are finding support and they deserve it, especially from the likes of the European Union CREATIONS programme.