Soaring Journey

Sly Boots first dropped Area of the Dead, a unique entry during Spookality 2023 as a technical achievement to make an Area 51 style shooting game in VRChat. Their new world, Soaring Journey, is another location with an impressive feature.

Most worlds that feature vehicles often have bugs or odd behaviors that break immersion. In this one, you spawn in riding a fleet of flying wings that you can disembark at any time. You can also jump around them, or spawn a portal, and maintain the same physical reference frame the whole time. It seems like it works exactly how it should in a video game. Most importantly, neither of these features have you dragging along with the wings or skating oddly along the world. Very few worlds have good vehicle behavior, but Sly managed to make it work in a way that makes you not even question it. It feels natural to a degree that you might not even notice it’s unique.

Aside from the vehicle performance, there are scenic points and even a very short scavenger hunt that shows everything in the world as a general proof of concept that looks great and works well. Definitely check this one out, and I hope that Sly makes his tricks known to other world creators.

(Rating: 8.5)

At first glance, Soaring Journey seemed like a basic visualizer world where you’re soaring above fields and the ocean, but ended up being more. The world expects you to jump off at certain points in order to get objects and ultimately unlock the greatest treasure. It features a unique synching feature to match timings up with your friends and not left behind. Overall it’s quite a beautiful experience and worth checking out.

(Rating: 8.5)