P·O·L·L·E·N

P·O·L·L·E·N
Information
VR/AR	VR
Developer	Mindfield Games
Publisher	Mindfield Games
Platform	Oculus Rift (Platform), SteamVR
Device	Oculus Rift CV1, HTC Vive
Operating System	Windows
Type	Full Game
Genre	Adventure, Indie, Sci-fi, Atmospheric, Exploration, First-Person, Science, Supernatural, Psychedelic, VR, Walking Simulator
Input Device	Gamepad, Keyboard / Mouse, Tracked Motion Controllers
Play Area	Seated, Standing, Room-Scale
Game Mode	Single Player
Language	English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, Finnish, Portuguese
Review	Mixed
Release Date	April 19, 2016
Price	US$24.99 at launch; US$9.99 on Steam (October 2026)
App Store	Steam, GOG, Humble Store
Website	https://web.archive.org/web/20160323094927/http://pollengame.com/?page_id=3006

P·O·L·L·E·N (also written P.O.L.L.E.N, or Pollen) is a first-person science fiction exploration and puzzle game developed and published by Mindfield Games, a studio based in Helsinki, Finland. It is set in 1995 in an alternate history, on a research base on Saturn's moon Titan. The game was released for Windows on 19 April 2016 on Steam, and was also sold through GOG and the Humble Store. It can be played on a regular monitor or in a virtual reality headset, and one purchase includes both versions.

At launch, VR play was available as a "near-final VR beta" for the Oculus Rift. An update on 13 April 2017 added native SteamVR and Oculus support, HTC Vive support, hand controllers and room-scale exploration. Critics were divided. The PC version has a Metascore of 64 ("mixed or average") from 10 critic reviews on Metacritic.

Reviewed 12 October 2026. Checked Steam store and API data, the four Steam announcements, archived official press kit and FAQ, Unity, MCV, Road to VR, Gamereactor, USgamer and GameSpot articles, Metacritic, OpenCritic and GOG listings against every claim. About review dates.

Gameplay

The player is a reserve employee of RAMA Industries who is sent to Station M, a research base on Titan, after a member of the research team disappears. Mindfield's press kit says that all contact with the crew is lost after the player lands, and that a storm is approaching, so the player has to enter the base. The story is told through exploration and puzzle solving. GameSpot wrote that the exposition is delivered through audio logs on cassette tapes found around the base. GameSpot noted that the player has to stand next to fixed cassette players to hear them, and that no other people appear in the game.

Nearly every loose object on the base can be picked up, turned and thrown. Memos, clipboards, audio cassettes and key cards carry the story. The main mechanic lets the player move between two versions of the station, one dark and dilapidated and the other bright and orderly. USgamer described the orderly version as the past, while GameSpot described the dilapidated one as a future after the crew's fate. Many puzzles involve changing something in one timeline so that a blocked area opens in the other. Other puzzles have the player operate machinery by turning knobs, pulling levers and spinning wheels. GameSpot put the game's length at two to three hours.

Setting

The game is set on 2 February 1995 at Research Base M on Kraken Mare, Titan. In this alternate history, the assassination of John F. Kennedy failed and the internet was never invented. The Soviet and US space programs joined forces, governments handed their findings over to private companies, and corporations set up mining and research colonies across the Solar System. Station M belongs to one of them, RAMA Industries. In GameSpot's description, the game opens at a retro-futuristic computer terminal that produces a punch card, and the base's research concerns something called "The Entity".

VR controls and comfort

Mindfield designed the game to be played with a gamepad or with mouse and keyboard, with or without a headset. The walking speed, turning speed and head bob change depending on whether the player uses a monitor or a headset. The game offers several body rotation modes, including a comfort mode. Mindfield also said that playtesting taught the team that "rotational stairs" should not be used in VR. In the April 2016 VR beta, Road to VR's preview described a gaze reticle used to pick up items with the right trigger of an Xbox controller, adjustable snap turning, and separate head and body rotation. The reviewer warned that stairs and jumps could cause discomfort because the game had not been built for VR from the start.

The April 2017 update added hand controller support. Players reach out to pick up items and turn their hand to inspect them, and can move with teleportation as well as by walking around a room-scale space. Seated, standing and room-scale play are all supported, and players can still use a gamepad or mouse and keyboard. The Steam store lists "Tracked Controller Support" and "VR Supported", and gives SteamVR or Oculus PC as the VR runtime.

Development

Mindfield Games was founded on 22 October 2013. Its press kit described it as the first dedicated virtual reality development studio in Finland at the time of its founding, with staff who had previously worked at Remedy, Rovio, Housemarque and RedLynx/Ubisoft. According to the studio's FAQ, five founders started work on the game in 2013, and by March 2016 the team had grown to 15 people. Stakula provided sound effects and music, and two script writers worked on the story. In an August 2015 interview with MCV/Develop, CEO and co-founder Ville Kivistö said that "Pollen is heavily influenced by movies like 2001: Space Odyssey and the original Solaris." The press kit also names the adventure games Gone Home and The Dig as influences, and says the storytelling was influenced by the directors Andrei Tarkovsky and Stanley Kubrick.

The game was made in Unity. In a February 2015 interview on the Unity blog, Kivistö said the team used Unity 5's physically based shading and real-time lighting to the fullest. The game's design required all lighting to be real-time, with no static lightmaps. In Unity 4 the team had faked global illumination with dozens of ambient point lights. With the Unity 5 beta they switched to Enlighten global illumination and replaced their own cubemap reflection system with Unity's reflection probes. Kivistö said Unity 5's deferred rendering path raised the frame rate by about 30% over the older two-pass path, and that the team recommended playing on the Oculus Rift.

Road to VR covered the game in August 2014, describing it as a first-person exploration and adventure game "optimised" for VR headsets. After an August 2015 interview with Kivistö and project lead Olli Sinerma, Road to VR reported plans to launch on Sony's Project Morpheus, the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, with gameplay that would differ slightly between the Oculus and Vive versions once hand controls were added. Kivistö told MCV/Develop that the game would be playable on other headsets such as the Vive and OSVR, and that the team planned to port it to Project Morpheus. Mindfield's press kit says the game was Greenlit on Steam in 36 hours, and that it was nominated for the 2016 SXSW Gamer's Voice Single Player Award and the 2016 Casual Connect Best Game Audio Award.

Release

Mindfield released the game on 19 April 2016, as listed on Steam. At launch the Rift version was a beta, and the studio promised to add HTC Vive and motion controller support later. In March 2016 Mindfield's FAQ said that a PlayStation 4 version and PlayStation VR support would come after launch, with no date announced. At launch, Gamereactor also reported that PS4 and Vive versions were planned for later in 2016. USgamer reviewed the PC version at a price of US$24.99.

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Date	Version or update	Changes
19 April 2016	Launch	Windows release; Oculus Rift support as a VR beta
2 May 2016	1.0.1	Frame rate lock options (30, 60, 144 or unlimited), controller vibration, automatic VR graphics preset, improved VR crosshair targeting
22 December 2016	1.0.3	Tobii EyeX eye tracking support, improved VR color correction and camera positioning
13 April 2017	VR update	Native SteamVR and Oculus support, HTC Vive and Oculus Touch hand controllers, room-scale play, teleport movement, permanent price cut

As of October 2026, the Steam store sells the game for US$9.99. The GOG listing still says that Oculus Rift support is in beta and that HTC Vive is not yet supported.

System requirements

These are the requirements listed on the Steam store as of October 2026. The store notes that the minimum configuration is not suitable for VR.

Component	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system	Windows 7 (64-bit)	Windows 10 (64-bit)
Processor	Intel Core-i3 3.3GHz / AMD Phenom II X4 3.0GHz	Intel Core-i5 3.9GHz / AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz
Memory	4 GB RAM	8 GB RAM
Graphics	Nvidia GTX650 / AMD Radeon HD 7870	Nvidia GTX980 / AMD R9 390X
DirectX	Version 11	Version 11
Storage	8 GB available space	9 GB available space (SSD recommended)

The Steam listing also includes Steam Achievements, captions, and interface and subtitles in eight languages. Full audio is available in English only.

Reception

On Metacritic, the PC version has a Metascore of 64 ("mixed or average") based on 10 critic reviews, and a user score of 4.2 from 19 ratings. OpenCritic lists a Top Critic Average of 69, with 38% of critics recommending it, based on 8 reviews. As of October 2026, Steam rates user reviews as "Mixed", with 62% of 182 reviews positive.

Publication	Score	Notes
Metacritic (aggregate)	64/100	10 critic reviews
OpenCritic (aggregate)	69	Top Critic Average, 8 reviews
USgamer	4.5/5	PC review
GameSpot	5/10	PC review
COGconnected	60/100	Score as listed by OpenCritic
Pixel Dynamo	7.5/10	Score as listed by OpenCritic
GameGrin	7/10	Score as listed by OpenCritic
OnlySP	9.5/10	Score as listed by OpenCritic

Bob Mackey of USgamer played on a monitor. He praised the time-shifting puzzles and the restraint of the storytelling, and noted that the game has no jump scares despite its dark setting. He concluded that "if you have an Oculus Rift, you may find it even easier to fall in love with their well-crafted world". Jason Imms of GameSpot praised the "gorgeous retro-futuristic art direction" and the opening, but criticized the slow delivery of exposition through audio logs and the "bizarre 10-minute cutscene" at the end, which in his view explained little. COGconnected also described a "bizarre finale" that left the plot unresolved. Pixel Dynamo compared the game to Gone Home and recommended it to early Rift owners.

Road to VR did not score its April 2016 preview because VR support was still in beta. Scott Hayden called its retro-future look "positively gripping", compared its method of storytelling to Gone Home, and wrote that its narrative drew on Rendezvous with Rama, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Contact and Moon. He found picking up items sometimes "janky" and said the game offered more than two hours of play.

See also

• Oculus Rift (Platform)
• HTC Vive
• Room-scale VR