World War Toons

World War Toons
Information
VR/AR	Virtual Reality
Developer	Reload Studios (later Studio Roqovan)
Platform	PlayStation 4
Device	PlayStation VR
Type	Game
Genre	Shooter
Game Mode	Multiplayer
Release Date	October 13, 2016 (open beta, North America)
Price	Free
App Store	PlayStation Store (removed 2017)

See also: VR Apps and PSVR Games

World War Toons was a free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter with optional virtual reality support, set in a cartoon version of the Second World War. It was developed by Reload Studios, which later renamed itself Studio Roqovan. The home version never left beta. An open beta for PlayStation 4 with PlayStation VR support went live in North America on 13 October 2016, the day the headset launched, and was among the first free-to-play titles on the platform.

The beta was taken off the PlayStation Store in 2017 and never returned. Studio Roqovan closed in March 2019; its chief executive, James Chung, blamed slow growth of the VR market and his own failure to raise enough money to launch the game properly.

Reviewed 13 October 2026. Checked every claim against the cited UploadVR (2015-2019), PlayStation Blog (2015, 2016), GamesBeat, Mogura VR and Delisted Games articles; title and search checked for duplicates. About review dates.

Gameplay

World War Toons was a team-based online shooter in which Axis and Allied forces fought on cartoon battlefields such as airships, bridges and windmills. Players picked from comic character classes. In a pre-alpha build shown in March 2015, UploadVR counted three: the Soldier with a machine gun, the Heavy with a rocket launcher and the Officer with a pistol, with a sniper class planned. Players could change class by running over a fallen enemy's weapon. The Sniper, armed with an M1 Garand, was added for the PlayStation Experience show in December 2015.

At the press of a button, a player could turn into a small tank for a short time. Other weapons and items described before the beta included a rideable rocket that pinned hit enemies to its front, a homing bomb called the "Grinnade" and radioactive waste that damaged nearby enemies. In the 2015 build, health did not regenerate; players restored it by shooting pigs and chickens, and bullets were slow and visible enough to dodge.

Maps had their own objectives. Dread Zepplin, shown in December 2015, was a king-of-the-hill mode on a flying battleship in which teams held a control point so that a cannon could fire on the other side's ships; the first team to destroy all three enemy ships won. Pyramid Scheme, the fourth map, was set in ancient Egyptian ruins with lasers, lava pits, fireballs and swinging blades; teams tried to carry a "Ra Chicken" back to their base in a first-to-three capture-the-flag format. A March 2017 update added The Great Brawl, a Chinese-themed map set in the wreck of the Axis team's Dread Zepplin blimp, together with new weapons and character skins.

VR design

The studio said the game had been designed for VR "since day one", although the PlayStation 4 version could also be played without a headset. Several features were aimed at reducing VR sickness. The team said that traditional FPS controls using both thumbsticks "would not work" because they caused simulation sickness, and moved to a scheme that used only the left stick for movement in four directions, which still allowed strafing. Through the scope of the sniper rifle, enemy heads appeared cartoonishly enlarged instead of the view zooming in, which the studio said avoided the sickness that fast zooming can cause.

The 2015 build tested on an Oculus Rift DK2 used head tracking to aim, a parachute-like helmet that slowed falls, a grey-out effect in place of a health bar, and an adjustable quick-turn option. Dead players rose as winged ghosts, which showed where the fighting was in the absence of a minimap. The March 2017 update added a prototype control scheme with a teleport option, at first limited to the Basic Training map; UploadVR noted that teleporting was unusual in multiplayer games that also used stick movement.

Development

Reload Studios was founded in 2014 by James Chung and Taehoon Oh, both former Call of Duty developers. The studio's community manager described the team in 2015 as former Call of Duty developers and animators from Disney and Marvel, and said the trailer had "a heavy dose of Looney Tunes". Its animation director, Nik Ranieri, had animated on Disney's Aladdin, Hercules and Pocahontas. According to Mogura VR, the studio raised US$2 million from World Innovation Lab (WiL) in June 2015 and a further US$4 million in October 2015.

UploadVR played a pre-alpha version at SXSW in March 2015. At the time Reload planned a public alpha around E3 and said the game would come to "all major VR platforms"; it was also building a non-VR version. The studio later said the game had been a hit at E3 and showed a new trailer, character, control scheme and level at PlayStation Experience 2015. In September 2016 UploadVR played a demo on an Oculus Rift with an Xbox One controller, and noted that closed beta sign-ups for a PC version were open. A closed PC beta was still running in March 2017, with no date for a full release on either platform.

Release

The PlayStation 4 open beta, free with optional PlayStation VR support, launched on 13 October 2016, the same day as the headset. Chung later said the beta was limited to North America and PS4 because its main purpose was to test gameplay and network issues, and that it saw a "healthy amount of downloads initially". In a farewell message quoted by Delisted Games, the studio said more than 500,000 people had downloaded the game since October 2016.

On 1 August 2017 the studio announced that the beta would be taken down from the PlayStation Store on 7 August 2017, according to Delisted Games; UploadVR and GamesBeat later dated the removal to September 2017. The developer said that "increasing difficulty of having both VR and 2D gameplay interacting together began to compromise what we could make at the timeframe we wanted to keep." Chung said the game was on PlayStation VR for about eight months, and that an improved version was never released publicly because its production stopped over funding problems.

Version	Platform	Date	Notes
Open beta	PlayStation 4, optional PlayStation VR	13 October 2016	Free; North America only
Beta removed	PlayStation Store	7 August 2017 (studio announcement); September 2017 (UploadVR)	Never returned to the store
Closed beta	PC	Ongoing in March 2017	No full release

Arcade version and studio closure

In September 2018 Studio Roqovan announced a partnership with SNK on an arcade game combining World War Toons with characters and features from the Metal Slug series. Codenamed WWT:MSVR, it was planned as a room-scale game for KT VR arcades, with the first mission due in the first quarter of 2019. In March 2019 the studio posted that the game had launched in Korean arcades but that the Metal Slug content had been removed because of issues that "unfortunately could not be resolved". The same post said the original World War Toons had been "put to sleep" and that "Studio Roqovan is no more." Chung told UploadVR that the studio had tried to move into location-based entertainment to get through what he called the "VR winter". The World War Toons IP was to go to a new company.

According to Delisted Games, the new owner of the World War Toons IP was STOIC Entertainment, which released a beta of a later game, World War Toons: Tank Arena VR, for Oculus/Meta devices on 26 July 2022. It is a separate game and is not covered by this article.

Reception

Because World War Toons never had a full release, it has no review aggregate scores. UploadVR's hands-on coverage before the PlayStation VR launch was positive. After the September 2016 demo, David Jagneaux of UploadVR called it "simple, silly, and fun", said he felt no motion sickness, and wrote that it was "a great foundation to work with", while doubting whether players would keep returning to it months later. Will Mason, writing for UploadVR in 2015, found its slower pace comfortable in VR and easy for casual players to pick up.