Pearl, a very sweet daddy-daughter short film, is now a free-to-play VR game

Google Spotlight Stories: Pearl is based exactly on the animated short film Pearl. The film, directed by Patrick Osborne, was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Animated Short 2017 category. The game, developed and published by Google, won an Emmy for Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Storytelling 2017. 

Pearl is a free-to-play VR adventure. You can't do anything in-game except look around. It's simply "interactive" storytelling in that sense. But the story is so affecting that that's just fine. With your HTC Vive or Oculus Rift on, you sit silently in the passenger seat of a dad and daughter's home, their hatchback. They crisscross the country, chasing their musical dreams. The story swims back and forth between love, angst, loss, and life, through rainy days and sunny days, holidays and regular days. In VR, you move your cone of vision from the back seat, to the driver's seat, to looking ahead past the dashboard and through the windshield. 

I don't think I can physically play this one. Not sure what it does to a VR headset's resolution to have tears squeezed out onto the inner screen.

Pearl is out now on PC.