Eolia is a fully hand-tracked sequel to ROTU: Ionia

After what seemed like endless months of waiting, it's fair to say that Rhythm Of The Universe: Ionia is a bit of a flop.

ROTU Entertainment's VR debut offered a gorgeous world and intriguing musical gameplay, but it was about 40 minutes long. But ROTU CEO Jason Parks and the team are learning from the first game on board for their next in-universe entry, Eolia, due in Quest 2 this summer. Watch the full announcement trailer below.

Eolia is not a direct continuation of the story of Ionia, the action takes place in a different world with a different musical accent. This time you will dive into the ruins of the desert, where the effects of climate change are causing droughts.

But there are a few key updates for this sequel that ROTU fans will want to know about. For starters, Parks notes that it will be a longer game with more gameplay variety. In the demo, I see his character riding through the desert as well as revisiting familiar musical challenges set differently in the first game.

Perhaps more interesting, however, is that Eolia fully supports hand-tracked input, including smooth navigation while moving around. The game also supports controllers, but I was very interested to see a movement that allows you to squeeze and then essentially use your hand as a joystick to move back and forth, while elements from the past game like climbing also return.

Hand tracking also allows for more accurate musical mechanics; For example, I see Parks plucking the strings in sequence, and the trailer also shows a flute where your fingers cover the holes, just like in real life.

At the time, I doubted that after the debut of Ionia we would see anything from ROTU, but Eolia certainly piqued my interest again. If ROTU can offer a more varied and in-depth adventure that makes extensive use of virtual reality hand tracking, then it could be a much more significant entry into a very intriguing universe. We'll see more about the game when it releases this summer on Quest 2.