Crumbling Releases First VR-Demo: Germany

Hamburg's Gamecity initiative announced on March 8, 2022 the release of the first public demo of "Crumbling," a third-person action-roguelike built for virtual reality by Games Lift alumnus Ole Jürgensen and his team. The announcement serves both as a product launch notice and as a showcase of the incubator and funding programs that supported the project.

The game places players in the Crafts & Comics store, where the villainous Böse Corp. has stolen the magic that animates enchanted action figurines. Players wield these figurines, called Crumblings, to defeat toy monsters and reclaim the store. Jürgensen argues that VR is commonly assumed to suit only first-person games, but that motion controls combined with an immersive environment offer strong potential for third-person action, drawing on the childhood experience of playing with action figures.

The demo introduces the setting through an interactive comic book, followed by a tutorial and the first world, made up of five dioramas. It is available on Steam and Sidequest and supports Oculus Quest 2 and Oculus Rift S headsets. A trailer is offered for those without hardware. The full release is planned for later in 2022 on Steam and App Lab.

The development path illustrates Hamburg's support structure for early-stage studios. The team shaped the concept in the 2020 Games Lift Incubator, previewed gameplay at the December 2020 graduation event, and then secured a 2021 Prototype Funding grant that let them focus on their first VR title. Sidebar news on the page, dated well after the article, shows the 2026 Games Lift offering five teams 15,000 euros each, workshops, mentoring, and a 1,000-euro coaching budget, indicating the program's continuation.