Cloudborn

My first honest reaction to Cloudborn was a kind of quiet surprise: here is a small indie VR title with genuine visual soul, wearing its watercolor inspirations openly, and asking you to do something physically direct and present inside a headset. That's a rarer combination than it sounds. Logtown Studios built this around a singular philosophy of non-violent, non-teleportation movement in VR, and that ambition shapes every moment you spend inside it, for better and for worse. The core loop is climbing. You grab ledges, ruined walls, cliffs, and vines by pulling the motion controller triggers, alternating hands to haul yourself upward in a motion that genuinely engages your arms. A heartbeat audio cue signals your stamina running low, which you recover by gripping with both hands and resting. More confident players can chain momentum, releasing a handhold at just the right instant to fling themselves further and faster between grab points. When that momentum system clicks, there is a real physicality to moving through the world, a sense of weight and rhythm that feels earned rather than scripted. The art direction leans unmistakably toward a cel-shaded, painterly palette, drawing comparisons to Miyazaki films and watercolor illustration, all set inside ruins of a lost civilization whose collapse carries a quiet, melancholy environmental message about overconsumption. But Cloudborn has rough edges that are hard to look past. The movement system, which the studio spent most of its Early Access period refining, still drew mixed reactions at launch. Some players reported being launched unexpectedly into the air during climbs, camera alignment issues when moving along ledges, and minor glitches on specific geometry like bridges. Road to VR's early hands-on noted that the experience was sometimes interrupted by a temperamental locomotion system, and the Steam community echoed similar bug reports. The comfort settings menu, intended to help players manage VR sickness through tunneling and cage options, is functional but awkward to operate in headset. For players prone to motion sickness, the freeform locomotion is a genuine consideration, though the developers incorporated motion-sickness mitigation research into the design from the ground up. The audience this works for is specific but real. If you own a SteamVR or Oculus PC headset and you have been looking for something closer to a narrative climbing adventure than a pure reflex sport, Cloudborn occupies a small and underserved corner. Its Miyazaki-tinged world, the stillness of exploring broken skybound ruins, and the tactile satisfaction of a good momentum swing carry a mood that more polished VR titles often sacrifice for spectacle. The developer's social presence appears to have gone quiet since 2018, which puts future patches or support in question. Treat it as a finished artefact, not a live service. With only 25 Steam reviews sitting at a mixed 56%, this is genuinely a gamble, but for the right VR adventurer, the climb is worth attempting.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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