- Fix for weird controller orientations - 3 April 2026
To all agents, Short story: Please follow this video guide on how to adjust the default motion controller orientations in case they do not feel correct: Long story: Back when The Red Stare was in development (2016 - 2017), VR game development was in its early days. It was a modern-day Wild West, on both a creative and technical level, where standardisation, rules, and conventions were non-existent nor agreed upon. Much like the old West: as different towns and cities became more developed and recognised, people from different towns started interacting with eachother; sharing ideas, trading goods, and perhaps even move and integrate in their new environment. Sometimes, however, in the process of change, some things break or adapt not as smoothly. This is what happened with VR motion controllers and different runtime environments, such as OpenXR, OVR, and Steam VR. Thoughout the last 10 y…
- A fix for those experiencing a crash - 11 September 2022
Hello agents, We have received reports of the game crashing shortly after launching the game. This appears to be a problem with newer generation CPUs. if this crash is affecting you, please follow the guide on this page: https://survios.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4402698622483-11th-Gen-Intel-CPU-users-Launching-Crashing-Issue EDIT 2026-04-02: Archived version of the original link above: https://web.archive.org/web/20230602143124/https://survios.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4402698622483-11th-Gen-Intel-CPU-users-Launching-Crashing-Issue It appears to have fixed the issue for some people (including one of our own developers). Please let us know if it does, so we can spread the word further. Keep up the good work, agent. HQ out.
- A new challenge for our agents.. WarpThrough has released! - 16 December 2019
*DECODED:.... ...TRANSMISSION BEGIN:* Greetings agent! I'm sure by now your skills to observe and deduce are infallible. But have you been training your speed and reflexes adequately? One of us at HQ developed something that could prove a great exercise for you: WarpThrough! This "Two dimensional action platformer" may be a bit different than the assignments we've given you so far, but I hope you'll give it a try! You can find WarpThrough over here on Steam I've heard there's a "Demo" available for free to try out, but that's probably just communist propaganda... Stay vigilant agent! HQ out. *TRANSMISSION END.*
- Motion smoothing issues are fixed! - SteamVR update 1.3.19 - 2 April 2019
Good news everybody! Valve has now fixed the issues in SteamVR that were causing performance issues and crashes in The Red Stare. The game should work correctly with motion smoothing as of SteamVR 1.3.19! Previously, the fix was only in the SteamVR Beta version from 1.3.2. This also increases stability for people with lower spec hardware. From the patch notes: Fixed a memory leak in Motion Smoothing when the application’s resolution is rapidly changing. Let us know if you run into any other issues, HQ out
- Motion smoothing causes issues - 4 February 2019
Edit: The good people at Valve have found a fix and submitted it to the SteamVR Beta (1.3.2)! We'll make a new announcement once the fix makes it into the main version of SteamVR. Hello there agents, Some of you have reported issues - major frame drops and even crashes. After some of you did a number of tests (Thanks MonkeyMike and others!) it turns out that the HTC Vive's fairly new feature 'Motion smoothing' is causing most it. This is a feature that is automatically turned on, but causes big problems in The Red Stare. So you could try turning that off in the SteamVR settings. If that doesn't work however, pressing Alt+Enter to make the game run in a window rather than fullscreen has also fixed issues for some people. We're contacting Valve to see if we can find a fix for it, but in the meantime the best way to avoid issues like this is to turn off motion smoothing in SteamVR. Good lu…
- 13 Months in! - 31 August 2018
Hello there agents! It's been 13 months since our program went live, and we thought it'd be a good time to report on how we're doing. Right now TRS has a little over 38k downloads which, given that having a roomscale setup for VR is not common for everyone, we're very proud of. What makes us even happier however, are the reviews. That we're at 93% positive reviews on Steam is awesome, but actually reading what people wrote, which is often either super encouraging or extremely meme worthy, has made our day numerous times. The team has spread out across numerous countries and studios, but having worked on The Red Stare has been, and continues to be, an amazing experience for all of us. Thank you all so much for being part of this :) HQ out
- The Red Stare wins TWO Dutch Game Awards! - 10 October 2017
The Dutch Game Awards 2017 happened last Friday, and The Red Stare won 2 out of 3 awards it was nominated for: 'Best Student Art Direction' and 'Best Student Game Design'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7qNP0L6HOM&feature=youtu.be We are extremely excited and humbled to receive both of these awards for the game that we spent so much time on. The Red Stare has been a foundational project for all of us. We learnt and developed our skills quite a lot by working on this game: it has definitely been one of the best, but certainly also one of the most challenging things many of us have worked on. Obviously, there is much more that can be said about the The Red Stare, its future, us as a team, and how this will affect us-- but for now, we will be reflecting on what is arguably one of our proudest achievements so far! Thanks from everyone at Play:D! Relevant links: http://dutchgameawards.nl/2…
- The Red Stare wins TWO Dutch Game Awards! - 10 October 2017
The Dutch Game Awards 2017 happened last Friday, and The Red Stare won 2 out of 3 awards it was nominated for: 'Best Student Art Direction' and 'Best Student Game Design'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7qNP0L6HOM&feature=youtu.be We are extremely excited and humbled to receive both of these awards for the game that we spent so much time on. The Red Stare has been a foundational project for all of us. We learnt and developed our skills quite a lot by working on this game: it has definitely been one of the best, but certainly also one of the most challenging things many of us have worked on. Obviously, there is much more that can be said about the The Red Stare, its future, us as a team, and how this will affect us-- but for now, we will be reflecting on what is arguably one of our proudest achievements so far! Thanks from everyone at Play:D! Relevant links: http://dutchgameawards.nl/2…
- The Red Stare nominated for 3 Dutch Game Awards! - 17 September 2017
#transmission established# Greetings agents, A few days ago, our radio operators intercepted secret messages originating from The Netherlands. After a few days of painstakingly decrypting these radio messages, we have deduced that The Red Stare has been nominated in 3 categories for the Dutch Game Awards this year! The Dutch Game Awards is the annual celebration of the best games developed in The Netherlands. The categories The Red Stare is nominated for are: Best Student Game Design Best Student Art Direction Best Student Technical Achievement Or in other words, it's nominated for all categories it was eligible for! The awards ceremony will be held at a secret location somewhere in The Netherlands on October 6th of this year, and several members of our network will attempt to enter the complex with a low-profile. The decrypted message also contains an odd character-set that we have bee…
- The Red Stare nominated for 3 Dutch Game Awards! - 17 September 2017
#transmission established# Greetings agents, A few days ago, our radio operators intercepted secret messages originating from The Netherlands. After a few days of painstakingly decrypting these radio messages, we have deduced that The Red Stare has been nominated in 3 categories for the Dutch Game Awards this year! The Dutch Game Awards is the annual celebration of the best games developed in The Netherlands. The categories The Red Stare is nominated for are: Best Student Game Design Best Student Art Direction Best Student Technical Achievement Or in other words, it's nominated for all categories it was eligible for! The awards ceremony will be held at a secret location somewhere in The Netherlands on October 6th of this year, and several members of our network will attempt to enter the complex with a low-profile. The decrypted message also contains an odd character-set that we have bee…
- Incoming update 1.03 - the Oculus update - 9 August 2017
#transmission established# HQ here, More and more agents are joining the cause. With the following changes, hopefully even more people will join the fight! We’ve been working a lot on improving Oculus integration, and some quality of life changes! Oculus 2-Sensor Oculus setup now supported! (recommended to use the Oculus 2-sensor 360° experimental setup) Resolved a lot of initialisation errors specific to Oculus. Fixed a bug where the objects sometimes spawned in mid-air, in the middle of the room, and/or not be properly rotated on the board upon starting either mission. Fixed an issue where, when using Oculus with specific room sizes, the respawning system was not adjusted properly, causing objects to prematurely cull/teleport/disappear. Fixed an issue where, when using Oculus with specific room sizes, pictures and intel attached to the board would disappear when looking away and the m…
- Incoming update 1.03 - the Oculus update - 9 August 2017
#transmission established# HQ here, More and more agents are joining the cause. With the following changes, hopefully even more people will join the fight! We’ve been working a lot on improving Oculus integration, and some quality of life changes! Oculus 2-Sensor Oculus setup now supported! (recommended to use the Oculus 2-sensor 360° experimental setup) Resolved a lot of initialisation errors specific to Oculus. Fixed a bug where the objects sometimes spawned in mid-air, in the middle of the room, and/or not be properly rotated on the board upon starting either mission. Fixed an issue where, when using Oculus with specific room sizes, the respawning system was not adjusted properly, causing objects to prematurely cull/teleport/disappear. Fixed an issue where, when using Oculus with specific room sizes, pictures and intel attached to the board would disappear when looking away and the m…
- Incoming update 1.02 - 2 August 2017
#transmission established# Greetings from HQ, We’ve been monitoring the situation and have found a couple of things to fix. So hereby: We fixed an issue with the navmesh for the AI that caused none of the characters to move for certain players (including norma, which broke the beginning of mission R). You may have to use the ‘Wipe Data’ card before starting a mission if you previously played the game, but encountered this bug. Audio now still plays when out of focus (We thought this would be too difficult to solve right now, turns out it wasn’t!) Fixed a bug where the camera would sometimes fly around when a mission had been loaded. Added mission names on the blackboard to emphasize that there are two different playable missions. Folder interaction is now a lot more reliable. Changed ‘Suspect info’ folder to only allow grabbing. It previously allowed swiping as well (Waving your hand ac…
- Incoming update 1.02 - 2 August 2017
#transmission established# Greetings from HQ, We’ve been monitoring the situation and have found a couple of things to fix. So hereby: We fixed an issue with the navmesh for the AI that caused none of the characters to move for certain players (including norma, which broke the beginning of mission R). You may have to use the ‘Wipe Data’ card before starting a mission if you previously played the game, but encountered this bug. Audio now still plays when out of focus (We thought this would be too difficult to solve right now, turns out it wasn’t!) Fixed a bug where the camera would sometimes fly around when a mission had been loaded. Added mission names on the blackboard to emphasize that there are two different playable missions. Folder interaction is now a lot more reliable. Changed ‘Suspect info’ folder to only allow grabbing. It previously allowed swiping as well (Waving your hand ac…
- Incoming update 1.01 - 31 July 2017
#transmission established# Greetings agent! We’re very happy with the initial feedback our missions received, and would like to elaborate on what we just added to accommodate your spying activities, based on tips from you guys: Fixed roomsize bug for Oculus with a Guardian System (room setup) that is less than 2.0m x 1.5m, which would make the room very thin. It now falls back to the default minimum room size. If the game is not in focus, voice audio (from the phone) will not play. Other audio will. Simple fix is focusing on the game (either clicking on it or alt-tabbing to it) This is sadly not something we can fix right now. Please let us know if you find anything else to improve, and let us know what you think. Thanks! HQ out. #transmission terminated#
- Incoming update 1.01 - 31 July 2017
#transmission established# Greetings agent! We’re very happy with the initial feedback our missions received, and would like to elaborate on what we just added to accommodate your spying activities, based on tips from you guys: Fixed roomsize bug for Oculus with a Guardian System (room setup) that is less than 2.0m x 1.5m, which would make the room very thin. It now falls back to the default minimum room size. If the game is not in focus, voice audio (from the phone) will not play. Other audio will. Simple fix is focusing on the game (either clicking on it or alt-tabbing to it) This is sadly not something we can fix right now. Please let us know if you find anything else to improve, and let us know what you think. Thanks! HQ out. #transmission terminated#
- The Red Stare is available NOW! - 31 July 2017
Become a secret agent in 1950s New York City and spy on your neighbours to find the communist spy. Connect your HTC Vive or Oculus VR headset and play The Red Stare for free! We're excited to release the game to the world, and hope you will enjoy it as much as we did while making it!
- The Red Stare is available NOW! - 31 July 2017
Become a secret agent in 1950s New York City and spy on your neighbours to find the communist spy. Connect your HTC Vive or Oculus VR headset and play The Red Stare for free! We're excited to release the game to the world, and hope you will enjoy it as much as we did while making it!
- The Red Stare launches on July 31! - 20 July 2017
Hi everyone! We finally know the release date for The Red Stare: it’s July 31, 2017. That’s in little over a week! Over the past months, we have been -- and still are! -- working very hard to make the game the absolute best we can. To celebrate this, we updated the store page with new in-game screenshots showing off the current state of the game. We’ve also got a new release trailer, which you can watch on the Steam page or here: https://youtu.be/mz2SZA3qunY The Red Stare was showcased at the game development conference INDIGO 2017 last month and was very well received by both industry and consumers alike. We may have some more exciting news to share in the near future regarding the outcomes of this! We are very excited to get the game out to the world, because for most of us it’s the first time shipping a finished game -- and also one of the best things we have worked on so far! We hop…
- The Red Stare launches on July 31! - 20 July 2017
Hi everyone! We finally know the release date for The Red Stare: it’s July 31, 2017. That’s in little over a week! Over the past months, we have been -- and still are! -- working very hard to make the game the absolute best we can. To celebrate this, we updated the store page with new in-game screenshots showing off the current state of the game. We’ve also got a new release trailer, which you can watch on the Steam page or here: https://youtu.be/mz2SZA3qunY The Red Stare was showcased at the game development conference INDIGO 2017 last month and was very well received by both industry and consumers alike. We may have some more exciting news to share in the near future regarding the outcomes of this! We are very excited to get the game out to the world, because for most of us it’s the first time shipping a finished game -- and also one of the best things we have worked on so far! We hop…
