The Sandbox

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Bonelab, the latest title from veteran VR developer Stress Level Zero, brings the core of Boneworks to Quest 2 for the first time, but beyond that does little to improve its foundational gameplay. This time, however, a fully-featured modding system could save the day.


Bonelab Details:
Available On: Quest 2 & Oculus PC, Steam
Release Date: September 8th, 2022
Price: $30
Developer: Stress Level Zero
Reviewed On: Quest 2

Gameplay

Bonelab’s gameplay is functionally the same as its predecessor, with highly physics-driven gameplay that can be both magical and bothersome. This time around, however, the game more clearly communicates its sandbox intentions and offers up official modding support with the hopes that its community will bring the fun.
Unlike Boneworks—which made players play through some nine hours of campaign before giving them access to sandbox mode—Bonelab walks players through each of its non-campaign mini-modes which include things like time trials with both combat and parkour, a full-blown sandbox for spawning enemies and items, and some experimental mini-games like physics bowling. It’s a good idea as it shows players everything the game has to offer up front.
Bonelab really doesn’t hold your hand, which some may appreciate and some may not. Once you reach ‘The Lab’ part of the game with the various mini-modes, you’ll need to explore and pay attention to your surroundings to figure out how to actually unlock the campaign mode.
After you give each mode a try (and figure out a little puzzle) you’ll unlock access to a 5-6 hour campaign mode which I found to be a largely dull affair which repeated almost all of the same mistakes as Boneworks. Rather than rehash them, let’s go through a quick summary of the critiques:

Thin narrative (even more so than Boneworks) delivered through a handful of voice recordings and text logs
Bland enemies and lack of variety
Boring weapons with little strategic differentiation
Weak puzzle & encounter design (and lack of compelling interplay therein)
Climbing is usually a frustrating nightmare (but the game loves to make you do it)
General jank with holster system and interaction affordances

The one truly new and interesting thing that Bonelab does over Boneworks is the addition of the quick-swap avatar system.
Switching between avatars gives you unique physical advantages & disadvantages, like being fast & weak, strong & slow, or tall & lanky. And you can switch between avatars on the fly with a ‘pull cord’ system where you reach for your arm and pull a little ball longer and longer to cycle through and select your avatar with one quick motion.

I find this particular interface to be very smart—it’s quick, fun, and easy to do. The one tweak I would make is to raise the pitch on each sound effect to further associate a specific pitch with the selection of a specific avatar. I would have loved to see Bonelab push further into this kind of novel interaction design that directly interfaces with gameplay.
And while it’s also a very smart idea to allow players to hop between avatars with meaningfully different capabilities, I didn’t find that the game really plays to this as a core mechanic in its level design. In most cases the avatar you should use for the given task is plainly obvious and there’s not much room for creativity—whether that be in a specific enemy encounter or puzzle. It’s a shame too because you could easily build a whole game around this avatar swapping idea.
So… I didn’t love the game’s campaign portion. But what about its sandbox modes?
Unfortunately they fall prey to the same issues as the campaign. The core issue is that this sandbox is missing truly fun toys.

Yes, you can spawn almost any of the enemies you encountered in the campaign… but they aren’t very fun to fight. And sure, you can spawn any gun… but again they function so similarly that it’s just not that exciting to have the arsenal at your fingertips.

Looking back at my Boneworks review, I find that Bonelab’s core gameplay can unfortunately be summed up in the exact same way:
Boneworks unfortunately doesn’t transcend the sum of its parts; it fails to find any compelling interplay between puzzles and combat, and misses the opportunity to build a set of core concepts which lead to a climax in mechanics, gameplay, and story. Instead it feels like piecemeal gameplay scenarios strung together atop a novel technical foundation with a sprinkle of narrative.
However, there’s a big “but” here. Unlike its predecessor, Bonelab has official modding support on day one. The studio promises that players will be able to import avatars, items, vehicles, and even entire levels. That means there’s potential for the game’s community build new content for the game—to bring new toys to the sandbox.
And it’s this which will make or break Bonelab in the long run. The developers have described their intent to offer the game up as a foundation for VR experimentation. If that catches on, Bonelab could one day be a much different experience than it is today.
Despite the various critiques above, I will say that I’m impressed with how Bonelab looks and performs on Quest 2. It’s not the best looking game on the headset, but the essential look and feel of Boneworks has translated nearly perfectly to the headset, including some neat trippy visual effects. Performance unfortunately isn’t perfect on the headset, with some later scenes slowing the game down here and there. Granted, I didn’t feel the hitching was enough to really impact my gameplay, though occasional crashes were a nuisance.
Oh and the soundtrack is once again a jam.
Immersion

One thing Bonelab definitely does right is create a consistently interactive world. Aside from the walls, ceilings, and floors, pretty much anything that exists in the game world is physics driven and can be interacted with.
That means you can do intuitive things like push open doors with the barrel of your gun, press buttons with your virtual elbow, or toss enemies over a railing to their impending doom. You can slam a door into an enemy to deal damage, catch an ejected bullet casing out of the air, or use a shovel to scoop up items and move them about.
This is often made much more fun with the help of the game’s always-available slow-motion which gives you more time to think about the actions you want to perform. For me most of the game’s fun came from using slow-mo to do cool action stuff like jumping from a platform and shooting enemies on the way down, flipping a gun from one hand to another for a cool reload, or watching my fist connect with an enemy’s face at full force.

But outside of slow-mo, things feel a bit bland. Shooting is a mere point and spray affair and melee often feels like a less satisfying version of Blade & Sorcery. Slo-mo is the key tool to make any of it fun, mostly by directing your own visual spectacle or challenging yourself to do some crazy move.

While the physicality of objects in the game is pretty solid, your body itself often feels like a floppy mess. Basic things like jumping and climbing are much more often frustrating than not, which makes it perplexing that the game loves making you climb and jump. Even straightforward things like climbing ladders and scrambling up a ledge can be inconsistent to a bothersome degree.
And this exemplary of a broader issue with Bonelab. The game is so busy wondering if it could make everything physics-based that it hasn’t stopped to consider whether or not it should. Sometimes the game’s physics approach makes the game more janky and less functional.
Take, for instance, the occasional weapon chest you’ll find in the game. It has a nice red handle so you know where to pull to open it. But when you do, half the time you also move the entire box, sometimes flipping it over and spilling out the contents. Boneworks had this exact same issue when it launched more than two and a half years ago.
And sure, that might be ‘physically correct’ given the game’s understanding of the forces involved, but it’s almost universally not the thing the user intends to do when they grab that red handle.
Bonelab would be a better game if the studio was more strategic about when to use physics to drive interactions and when to make exceptions for the sake of usability.
The red handle on the weapon chest is but one example of an issue that came cleanly from Boneworks to Bonelab—the game’s holster system also remains quite annoying with several obvious design issues that could be addressed with just a little bit of attention.
Comfort

Bonelab is unabashedly an intense game as far as comfort goes. The game warns players up-front that they should have serious VR experience before trying the game—a warning that everyone ought to heed.
The game doesn’t avoid gameplay that commonly results in discomfort: things like launching you through the air, smooth turning on vehicles, dropping you from great heights, or having you slide down long curvy stretches of pipe. Not to mention a literal rollercoaster ride.

Compared to its predecessor—which at launch had an exceptionally springy feeling to its climbing which gave me the worst case of proprioceptive-disconnect that I’ve ever experienced—Bonelab fares a little bit better with its climbing. It’s still shaky but not nearly as bad as the original.

Bonelab has seemingly no limits to its sandbox mode which means you can potentially slow the game to a stuttering mess if you spawn enough items; the choppy framerates can cause discomfort, though the game never forces this situation on you.
If you consider yourself generally sensitive to artificial motion you should think twice about playing Bonelab; do recall that both Meta and Steam have reasonable 14-day return windows if you haven’t played the game for more than two hours, so you can always give it a try to see if it works for you or not.








‘Bonelab’ Comfort Settings – September 29, 2022




Turning



Artificial turning



Snap-turn



Quick-turn



Smooth-turn




Movement



Artificial movement



Teleport-move



Dash-move



Smooth-move



Blinders



Head-based



Controller-based



Swappable movement hand




Posture



Standing mode



Seated mode



Artificial crouch



Real crouch




Accessibility



Subtitles



Dialogue audio



Languages
English


Adjustable difficulty
In some modes


Two hands required



Real crouch required



Hearing required



Adjustable player height




 


Bonelab, the latest title from veteran VR developer Stress Level Zero, brings the core of Boneworks to Quest 2 for the first time, but beyond that does little to improve its foundational gameplay. This time, however, a fully-featured modding system could save the day. Bonelab Details: Available O...

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‘Bonelab’ Review – An Ambitious Sandbox Waiting for the Right Toys

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SAND trades below 50 and 200 EMA on the daily timeframe. 
Price continues to range with little or no volume despite having strong fundamentals.
A break above $1 could trigger a relief rally for SAND price.

Sandbox (SAND) price has had a rough time recently as price ranges in a daily timeframe channel against tether (USDT). Despite having good fundamentals with so much backing from top investors and partnerships, the price of Sandbox (SAND) has struggled to replicate its run to a high of $8. (Data from Binance)

Sandbox (SAND) Price Analysis On The Weekly Chart 
The price of SAND has had difficult moments, with such movement from a low of $0.5 to a high of $8 in a few weeks, creating euphoria in the hearts of traders and major crypto players.
Despite being backed by strong investors and partnerships, the bear market has impacted the price of SAND, which has dropped from $8 to $1, a drop of more than 70% from its all-time high.
SAND’s price showed great strength as it rallied from its weekly low of $1 to a high of $1.5 before failing to break above that region to higher heights.
The price of SAND has remained range-bound, unable to break above a weekly resistance of $1.5 to trend higher to the $2 region.
To have a better chance of trading higher, the price of SAND must break and close above $1.5. The price of SAND has formed a downtrend line, acting as resistance; flipping the area of $1.5, which is acting as weekly resistance, into support will signal a more relief bounce for the price of SAND.
If the price of SAND fails to break through this key resistance region, we may see the price of SAND range within this channel or retest the $0.6 and lower support and demand zone for more buy orders.
Weekly resistance for the price of SAND – $1.5
Weekly support for the price of SAND – $0.6-$0.5.
Price Analysis Of SAND On The Daily (1D) Chart
Daily SAND Price Chart | Source: SANDUSDT On Tradingview.com
The daily timeframe for SAND prices remains in a range channel, with prices unable to break out due to low volume. After being rejected from a high of $1.5, the price continued in a range in a channel, with eyes set on flipping the $1.5 rejection area, where SAND prices have tested several times.
The price of SAND is currently trading at $0.92 on the 1D timeframe, below the 50 and 200 Exponential Moving Averages (EMA), which act as resistance. The prices of $1 and $1.6 correspond to the 50 and 200 EMA resistance levels, respectively.
The price of SAND needs to flip the $1 resistance into support to signal a relief bounce as the price of SAND has kept trading at its low since the major rally.
Daily resistance for the SAND price – $1-$1.6.
Daily support for the SAND price – $0.6.

Featured Image From Breakingnews, Charts From Tradingview 


SAND trades below 50 and 200 EMA on the daily timeframe.  Price continues to range with little or no volume despite having strong fundamentals. A break above $1 could trigger a relief rally for SAND price. Sandbox (SAND) price has had a rough time recently as price ranges in a daily timeframe cha...

newsbtc.com

Sandbox Struggles In A Bear Market, How Low Can Price Go?


A trio of non-fungible token (NFT) projects have been surging recently, just behind some of the highest profile ones this year.



The Sandbox, a blockchain-based metaverse real estate platform, came in at the top spot on LunarCrush’s Top 10 AlternativeRank NFTs projects, based on social media and market activity. 



It was followed by a surging Ethereum Name Service in second, and the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection in third. 



However, immediately following on the list came three rather unfamiliar projects that seem to have some momentum behind them, VeeFriends, DegenToonz, and DigiDaigaku, sequentially.



VeeFriends



VeeFriends describes itself as, “a Gary Vaynerchuk NFT project around meaningful intellectual property and an extraordinary community,” on its website. In addition to joining the VeeFriend community, owners of the NFTs also gain three years’ access to Vaynerchuk’ annual VeeCon, where the business maverick focuses on themes of entrepreneurship and innovation.



While primary sales of the NFTs started on VeeFriends.com, the ERC-721 standard tokens are also now available on secondary marketplaces like OpenSea. Currently, the total trading volume of the collection on OpenSea stands at 57,200 ETH, with a floor price of 5.84 ETH.



VeeFriends’ Just Jackal. Source: OpenSea



Degen Toonz offers airdrops



Launched in mid-Feb., Degen Toonz are a collection of 8,888 unique NFTs, each one doubling as a membership to a metaverse community. 



Rewards for minting an NFT include free t-shirt and wallets of that minted NFT, 1/1 token rewards up to $50,000 in ETH, as well as Mint and HODL airdrops, according to the project website. Current HODLERS are also rewarded with exclusive airdrops that could include additional TOONZ and ETH.



On OpenSea, the collection has a total trading volume of 17,300 ETH, and with a community lacking some of the resources of Vaynerchuk’s brood, a floor price of 0.55 ETH. 



TOONZ #7810. Source: OpenSea



DigiDaigaku characters are shrouded in mystery



Finally, DigiDaigaku is a collection of 2,022 unique character NFTs developed by Web3 game developer LimitBreak. Revealing little, the project’s website and Twitter page remain cryptic. 



“Currently, DigiDaigaku characters live in a mysterious world unknown to outsiders, but in time, exciting details about their world will be revealed,” the project’s description on OpenSea read. 



While the collection only has 7,500 ETH in trading volume, the NFTs command a staggering floor price of 14.5 ETH, or nearly $20,000.



DigiDaigaku #331 – Misako. Source: OpenSea



Solana NFT projects surging



The continued sales of these new NFTs projects demonstrates the resurgence in demand for NFTS. In another sign of the swelling interest, Solana NFTs have now risen to become only second to Ethereum by recent sales volume.
The post VeeFriends, Degen Toonz and DigiDaigaku on Heels of Top 3 NFT Collections appeared first on BeInCrypto.


A trio of non-fungible token (NFT) projects have been surging recently, just behind some of the highest profile ones this year. The Sandbox, a blockchain-based metaverse real estate platform, came in at the top spot on LunarCrush’s Top 10 AlternativeRank NFTs projects, based on social media and m...

beincrypto.com

VeeFriends, Degen Toonz and DigiDaigaku on Heels of Top 3 NFT Collections

Palm Beach gets its own NFT restaurant offering a range of benefits for members, while the PGA partners with Tom Brady-backed NFT platform Autograph. 

The Sandbox price	$0.850269
Low - High 24H	$0.83961 - $0.873107
Market cap	$1.28B
Volume 24H	$187.11M
All time high	$8.40 -89.89% November 25th 2021
All time low	$0.028978 2828.61% November 4th 2020
Genesis date	N/A

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