Updated to clarify that the game always takes place in Stellar Cafe, not additional locations, as the original interview with Astrobeam suggested otherwise.
As I sat across the table from a soothsaying robot, I pondered exactly how this robot actually “thinks.” Does it know the “future” because it was programmed to, or is it using a complex neural network to determine a possible future based on all the knowledge it has in its seemingly endless database?
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But then it dawned on me: I was talking to an actual robot. It didn’t matter how it thought; it was all about how realistic it felt and how close this was to the sci-fi movies we’ve all grown up watching. These robots were seemingly pulled straight out of the Star Wars universe and could not only function within their designed parameters, but could also psychologically process and respond to any question I asked them.
This was more than just a ChatGPT moment for me. It was a surreal representation of a future I didn’t genuinely think I’d ever live to see; yet, before me was a collection of robots, each with its own job and seemingly functional brain.
The only way this could have felt more realistic to me is if these were physical robots in front of me in a cafe, but thankfully, their heavy mechanical bodies were still confined to the boundaries of my Meta Quest 3 headset. For now, at least. And soon, everyone will be able to check out the full experience in Stellar Cafe when it launches on the Meta Quest platform later this year.
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Just another day in Stellar Cafe
Stellar Cafe – Announce Trailer – YouTube
My demo opened with me sitting in an elevator. As the doors opened to Stellar Cafe, I could see the friendly bartender wave to me in an attempt to usher me into the room. But, like those strange dreams we all sometimes have, none of my appendages (or virtual inputs) seemed to be working.
So I asked my handy virtual assistant how to get to the bar and, much to my surprise, my assistant warped me to it. Now I know I can move around just by asking, and the future-forward flavor of this demo has only just begun.
Immediately, James, the bartender, introduces himself and asks me what I want to drink. Having never visited Stellar Cafe before, I thought my safest bet was to order from the menu, so a Meteor Mocha it was. That is, until I read the ingredients on the side of my cup and realized it had oat milk in it.
Upon telling James I was allergic to oats, he profusely apologized and whipped up a new Meteor Mocha with synthetic milk instead. None of this was scripted, and it’s not something a developer would likely think of to build into a game in the first place.
Upon telling James I was allergic to oats, he profusely apologized and whipped up a new Meteor Mocha with synthetic milk instead. None of this was scripted, and it’s not something a developer would likely think of to build into a game in the first place. Heck, I’ve been to more than a few coffee places that didn’t even realize someone could be allergic to oat milk, and you’d think they would be the ones on top of that stuff.
My conversations with the three other robots in the room were similarly impressive. One robot was sitting next to a scenic view of a few planets, and I wondered if it would know more about them. Turns out it did, and not only that, it wasn’t just hallucinating answers the entire time. After describing the planet Golga (I think it said Golga) as “a soulless planet filled with corporate resorts and pristine beaches,” I asked it which planet it was referring to.
To my surprise, it not only told me that the purple planet was Golga, but the green planet next to it was “just some backwater mining colony” that seemed to provide all the resources needed for the corporate overlords running the planet next door.
(Image credit: Astrobeam)
Similarly, all the robots remembered my name as Devin, a misnomer that occurred when I was interviewing Astrobeam’s CEO, Devin Reimer, and the game overheard me asking him about something at the bar. Apparently, James asked me my name, and I didn’t have the heart to correct him, although it would have been easy enough to do so.
But Stellar Cafe isn’t just some LLM experiment that you’ll want to play for 5 minutes and move on to the next thing. Reimer told me the game always takes place in the cafe (hence, the name), but the robots you’ll see are always changing. Like a normal cafe, there might be some regulars, but there are plenty of fresh faces (or face screens, as the robots call them) to meet all the time.
The demo’s main objective was to convince all the robots in the room to RSVP for that evening’s party. The demo ends once you complete this task, but the full game will venture on to that party and introduce a whole host of new characters and places. Regardless of your location, your goal is to chat with robots and help solve problems through conversation — a core tenet of being human, I’d say.
(Image credit: Astrobeam)
Throughout the entire experience, I couldn’t get over how profoundly different it was to navigate with my voice. To date, I haven’t seen any other games — VR or otherwise — that used voice quite like this. Oftentimes, when you see voice interaction in games, it’s just to complete commands.
In Espire 2, one of the best Meta Quest games, you sneak around like Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid, and can tell guards to “put their hands up,” or “freeze,” to make them surrender. But these are very specific commands, and you can’t just ask your in-game robot companion to go do something for you.
In Stellar Cafe, that’s the whole premise behind the concept, something Reimer says the studio has been working on for the past two years. LLMs like ChatGPT are based on natural language input, and Reimer says the team has constructed a bespoke model that runs efficiently enough to make this a one-time purchase title. Not only that, but it’s fast enough to keep responses from making you wait. Ask a robot something, and it replies right away. It’s pretty stellar.
Each robot’s responses are not only quick and impressively natural-feeling, but they run on an efficient custom LLM that will keep this as a one-time purchase game.
Not only can you ask your virtual assistant, Visor, to transport you around the room, but you can make these commands with as much or as little knowledge as you might have of the game’s content. “Bring me to the window with the orange robot” works just as well as “Sit me at the third seat at the bar with James,” or “take me to that fortune teller robot.”
Keeping the conversations compelling and feeling natural relied on an input that felt more natural. When gamers feel bored during a conversation in VR, they often “run around and jump off of stuff,” as Reimer noted.
So if the script is flipped and you can’t do that, you’ll find yourself fidgeting in your seat, twiddling your thumbs, or picking up objects as you have a conversation, instead. “It’s like what you do when normally chatting with people you’re seated across from,” Reimer added, and I couldn’t agree more.
(Image credit: Astrobeam)
After spending 30 minutes convincing robots they needed to go to the biggest party of the year, I was convinced that I needed to play the full Stellar Cafe game when it debuted later this year. Reimer’s previous chops are rooted in Job Simulator and other Owlchemy Games titles, and it shows in his new company’s first release.
Gone are the days of dialog trees and repeating NPC talk in games. Instead, these characters feel like actual sentient beings in a fantasy world. It’s a new era of VR gaming and a unique chapter in the history of the medium, as well, and I can’t wait to be a part of it!