New virtual reality basketball game Blacktop Hoops released
Blacktop Hoops, a virtual reality (VR) basketball game developed by Vinci Games, is now available on Steam, Pico, and the Meta Quest Store.
Vinci Games promotes the game as a bright, streetball-inspired virtual reality basketball experience that transports players to the courts. It is designed for gamers who want to slam like their favourite basketball players. A launch trailer for the same has also been released.
Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Y Combinator, and Makers Fund supported the studio directly. Blacktop Hoops was an enormous success on App Lab, ranking as the top-rated game with more than 16 thousand reviews, a 4.9 rating, and more than a million participants during the pre-launch period across Steam and Quest.
In a campaign phase that takes place on four legendary streetball courts—in Oakland, New York, Athens, and Los Angeles —players interact with 12 distinct streetball luminaries. In the ultimate match, contestants vie for the title of greatest of all time against Jordan Kilganon, the global dunk champion.
Fans of multiplayer action may play casual matches involving 2 to 8 players (single to teams of fours) on the courts or advance through the ranks in skill-based matching from the pool of 21 divisions and 9 ranks.
The Vinci Games team was obsessed with developing the most suitable VR basketball game due to them being lifelong basketball players, said Nathaniel Ventura, CEO of the company, in a statement. According to him, the sentiment is that they have made an immersive and engaging VR basketball offering, with a gaming experience and culture that players have not witnessed since NBA 2K. The physics of Blacktop Hoops are easy to understand yet difficult to master, regardless of one’s level of hooping experience. It can be a lot of fun when played alone, with teammates, or internationally against the best VR players around the globe.
In addition to sharpening their talents in eight training modes—which include shooting, dribbling, stealing, blocking, and a three-point shootout—players may excel in a number of game scenarios. They may practice in one-on-one and two-versus-two matches against realistic AI bots in VS AI, which are powered by more than 800 motion-captured basketball animations to create distinct move sets and tendencies. In addition, the game has a CourtCam mode that allows users to explore the campaign in either first person or a brand-new third-person top-down view.
A new system of customised avatars is one of the most significant enhancements. Over 600 personalisation options are available to players, ranging from faces and body types to clothing, emotes, footwear, spectacles, and more. With millions of variations, players may customise their own avatar by combining and matching different cosmetics. Similar to this, eight distinct game modifiers—such as large head, slow motion, enormous opponents, mega leap, and chicken ball—allow players to customise their single-player experience and create unique, humorous gaming moments.
The game is cross-platform compatible and retails for $30. Ventura, the former head of Oculus, Google, and Unity’s elite developer programs, and CTO Maciej Szcześnik, who was CD Projekt Red’s lead gameplay designer for the critically acclaimed Witcher series, formed the firm.
