'Music, reality, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference' (D12 - When the music stops)

Playing the piano in virtual reality was new to me and surprisingly fun!
Can I now apply this to a real piano? Yes, but it won't really allow me to play a completely complicated song.

VR Pianist is a rhythmic VR game, you choose the song you want to do and the difficulty. (easy, normal, hard)
based on the difficulty level you will have to press more or less keys to get a final score.

Here you can see an example of 'Beethoven - Für Elise' on hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P975DqLlPg

You will have to choose music from three different styles,
the game also has some small objectives so that you can unlock extra songs.
These objectives are simply to finnish a number of songs.
Once you have done a series of objectives you will also end up in another location.
These locations can also be colored in for some visual effects according to your accuracy during the sessions.

The gameplay is quite similar to other rhythm games, you get to see a color above a key that then 'counts down' and you have to press the keys at the right moments, according to the timing you will get more or less points per key.

What is also very interesting with VR Pianist is the 'Leap Motion' compatibility.
Using the leap motion you will have full hand/finger tracking and also be able to use all 10 fingers to play the piano.

i tested with the valve index controllers and currently there is no finger tracking for vr controllers that support finger tracking so if you are using vr controllers you will currently have to play with your virtual index fingers but honestly those are enough to play any difficulty level .
You can also play freely and here it seems more useful to be able to use multiple fingers, hopefully finger tracking via vr controllers can be solved with a future update.

You also have the option to adjust the position of the piano so that you can play the piano in VR in a comfortable position.
You will not feel anything under your fingers in real life, but there are creative options for this.
For example, you can sit at a table or your desk, and position the VR piano with the table/desk,
in this way you would get feeling on your fingers when touching the virtual keys,
you can also put a keyboard on the table if you have one, but I do recommend that you also put some books under your wrists so that the posture remains comfortable.

You can view my initial impressions review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/9fegwqllD4g

In case you can't tell from the store page video, you're playing finger piano in VR. It's similar to guitar hero, except you are playing real notes on a virtual piano. The game has several songs from contemporary, classical, and thematic piano music. It has easy, normal, and hard difficulties. Several songs are unlocked until you do good enough to unlock the rest.

I had a difficult time telling exactly what I was doing wrong to unlock songs though. The best I could do (whether Easy or Hard) is a little over 50% score when you need to score at least 70% to unlock songs. This game definitely needs a better way to indicate exactly when to hit the notes. I think I know Ludwig Van's 5th symphony pretty good, not as well as the 9th, but still pretty good. Yet for whatever reason, I wasn't getting scored highly with the notes on time.

Also, the keys weren't always as responsive as I would have liked, especially when playing songs on my own. Game is in Early Access though, so hopefully those things get patched up. Game is running on the Unity Engine. On my RTX 3080, I was getting a steady 90 fps. Other than volume settings & the ability to change the position of the piano, there weren't any other settings available.

Despite the jank of this experience, I must admit I was having fun. As long as you're not expecting a piano simulation or Rocksmith VR for piano, I think you can enjoy this arcade piano version. It does need more songs. I would also like better haptics and physics. I see no reason why the grab and trigger buttons couldn't be used to pretend to use other fingers. Trigger could be a certain shape of fingers, grab could be another. I think it would add a needed depth to the gameplay. I think the beatmap could also be clearer on what's to be played next. I definitely like the multiplayer idea the dev has on his roadmap.

Anyways, it's only $14 USD so I can give it a least a neutral recommendation. It's more fun than it should be (assuming you like piano music). I look forward to seeing the final product

Rate ?/10.

Please note: I received a free Steam key through the Steam Curator Connect program. You can join my Steam Curator group here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Oculus_WMR

controls are kinda crap it's super clunky and doesnt feel right playing. notes take too long to be ready to be tapped? or like the thingy takes too long and it makes the buttons hard to time. can only really play with one finger at a time and just isnt as fun as it looks.