Alientrap's Modbox brings magic to HTC Vive's Room Scale VR

At first, Alientrap's Modbox feels like a room scale Garry's Mod and it made me feel like a god, albeit a mischievous one, as I pull items from the menus located in my hands.

If you want an item to be bigger, you grab it with one hand and give it a tug. Bored of an item? Toss it over your shoulder, no problems.

My first experiments were simple. I juggled a basketball for a few seconds, marvelling, as ever at how hard it is to throw and catch items without any of their real-world heft. After this I fixed a basketball hoop to a chunk of wood and fixed it into thin-air.

It feels like Google's TiltBrush but with more freedom - soon I'm hitting a punchbag with a baseball bat and tossing throwing stars through the air and letting them thunk satisfyingly into a wooden fence I'd built.

Once I got bored I was free to teleport away with nothing more than pushing a button and sweeping my arm.

That's when I discovered how detailed the construction here really is. There's a variety of joints and hinges to attach items together and damaging metal objects requires you to virtually take a baseball bat to them, the baseball bat locking into your hands if you grip it by the handle.

I built a small house and then filled it out with golf balls, a trampoline and a ton of force-fields which are invisible but stop physics objects, letting me create a fun viewing window as golf balls fire all over the place.

Modbox is an interesting experiment, but at the moment that’s all it really feels like. You throw things around, literally, and see what sticks.

The tools you’ve got to dick around with do give you plenty of options, but it’ll be intriguing to see what sort of extended experience Alientrap can build around them.

For now though, it's great fun, and definitely something I'd recommend to the scant few of you out there with access to a Vive.