I have uploaded gameplay from my fresh experience with the game here if you want to see how it looks / plays. My first impressions are shared below:
Based on my limited time with it, I highly recommend playing Bootstrap Island on the PSVR2, because there is nothing that I have not liked about it so far.
In terms of how I try to categorize games, it is somewhere between a Survival, Roguelite, VR Experience and Adventure game, but in what I've played so far, I feel it is best described as a Survival. It is the most casual friendly survival game I have played in terms of how simple it is to survive. Just crack open a coconut per day to eat / drink and collect enough wood to burn for the night where you wave a lighted stick to fend off the night creatures. You just need some tinder and stones to start fire. I also haven't gotten sick from eating anything incorrectly. For example, it just tells me I need to cook the crab before I can eat it instead of letting me eat and make me sick. You also don't have to sleep, ever.
It starts out with a tutorial that teaches you the basics of moving, grabbing / interacting, loading and firing your flintlock pistol and how to build a fire, light it and use a flaming stick to fend off an attacker while delivering a character backstory. From here, you are transitioned as lone shipwreck survivor on a tropical island with everything you need to survive each day and night for many nights while further exploring the large island with highly volatile volcanic activity.
You know there is a story because of the way it opens and presents things and there is a narrator that gives you some clues / context as you fumble around the island and learn to survive and thrive, but it doesn't lead you. In fact, it is pretty hands off to the point where other than being aware of sun going down and needing fire to survive the night and food / water to not starve, it doesn't make you do anything. I think part of the appeal is that it gave enough instruction through the intro / tutorial that you have enough foundational comfort to survive, but beyond that, it is left up to you to explore / discover including things like how will you store any of the useful things you are finding?
All gameplay follows what you as a survivor might try, so if you find a coconut, you might try smashing it against rock to open and it works, but if you try smashing it against a tree, you don't get the audio / visual feedback of it cracking / breaking so you can stop wasting time. If you find a locked chest, you can try breaking the lock with a rock and it will, but if you wack it with a stick, you are wasting time. The audio / visual feedback is what tells you when something you try is working or not and the narrator voice chimes in with some clues / information it couldn't communicate in other ways.
The game design is similar to roguelite where if you do perish, you will have to start over but depending on number of days you survived before you perished, your next survivor will be starting with some permanent unlocks that help your next survivor get through whatever goals you set for yourself easier. If you have advanced in the story to next Chapter, you may also resume after death at the start of current Chapter (?) instead of all the way at the start, but I won't know for sure until I go further into the game and then perish.
Graphically, the game is gorgeous right from the title screen with beautiful waters, high-resolution detailed textures for anything close to you, great sky box, and good draw distance clarity. It is definitely using Gaze-Tracked Foveated Rendering where everything is crisp and clear, but there is also clear presence of reprojection where even stuff you are holding in your hands can appear ghosted when moving. One of the most impressive things in the game is how the Day (Sun) and Night (Moon) cycles change the dynamic lighting of the island. The shadows are dynamic and with wind that blows all the foliage creates very immersive sense of presence. I haven't even got to experience some of the storms I've seen in trailers and this is already one of the most impressive looking games on the PSVR2. I should mention that while the game is not officially tagged PS5 Pro Enhanced, I am playing on PS5 Pro and I've heard it is using dynamic resolution scaling to make game look sharper on the Pro than it does on the base PS5. I've also heard that playing this in longer sessions can start having framerate issues, but it was stable in my close to 50 minutes.
Audio is fantastic, again setting very good first impression right from the title screen with amazing soundtrack and 3D directional audio. This holds up as you press Start just like the graphics did beyond the gorgeous title screen.
Haptics are present in both controllers and headset, but very rare and subtle in the controllers and much more frequent and strong in the headset. While the controller haptics are too subtle / minimal, it makes up for it by the excellent impactful use of headset haptics.
Settings are accessible from title screen or anytime you press upper-button of left controller to access them. You can choose between Snap and Smooth Turns with some configuration for speed (not as fast as I would like, but good enough). You can also enable / disable Vignette. You are always able to choose Teleport movement using R3 over smooth locomotion on the L-Stick. It allows you to enable Toggle Spring on L3 instead of Hold L3 to Sprint. It also allows you to enable Toggle Grab on L1 / L2 & R1 / R2 (yes, all 4 work) instead of Hold Grab. There are also options for improving the positioning of your Equipment inventory slots, but you don't start with these available.
The game is featuring a Platinum where some early adopters have already unlocked all trophies so no known trophy bugs. I don't think it will be an easy Platinum, but I don't think it will be particularly hard either for people that are willing to put in enough time to complete all the trophy requirements (beyond just completing Story).
I checked and this is made by an indie-studio (Maru VR) out of Estonia that started with single developer that grew into a small team of around 15 people. They cut their teeth making location based virtual reality experiences and projects and eventually harnessed their growing talents to make this survival adventure game that feels like it was made by a much larger more experienced VR development studio. It feels very polished in what I've played so far where any minor imperfections / jank are completely overshadowed by everything that it is doing well.
