TL;DR: You can now practice rhythmically defending yourself against laser attacks with dual wielding laserblades in Holodance (store.steampowered.com/app/422860/Holodance/) when you opt-in to the "lazers" branch on Steam. There are a few settings you should make in the game, shown towards the end of the video (use 0.25x in case this is too fast - we can't always use bullet time, works on YouTube: gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=VXP3HQolwJI).
Back in October 2016, and again in January 2017, I mentioned an upcoming "sword-mechanic" for Holodance. The idea is to have a progression in mechanics to give players more variety to play with. We already have environments players can unlock with a grinding progression (your accumulated score) - but I realized a while back that a gameplay mechanic needs to be skill-based. The full deal is sword & shield, dual wield and eventually, laser-guns. And instead of making this a linear progression, we'll have a kind of "skill-tree", so players can decide in which order the additional mechanics are added.
In fact, I had even played with a sword-mechanic much earlier in 2015, while still working with Razer Hydra (primarily as a workaround for the tiny tracking area), and a sword-based mechanic was also suggested to me on Reddit in 2015. It really clicked, however, when I saw Lightblade VR, a really nice little "practice game".
One really tricky thing in game development is prioritizing which item to implement when. Usually, there's a kind of natural order to it, inherent to the development process: First, polish the core mechanics. Then, add skill-tracking. Then add new gameplay mechanics. It so happens that we are just finishing skill-tracking and procedural beatmapping ... and then came Beat Saber. Awesome polished game, amazing video. Kudos to the developers, they are doing a great job with this and I'll definitely spend some time playing their game because I think it will be a lot of fun.
But as I had seen with Audioshield, even when you show a mechanic much earlier than another game is even announced (possibly before development of that game even started) and even get a little bit of press coverage, most people will think that the game they first heard of or saw was the game that "invented" some mechanic. Not necessarily the game that actually did or was the first actual playable game (the very first time the "catch/punch orbs in the rhythm" mechanic was implemented, as far as I can tell, was in a tiny prototype called "E-Motion" at Shayla VR Game Jam mid 2015 - I did take inspiration from that).
Just mentioning something on a forum is kind of nice for the record ... but ... only very few will notice, let alone remember. Exposure really shapes public perception.
The mechanic we have in Holodance is quite different from Beat Saber. It's the defensive art: Lasers shooting at you that you need to protect yourself against. We will have slicing, too, but that's for Spinners, which are kind of rare and when they come towards you, they usually stay for a little while. And those things are big. And you'll get a chance to slice through it several times (in fact, the more slices, the higher the score). Sliders and spinners are not done, yet - but as mentioned above, you can already play what you see in the video, today, simply by opting into the right branch and using the right theme(s).
Complete sessions:
Holodance Laser Defense Gameplay: antiPlur 'Speed of Link'
vimeo.com/252627002
Holodance Laser Defense Gameplay: Cerulean Veyron ‘Transcendence’
vimeo.com/252623257
