Beast, Inc.’s VR Dragon Pets Are Coming Home, But Don’t Expect Obedience
Launch Announcement
San Francisco, CA, USA — Beast, Inc. will soon launch an Early Access home version of its flagship product, Beast Pets, a virtual reality sandbox where baby dragon pups live and play. Beast Pets was first launched in out-of-home VR arcades and entertainment centers in mid-2017, and is now available in over 200 locations around the world. After iterating on Beast Pets in location-based VR centers and racking up more than 50,000 sessions, the team feels that the dragons are finally ready to come home.
The dragon pups may be cuddly, but don’t expect them to be obedient. “We call them virtual beasts for a reason,” explains CEO Vivian Tan. “Imagine befriending a young dragonling in the wild. It might follow you home if you have food and a warm bed, but it’s not going to just obey you. You have to earn its trust and build up a two-way relationship.”
The idea of forming meaningful relationships with virtual pets has resonated with the startup’s nascent user community. Eva Hoerth, VR researcher and Women in XR Fund Fellow, describes Beast Pets as “a beautiful example of how VR can connect us intimately with others — in this case, baby dragons. Both kids and adults love Beast Pets because it satisfies our human instinct to nurture, play, and build relationships.”
“Beast Pets is different from other VR experiences because the dragons are like pets. You can pet them, play with them, and feed them,” says VR Kid, a young YouTuber who became smitten with the dragons after her father (also an avid gamer and streamer) signed up for the Beast Pets home beta program. “You don't get that kind of interaction in other games, and I enjoy feeding the dragons a lot.”
The transition from out-of-home VR centers to home VR means more opportunities to explore what it means to have pet dragons become part of your daily life. Today, the baby dragons are about the size of house cats and enjoy chasing after their favorite toys or other dragon playmates. Beast, Inc.’s ambition, however, is to create virtual beasts that can learn and grow with their humans, a process that will involve tapping the team’s inner child and the user community for inspiration.
“It’s our first time raising dragons too,” jokes CTO Mat Tyndall, “so we don’t know yet if they’ll ever become housebroken or if they’ll just break your house. This will be a community effort, and that’s why we’re launching in Early Access first so we can figure it out together.”
Beast Pets (Early Access) will be coming to HTC Vive and Oculus Rift in February 2019.
Beast, Inc. is a San Francisco startup that brings virtual pets to life through AI, XR, and a little bit of magic. Our vision is to create magical pets that behave like our real pets — with unique temperaments, social dynamics, the ability to make choices, and the capacity to learn and grow with us. By leveraging artificial intelligence and spatial computing, we can break down barriers between virtual pets and their humans, foster deeper emotional connection, encourage emergent behaviors, and create more opportunities for unpredictable moments of delight to really shine.
Patch Notes for 0.51.2
Put the health and safety warning all by itself (because lawyers), added a welcome message, fade transitions, and squashed bugs!
General
Added a separate area with the health and safety warning.
Added fade to black transition when switching to a new location.
Changed the initial message on Tabby (the Magical Tablet) from a health/safety warning to a welcome message.
Improved analytics and event tracking.
Various bug fixes and performance improvements.
Patch Notes for v0.51.0
Interactive Sign aka Magical Tablet aka Tabby.
Tabby the Magical Tablet and Winter Park upgrades! We’ve been hard at work upgrading the Interactive Sign to the point that now we’re comfortable reclassifying it to a Magical Tablet (Tabby for short). We have a lot of fun upgrades planned for Tabby which we’ll steadily be pushing out. We’ve also made our first round of upgrades to Winter Park based on your feedback. Thanks and have fun!
Winter Park
Added 4 smaller ice sculptures on the lower level.
Made upper platforms feel larger and less precarious.
Ice breaking improvements.
Improved lighting and ambient music.
Moved treasure chest locations.
Reduced teleport max range to make navigation easier.
Beast Park
Block tower now always resets properly.
Magical Tablet (Tabby)
The Interactive Sign will henceforth officially be classified as a Magical Tablet.
The Magical Tablet with henceforth affectionately be nicknamed Tabby.
Tabby is now more dragon resistant.
Tabby can now only be loosely grabbed by the lower corners.
Tabby now has persistent navigation buttons for showing different screens.
Pressing the help button on Tabby can bring up the instructions for items from the tutorial.
Changed design for selecting a destination from the map screen on Tabby.
Moved arrow buttons off to the sides of Tabby, floating in the air.
Adjusted the default range of Tabby to be slightly closer when it is interactable.
Added box outlines and arrows to graphics to make instructions clearer on Tabby.
Hundreds of little things that turn out to be necessary to make a Magical Tablet feel right.
Dragons
Dragons are much less likely to get between you and the Interactive Sign.
General
Improved analytics and event tracking.
Various bug fixes and performance improvements.
Patch Notes for v0.50.0
Hey dragon baby, it’s cold inside.
Winter Park and more tactile interactive sign! Winter is here, which means it’s time to play in the snow and ice with some baby dragons! We’ll continue to add more environments and activities now that we’ve got the process worked out. What do you think of Winter Park and what would you like to see next?
Winter Park
Our first of many new environments with new activities.
Break ice sculptures with snowballs!
Direct dragons into icicles with the laser!
Giant snow boulders that roll around!
Adjusted the tutorial to also work in Winter Park, but with a different chest and dragon order and snowballs instead of throwing balls.
Sign with map that can take you to Beast Park.
Beast Park
Changed tower reset sign to use pictures of stacking blocks instead of text.
Sign with map that can take you to Winter Park.
Interactive Sign
New tactile interface, press buttons on the sign with your fingers to navigate!
It’s now possible to visit Winter Park in addition to Beast Park by pressing the next arrow and then the Winter Park button.
This version is only available in the loading zone and in the Parks after completing the teleportation stage.
Dragons
Dragons will respect your personal space a bit more.
Dragons are slightly less interested in each other and you.
General
Improved analytics and event tracking.
Various bug fixes and performance improvements.
Patch Notes for v0.49.0
Markers everywhere!
Destination markers, hidden objects and Oculus Rift support! Our top request has been for more things to do with the dragons which is why we’ve hidden the toys, items and treats next to destination markers scattered throughout Beast Park. Teleporting to a marker will reveal what was hidden. We’ve also added preliminary Oculus Rift support and would love feedback!
Dragons
Dragons are less likely to be all contorted when they pop in for the first time.
Dragons will fly lower around people.
Beast Park
Objects, toys and treats are now hidden throughout Beast Park next to destination markers!
After completing the teleportation tutorial, glowing rings will appear all over Beast Park.
Teleporting to onto the glowing rings scattered throughout will now cause hidden objects to appear.
Moved the berries and balls so they are more spread out around Beast Park.
Changed the “Instant Cleanup” button for the tower to only be pressable by the player and easier to press too.
Tutorial
The delay before prompting to open a chest increases for each chest opened.
Added a second orb to keep the dragon distracted until the whistle is blown.
Improved visual instructions for switching powers.
Small crates for Telekinesis now appear with a pop effect.
General
Completely reworked controllers under the hood.
Teleport rings will now face the player in the optimum direction after teleporting.
Adjusted the hand position for Vive controllers.
Oculus Rift support!
Simplified most tooltips.
Updated Korean localization, more languages coming soon!
Improved analytics and event tracking.
Various bug fixes and performance improvements.
Patch Notes for v0.48.0
Someone's angry
Dragon personality and preferences are now way more obvious. Dragons will now take the time to investigate new things in their environment (including you!) to see if they like them or not and then react accordingly. This mostly takes the form of getting closer and paying more attention to things that make them happy while staying further away or ignoring things they dislike.
Dragons
Dragons can now develop preferences for things that match their personality.
Dragons will investigate new things to see if they like them.
Dragons now react more when they see things the strongly like or dislike.
Dragons will get closer to things they like and stay further away from things they dislike.
Dragons now get distracted periodically and stare into space.
Dragons are slightly less obsessed with you when they pop in the first time.
Dragons are able to better balance their attention between the things that interest them.
Various other personality, relationship and behavioral tweaks.
General
Improved analytics and event tracking.
Various bug fixes and performance improvements.
Patch Notes for v0.47.0
This is a very emotional update… because the dragons have started exhibiting more emotions. Right now their reactions are focused on their physical interactions with you, so make sure to pet them lots! Don’t worry if they somehow get upset, they calm down pretty quickly.
Dragons
Dragons now have a larger emotional range including joy, fear, anger and bliss.
Dragons have started keeping track of their relationship to you and other dragons.
Dragons now react emotionally when you touch them.
Holding the dragons calms them down, especially if you gently pet them.
Dragons get louder when they get more excited.
Tutorial
Nearby dragons get happier briefly after completing each stage of the tutorial.
Beast Park
Swapped the position of a stack of small crates and a big ball.
Added the restack block tower control panel behind the block tower.
General
Improved analytics and event tracking.
Various bug fixes and performance improvements.
Patch Notes for v0.46.0
The dragons have been working on their flying skills lately and it shows! They are now much better at zipping around the park, chasing after things and behaving themselves around people.
Dragons
The dragons are a bit more coordinated and agile now.
Dragons will now fly lower around your head so you don’t have to keep looking up.
The dragons seem a bit better at chasing after balls.
Instructional Sign
After completing the tutorial when the sign encourages exploration, it will also show smaller versions of all the extra activity graphics together.
Touching the sign after the tutorial will show the next suggested activity in Beast Park.
Loading Zone
Added a hand graphic alternating with the Beast Park graphic.
Beast Park
Added one time use teleport markers next to the berries and bubbles when they appear.
Added a persistent teleport marker next to the instructional sign when it is stationary.
General
Improved analytics and event tracking.
Various bug fixes and performance improvements.
Patch Notes for v0.45.0
Personalities and interface improvements! The dragons have started exhibiting noticeably different behavior, with some acting more social than others. We’ve also made a lot of much requested interface improvements to make everything even more intuitive. As always, contact us if you notice anything weird or adorable!
Dragons
The dragons have started developing individual personalities! Some dragons seems to be friendlier while others are a bit shyer. They’re growing up so fast! 😭
Gems
Hands will make a pointing gesture as they get near gems on your wrist to make touching them easier.
Gems that are currently disabled will turn grey.
Powers
Objects grabbed with telekinesis can be dropped by releasing the touchpad again.
Tutorial
Changed disabled button colors on controllers to grey so they’re easier to ignore.
Changed the wrist twist animation around the hands to only show the arrows, spin them around and then back, then hide them.
Gem tooltips show up once they are selected for the first time instead of when they are first equipped.
Simplified all tooltips.
Loading Zone
Increased the size and speed of the pulsing effect around the Beast Park selection.
General
New beast logo colors!
Improved analytics and event tracking.
Various bug fixes and performance improvements.
Patch Notes for v0.44.5
Finally squashed the steamvr controller bug! Thanks to everyone that reported this!
As a reminder, we also support the ‘prev’ beta branch which will always have the previous stable build.
