At gamescom 2015, Valve lifted the lid on a new virtual reality experience for SteamVR and HTC Vive, set in the massively-popular online game DOTA 2. While the full multiplayer game demands absolute concentration of multiple skirmishes taking place across a map filled with players, 'The Secret Shop' is a solitary, passive experience that takes a closer look at its world.
You start standing inside a hut, rickety and weathered in appearance but full of warm, inviting objects and details, with bottles containing strange potions on shelving resting on stone walls, a Tango (a healing item in the main game) sitting off to the side that catches our attention with a soft green glow, and a desk covered in old parchment covered in mysterious scribbles.
© Valve
A look at The Secret Shop
There's not quite enough time to take it all in, as after a moments of gazing around, a merchant enters and gives you a warm but apologetic welcome, saying he's been a poor host and hasn't giving you enough light to look around. He reaches out his hand and drops an orb on a nearby table, inviting you to walk over (SteamVR takes place in a open space that you can explore within set confines) and pick up with one of the motion controllers and take with you.
You're then told to point the light at glowing portals that are dotted around the room. Finding one immediately to our right, sitting on the desk, pressing a trigger sees us suddenly shrunk down and placed onto the desk, standing on the parchment we were just gazing at moments ago like its a giant rug, while a giant spinning globe towers above us.
A huge spider then creeps past, making us take an involuntary step back. Most impressive of all is the merchant, who is continuing our prior conversation, who now appears mountain-sized and intimidating, his voice booming out to our now tiny stature. The sudden scale change is impressive.
Pressing the button again instantly warps us back to full size, and we can continue exploring the room. There are numerous of these portals that shrink us and place us in different parts of the shop, two of which are sat on shelves, one with a giant, breathing frog overlooking us as we gaze the rest of the room, and another on the opposite side of the hut, with a mysterious eye ball peering through a gap in the wall from outside.
© Valve
The Secret Shop's merchant
There were a few hidden portals, too; peering underneath curtains revealed one on a window, warping you to a shelf so you can see the black forest beyond, with several scary eyes staring back, and there was also another on the ceiling that saw you sit on a beam as a giant book with a menacing face chomped around before collapsing into a rest.
As you go about exploring, things continue to happen all around the room, such as a creature scampering from the corner, giving you puppy dog eyes before retreating into the shadows, and a toy version of hero Axe that jumps from a jack-in-a-box. At the last minute, we also remembered to look down, and saw a creature hidden inside an underground sewer.
There's no doubt we missed loads more of these, and we imagine you can see more if you experiment with the various portals at your disposal. Seeing the merchant from the desk really wowed us, but what would have other things looked like when shrink down to a tiny size?
The HTC Vive
It was an impressive demo that showcased how effective unique scales can be within virtual reality, though was one that didn't make much use of the Vive's unique features. Though this was a passive experience and invited exploration, we didn't walk around as much as other demos we played (though maybe this would change on repeat plays), and it doesn't use the controllers much either. Though they're represented with 1:1 movement with the demo, and are used to activate the shrinking portals, you could probably do this with a standard controller.
But even without direct interaction with the world, it proves that even the more passive experiences in Vive are really entertaining. Teleporting between space and scales at a moment's notice was fun and not at all jarring, and despite being situated in such a relevantly small location, proved you could cram an awful lot of secrets and blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments. Hopefully next time we get to stay a little longer and get to uncover more of what Valve is hiding.
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