The Civilization franchise is getting the VR treatment with Sid Meier’s Civilization VII – VR on Meta Quest headsets this spring, 2K and Firaxis Games have announced. The “virtual and mixed reality” game will be available for the Quest 3 and 3S, but no price or specific release date has been announced quite yet.
How are 2K and Firaxis making it work? It’s presented through a “board game-like construction” that’s projected into your physical space using the Quest’s passthrough cameras or shown in a virtual museum environment “looking out onto a vista personalized to your leader,” says a Meta blog post about the release. You can switch between the two modes at any time, Meta writes. And when you’re playing in multiplayer mode, you’ll see your opponents around the table, represented by the digital bodies of their chosen leaders.
Here’s a trailer for the game.
Meta writes that this version “brings the true Civ experience” to the Quest. For instance, you’ll be able to pick whatever leader you want to run a civilization, a new tweak to the Civilization formula that my colleague Ash Parrish wrote about in her review of the regular game. One gameplay difference Meta mentions is that the game is sped up by default compared to other editions — not everyone finds VR headsets comfortable for long sessions, after all — but the company adds that you can adjust the pace to your liking.
We’ll see just how close Sid Meier’s Civilization VII – VR hews to the PC and console versions of the game when it’s released in the spring. Until then, I’ll be thinking about that Futurama episode in which Bender becomes a god.
