Stellar Cafe is an upcoming VR game that’s all about interacting with AI chatbots in some interesting ways. I went hands-on with the game’s first level to see whether developer AstroBeam could truly hide ‘the bot behind the curtain’, and deliver some fun in the process too.
One day, AI will be able to express itself with all of the same weird, messy behavior that defines a lot of our face-to-face communications today—stuff like hand gestures, body language, different types of slang, code switching, and using tones that could change a sentence’s meaning.
We’re not there just yet, although Stellar Cafe is definitely onto something big, and is doing a lot under the hood to make you think twice before ordering any one of the cafe’s robotic patrons to mind their own business and do something a little more productive, like, maybe… summarize this article.
Currently based on Google Gemini—although the studio says that could change—the inhabitants of Stellar Cafe can’t really offer any of those truly human behaviors yet, although they do offer something more than your standard chatbot.
Stellar Cafe’s bots have their own objectives and internal logic, and to some extent, their own personalities too. And while they’re each directed towards specific goals, what results is entirely unscripted, I’m told. Bots draw from those prime motivations, but also build memories across sessions, such as your name or past choices you made.
But this isn’t just a cool tech demo. It’s a proper VR game that should feel more than a little familiar, but more on that below.
As I board the intergalactic cafe, which serves up all sorts of themed drinks in a futuristic, nebula-side diner, I learn that I actually have my own objective in all this beyond sitting around and shooting the breeze with robots in this wacky future-scape.
James, the helpful robot barista, needs a hand to convince his robo-patrons to agree to attend a big ‘Patch Day’ party. Some have RSVP’ed a definite “yes”, but there are still a few holdouts in need of convincing. In Stellar Cafe, you’ll have to use your human intellect to convince them into dropping everything else to get to that big Patch Day celebration.
The game’s first level took me around 30 minutes to play, which included three robot patrons, each with their own problems. The amount of tongue-in-cheekiness on display isn’t lost on me either, as the game cleverly reverses roles: I’m basically a human doing the job of a chatbot.
One patron was too anxious to pick out an outfit for the big day, so they needed my help with some sort of weird therapy involving a crystal ball. Another needed me to draft a resignation email to their boss, because they had to work that day and ultimately just wanted to join a rock band. The last patron had a podcast due, but didn’t have any idea who to interview next. Cue the human sitting across from them, talking about their memories, or the “most difficult word to understand.” By the way, I said “never,” although I think I was just trying to come off as profound.
All of the game’s story and interactions take place in the same cafe space, refreshed each day with new patrons with their own party-pooping issues, which also means new activities to do. Besides a few tables, each of which is stocked with a few interactive items to mess with while you chat, I noticed there was also a standup stage off to the side, which I just know means I’ll be telling a bunch of corny jokes about robots at some point.
Notably, as a hand-tracking only seated experience, all you need is your voice to move around, which is done by simply calling up the keyword ‘Visor’, and casually telling it where you want to sit next in the cafe. Every weird way I asked worked too, which was pretty amazing: “Visor, let’s move over to that other table,” or “Visor, the bar,” etc.
Between all of this script-flipping irony and interesting one-off activities is the usual fluidity chatbots bring to the table, which let you discuss almost everything the underlying LLM can. Still, I couldn’t just play the game and not try to break its AI, even just a little.
It doesn’t speak anything but English, which is unfortunate, but understandable given the amount of customization each NPC is getting here. I can’t help but think Stellar Cafe is primed and ready to be coopted into some sort of ad hoc full immersion language learning course.
Some of the reason the game is focusing on English-only for now is that AstroBeam is tailoring each character with their own quirks, conversational styles, and even favorite words they can dynamically inject into chats. That level of customization is important too, as you’ll be dealing with a dozen different bots along the way to finally celebrating together on Patch Day, which means each one needs to have its own specific personality.
That said, the game’s AI makes some of the usual flubs that Gemini (or any other big LLM) makes today, which in VR can be maybe a little more immersion breaking than if I were staring at a pulsing orb on my phone. It can misunderstand a word, loop around sometimes in the middle of conversations, and sometimes stick to the patented conversational flow that seems to be popular with LLMs right now: i.e. the bot usually includes a summarization of what you just said, an affirmation of how great you are, and then inserts a pretty generic question to stimulate further conversation.
That’s not always the case though. When it works, it feels like you’re actually talking directly with a robot plucked straight out of Job Simulator… which really shouldn’t be a surprise. Led by former Owlchemy Labs CEO Devin Reimer, AstroBeam’s debut title seems to be making the same sort of gamble Job Simulator did with controller-based interactions, albeit with voice-based input.
I haven’t played more than 30 minutes, so I can’t say with any certainty whether Stellar Cafe is going to be the next Job Simulator or not though. I want to break it more, and discover its flaws and quirks before anything. It is however one of those rare experiences that feels like the future.
There’s no release date yet, although AstroBeam says it should arrive sometime this year across Quest 2 and above. While Reimer didn’t personally confirm any other headsets at the time, he says the studio may consider other (unnamed) headsets.
