Astrea, the studio and publisher behind a host of VR narrative experiences, including Spheres, Astra, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom, has released an interactive VR experience on Quest and PC VR headsets that lets you embody passengers on a train, and help them face pivotal moments in their lives.
Called The Passengers, the four chapter, 40-minute interactive experience allows you to become one of four characters, experiencing their internal monologues and interacting with the environment with both your hands and voice.
Developed by Canada-based studio Couzin Films and France-based Les Produits Frais, The Passengers tells each story with a variety of styles, offering different visuals such as oil paint, watercolor, pencil, colored pencils, and immersive video.
“In this experience, you can be each one of the four passengers who all have their own personal quest. The course of each story is affected according to what they say, where they look, and what they do with their hands. You are one deciding all of that. The characters were created by volumetrically scanning the four actors. They were then rigged and animated through motion capture.”
While The Passengers is new to consumer headsets, it’s actually been on the international festival circuit since 2021 shortly after its completion.
The experience won the Best Immersive Experience – Fiction award at the Canadian Screen Awards (2022), and was selected as a finalist at the Prix Gémeaux (2022), Prix Numix (2021) and the VR Experience of the Year at the VR Awards (2021).
You can find The Passengers on the Horizon Store for Quest 2 and above, and Steam for PC VR headsets, priced at $5.
