Ragnarock from France-based WanadevStudio combines a rocking Viking-metal song library with clever game mechanics for an incredible take on the rhythm genre in VR.
The game debuted on Steam early access late last year and carries more than 1,000 reviews and an “overwhelmingly positive” rating, yet, despite the positive feedback, it drifted right under our radar. It caught our attention earlier this month as the devs saw fit to graduate the title from Steam Early Access on July 15 and move on to Quest’s App Lab with confidence they’ll have an Oculus Quest release date soon. We’ll need to spend more time with Ragnarock, and specifically progress to its harder difficulties before rendering a review verdict, but we’ve played enough to wake up to this gem and let our readers know this is a rhythm title to watch.
The idea is you’re on a Viking ship and you’re pounding on four drums in front of you with two to the side that activate your boost. When you’re doing really good you can drive your team to row faster. There’s a ship full of Vikings seated in front you and watching your performance, and they’re depending on you to drive their rhythm faster. When you kick butt they even chant back at you some encouragement. The effect is perfect — you feel like you’re really encouraging them and they’re encouraging you. And because you’re anchored by this sense of a boat underneath your feet, gliding straight across the water, you feel safe. It’s an ingenious approach to avoiding simulator sickness that offers locomotion through a world while thematically attaching it to a reason for being in that world.
The environments are drawn from nordic mythology and the devs plan to add more over time. It’s some really clever thinking to find this great mesh between different things being done in rhythm games. At one end of the rhythm game spectrum you’ve got Pistol Whip, where you’re drawn down a straight line and the developers change the environments around you to tell a story as you move through the world. On the other end of the spectrum you’ve got what Beat Saber is doing where you’re completely stationary, you don’t actually move, and you’ve got things moving past you. There’s of course variations on all this because there’s just so many rhythm games, but Ragnarock’s approach is the most satisfying I’ve played since 2019’s release of Pistol Whip.
Part of that is likely due to my sheltered American English-only ears finding an unexpected sense of joy rocking out with this largely incomprehensible song library, including songs from groups I’ve never heard of like Paddy and the Rats, Sons Of O’Flaherty, GloryHammer, and Alestorm. I know nothing, Jon Snow, but it rocks nonetheless. I went through three or so songs on easy and then, by the fourth, I enjoyed it enough to try it again and fight for a silver medal. On the second ride through there was another ship beside me — the ghost of my last performance gliding alongside and trying to out-drum me. Ragnarock layers on cross-platform multiplayer this same way, lining up ships to your flanks. You know that scene in Mad Max: Fury Road where the cars are coming out after the good guys and they start drumming and rocking on the front of this war vehicle? That’s this whole game — every song is you feeling like you’re out there getting your crew to go faster and it’s just brilliant.
One thing I’ll note is because of the mechanics of drumming, Ragnarock has a slightly different way of driving your body’s movements as compared with some other rhythm games. You may want to do lunges, for example, while keeping your arms in the same position to hit two notes in sync on either side of you. So this may strain certain muscle groups more frequently and repetitively compared with widely varying slices in a game like Beat Saber. An FAQ for the game says there’s beta support for “custom songs” on both PC and Quest.
Ragnarock is on App Lab on Oculus Quest and it is out of early access on Steam. We’ll keep drumming away at this one and try to come back with a full review as soon as we’ve attacked some higher difficulties and played with more of the options.
Moss: Book II, a direct sequel to the lauded original, was finally announced earlier this month. And it hopes to answer what was perhaps the original game’s biggest problem: it was too short! In an interview with the game’s Design Director, Josh Stiksma, we learned that, this time around, the second ‘book’ in the series is set to be thicker indeed.
Polyarc’s Josh Stiksma spoke recently to Road to VR about the anticipated Moss: Book II, which doesn’t have a confirmed release date but is due to launch first on PSVR (likely coming to other platforms in the future).
If it wasn’t clear already, Book II will pick up right where the original game left off. And just like the original—which had a giant snake as the primary antagonist—Book II will be centered around another animal foe, this time of the avian variety.
And while Stiksma says that the gameplay will be more of an evolution than a revolution, he confirmed that the game has been in development for two years already, and expects it will have a suitably larger scope than the original.
There’s a few reasons why: for one, the game has a larger dedicated team. The original game, Stiksma said, was developed when the studio was just 15 people total; a handful of them were only part-time on Moss, and some weren’t working directly on the game (like HR, finance, and marketing). Polyarc has since grown to 32 people, and this time around there’s 15 people working full-time directly on Moss: Book II, he said.
Beyond having more hands on deck, Stiksma also explained that there’s significant gains in efficiency when working on a sequel compared to a brand new game. Much of the creative overhead—like art direction, level design, character design, tooling and much more—has already been ‘figured out’, which makes it quicker to build on top of that work compared to creating an entirely new world, characters, and gameplay.
Image courtesy Polyarc
But Moss: Book II won’t just be more of the same, Stiksma said. While the core gameplay remains in tact, the game will add some new interactions and a sort of progression that will deepen the game’s mechanics.
Players familiar with the original game will recall that while they control the main character, Quill, from a third-person view, they themselves are present in the world as well. The game requires that players actually reach out and interact with certain parts of the world to open new pathways and help Quill in other ways.
Stiksma gave an example of one new interactions in Book II, in which players will connect magical vine bridges from point to point to help Quill navigate the environment.
Image courtesy Polyarc
And then there’s what Stiksma called “progression,” which takes the form of new weapons that Quill will find throughout her journey, opening the door to new attacks and abilities.
In the Moss: Book IItrailer we can see Quill discover a large hammer, and see the player touch her sword to power it up for a dash attack that crosses platforms. It isn’t clear yet if the player will get to swap weapons freely or if each section of the game will be built around one specific weapon.
Image courtesy Polyarc
Stiksma wouldn’t go as far as saying whether Moss: Book II will launch in 2021—though the announce timing seems about right for a holiday release—but he did confirm that it will launch first on PSVR. The studio could try to time the game’s release date with the launch of PSVR 2, though it also doesn’t have a specific release date (but is expected in 2022).
Like the original Moss, it’s unlikely that the sequel will stay exclusive to PSVR indefinitely. Stiksma stressed how important porting the game to other VR platforms has been to Mossreaching the platinum sales milestone, and we expect the studio will want to follow a similar timed-exclusive path for Book II.
VR Education, the virtual reality software firm behind ENGAGE, has reported a significant uptick in revenue generated by the social VR platform so far this year, with revenue from Engage in 2021 nearly doubling over the same period last year.
The Waterford, Ireland-based company has created a number of bespoke educational experiences over the years alongside its most successful product, Engage, which targets companies using it for things like virtual training, simulation, education, and online events.
Publicly traded companies working on VR are typically very large and diversified to the point where picking apart financials doesn’t always provide meaningful data. An overwhelming majority of companies working in the industry are however privately held, and therefore not obligated to specify their wins (or losses).
But VR Education is a fairly unique case in the industry. As a small to medium-sized company publicly listed on both on Euronext Dublin and London Stock Exchange, it’s not only obligated to give stock holders a peek into the financials, but it also conveniently serves as a strong watermark to see just how things are moving in VR.
In the most recent stock holder update detailing the first half of 2021, the company says Engage nearly doubled its revenue over the same period last year, with unaudited revenue in H1 2021 expect to come in somewhere around €1.25 million (~$1.5 million), an increase of 84% over an H1 2020 revenue of €680,000 (~$800,000). In H1 2021, Engage accounted for 72% of its overall revenue stream, an increase of 39% over the year prior.
To put that into perspective, in 2020 the company reported an annual total revenue across all products at €1.42 million (~$1.68 million). With a global pandemic bottlenecking most in-person business though online communication platforms, it seems VR Education has managed to capitalize.
And the company seems to have a fair bit of runway ahead of it too. In June the company announced it had raised €9 million (~$10.7 million) which will help it launch its Oasis metaverse platform—said to be a “fully featured corporate metaverse” where companies can meet and sell products and services directly to each other.
VR Education now counts more than 100 commercial customers using its Engage platform, including recent additions Abbott Laboratories, KPMG, MongoDB, and the US State Department. HTC, a strategic partner and shareholder of VR Education, has also started selling its ENGAGE-based product, VIVE Sessions, in China via its Vive XR Suite software bundle.
Engage is available across a host of VR devices including SteamVR headsets, Oculus Quest, Vive Focus Plus, and Pico headsets. It also supports mobile devices running iOS and Android, and traditional PC monitors.
Arcsmith’s puzzles are tricky and troubling, but it roots you in its world in fascinating ways. More in our Arcsmith review.
Don’t tell the kids at the back but Arcsmith is actually a sneaky piece of edutainment. Its bitty puzzles have the air of a shop class, and wrapping your head around voltage and heat output as you fashion crude bits of future gear restores a long-forgotten (for me at least) sensation of actually learning something.
But, for the learning-adverse (again, myself included), don’t let the math deter you; Arcsmith is more than the sum of its parts.
If you know developer Bithell Games well then you probably know what to expect here. Namely, there’s a deep emphasis on character-led story that’s fed to you between levels. In fact, the game’s approach to narrative is specifically tailored to VR. You play as a young Arcsmith — essentially a fancy future term for engineer — that’s placed aboard an isolated space station orbiting a planet. Joining you is Korith Dinn, a seasoned and galaxy-weary Arcsmith that reluctantly takes you under his wing as you’re sent circuitry jobs that range from fixing radios to heating terrariums.
Arcsmith Review –The Facts
What is it?: A VR puzzle game in which you make machinery by piecing together parts, set to the backdrop of a sci-fi story. Platforms: Quest Release Date:Out now Price: $24.99
First and foremost, then, the game’s an exercise in character connection. Korith’s initially cold front soon thaws as he starts to reckon with his past and opens up. He’s a lovable guy — think Sully from Monsters Inc. without the fur — and Bithell Games touches on most of the right notes with him. There’s a lot of arresting eye contact that genuinely makes you feel like you’re in the presence of another living, breathing being, and there are moments when Korith stands over you that can feel like you’re having a real, if one-sided conversation.
Ultimately, though, the script is a little too heavy on exposition (Korith has a lot to say about his past) to earn some of the emotional beats it’s gunning for, and there isn’t much range in expression as we’ve seen in other character interactions in VR. The lack of 3D audio in the game also really hurts, as Korith can stand to one side and it sounds like he’s talking from another part of the room entirely. It’s a distracting oversight.
Puzzles, meanwhile, are more of a mixed bag. It’s essentially Lego with voltage; every level features a handful of key parts that will require a certain amount of power and heat, and you can order power generators, radiators and a range of other parts to manage it all. Eventually, you’ll get new parts the provide power in different ways and varying requirements, like using light to power a device with solar energy, dealing with power fluctuations, or building kit within certain boundaries.
Getting a grip on the inner workings of the circuity and keeping it is tough. You’ll quickly find yourself overstuffing a device with heat and power and then watching bits fly off as you power it on to test it. This can be frustrating – the game doesn’t have a means of letting you power on the device and keep it running without disaster striking a few seconds later. On the one hand, it’s a fun representation of the taxing trial and error the job includes but, on the other, you long to just sit back and take the time you need to figure things out.
I’d often find myself making ham-fisted, bloated machines without much understanding of how to streamline the process. The puzzles are at their best when you can walk it back and talk through adding in each individual part and the consequences of doing so. Arcsmith is incredibly rewarding in these moments, but they don’t come without the sensation of being overwhelmed first.
Perhaps Arcsmith’s best qualities, though, are in its more passive aspects. The fiddly puzzles and sense of place come together to conjure a genuinely convincing scene that made me nostalgic for a job I’ve never even had. Toiling away at circuits while the radio blares its (pretty sensational) soundtrack in the background, and catching glances from Korith as he did the same over the other side of the room has a strange authenticity to it. Moreover, the incoming news updates about impending intergalactic war draws striking parallels with the helplessness we all feel listening in on bulletins in today’s news climate. The difference and winning element in Arcsmith’s narrative, though, is the message that you do have the power to fight back in your own way.
Arcsmith Review – Final Impressions
Arcsmith is about a lot of things: the joys of tinkering with gadgetry, the power of character connection in VR and finding strength in darkness. It wrestles with these elements with mixed results. Puzzles have a trial and error charm but can be overwhelming and finicky, while the game’s dialogue leans too heavily on exposition over emotion. But it is a genuinely admirable attempt to build something specific to the platform – a game that puts immersion at the heart of both its storytelling and mechanics and the result is a rare, convincing sense of place. It’s good to know that, in an era of explosive VR action and rhythm games, we haven’t lost sight of that.
For more on how we arrived at this score, read our review guidelines. What did you make of our Arcsmith review? Let us know in the comments below!
Drums Rock combines VR drumming, heavy rock music and demon-destroying action on Oculus Quest in late 2021.
As anyone with a VR headset will know, there’s no shortage of rhythm games available on the platform. However, recently we’ve seen a particular uptick in drumming rhythm games such as Smash! Drums and Ragnarock, to which Drums Rock will be the latest addition.
Drums Rock’s premise looks to be similar at its core to other physical rhythm drum games — each piece of the drum kit is assigned a color, which you have to hit at the right time similar to Guitar Hero or Rock Band. However, there’s a VR twist: the indicators that tell you when to hit each drum piece come in the form of flying demons.
That’s right, this hell-themed rock game is sending colored demons flying towards you and you’re only option to defeat them it to hit the matching-colored drum at the right time.
Developers Garage 51 say they wanted to create a rhythm game inspired by classic rock music, combining it with elements of horde mode gameplay. It will feature an original rock soundtrack, unlockable songs and cosmetics, and both a campaign and challenge mode.
There’s no word on whether Drums Rock will release on the Oculus Store or App Lab for Quest, or whether it might also make its way to PC VR or PSVR platforms either. Expect to hear more in a few month’s time.
Arcsmith, the new VR puzzler from Thomas Was Alone developer Bithell Games, is now available on Oculus Quest.
The game was announced a month ago, and will blend storytelling and puzzles together in a sci-fi setting. You’ll be solving engineering puzzles that involve assembling machines, like radio and drones, and connecting their circuitry.
To celebrate the release, the Oculus blog posted an interview with Game Director Nic Tringali talking about the development process and the goals the studio had in mind for the game. From the sound of it, the puzzles in Arcsmith won’t just have one solution. “Our starting point was wanting to do this kind of open-ended puzzle game, where the game gives you a goal but how you solve it is up to you.”
Tringali went on to cite Kerbal Space Program and Opus Magnum as big influences for the style of puzzles in Arcsmith, but said that “aesthetically it’s a blend of classic sci-fi films” and the cartoon-y look of the Disney cult classic animated film Treasure Planet.
In terms of storytelling, a lot of effort was put into the environments and animation as a form of immersive storytelling. “From the animation side as well, VR is much closer to sitting in a theater than watching something on a screen, so the animation had a lot of considerations around the player’s location and sight lines, which is a lot different from placing a camera in an environment.”
nDreams, the studio behind Phantom: Covert Ops (2020) and the upcoming PSVR exclusive Fracked, announced today it’s opening a second VR development studio called nDreams Studio Orbital, which will focus on creating games as a service for VR.
nDreams Studio Orbital will be headed by Chris White, who previously worked as a senior product manager at FitXR, the team behind the eponymous subscription-based VR fitness app. White has also worked in senior positions at Space Ape Games, Glu Mobile, and Electronic Arts.
The Farnborough, UK-based nDreams says its new studio will be fully remote, and will allow the company to develop “a more diverse portfolio of games across a range of ways to play.”
nDreams hasn’t tipped its hand yet, however one of the most successful genres in VR right now is fitness titles featuring either annual or monthly subscriptions, which typically target the Oculus Quest platform.
Founded in 2006, nDreams first transitioned to its role as VR developer with the release of a demo called SkyDIEving for the Oculus Rift development kits back in 2013. The studio has since released a host of VR titles targeting all major platforms including Bloody Zombies, Shooty Fruity, The Assembly, and meditation app Perfect.
Earlier this year, nDreams also became a third-party publisher with the release of a $2 million fund earmarked for VR developers looking for funding and industry guidance. The studio has also worked with Ubisoft and out-of-home entertainment company Zero Latency VR to create a free-roam virtual reality experience based on the Far Cry franchise.
nDreams says it’s actively recruiting for several key roles for the new studio, which can be found on the nDreams website.
Good news! There’s a slightly better chance you can now play Microsoft Flight Simulator in VR with your current PC specs.
Asobo’s celebrated sim this week got an update with a ton of optimizations on PC, made possible thanks to the just-released Xbox port of the game. When it was first announced the team confirmed that the patch would also enable benefits for PC VR users. When we first tried Flight Sim in VR in late 2020, the game was very messy for us running on an RTX 2060 Super and a Ryzen 9 3900x 12-core processor with default specs, and very jittery still with all graphics settings brought way down. You can watch that performance here.
Running the same specs after this week’s update resulted in a smoother experience, but still not perfect by any means. Jitter was no longer consistent and, flying over the New York skyline, there were was a lot of time spent enjoying the (admittedly blurry) scene hassle-free. But moving my head or turning the plane would still result in fairly regular hiccups – momentary screen freezes and judder as well as some strange image warping around the windows.
I’m not to most tech-savvy of PC users but I have the right kit for the game’s minimum specs, especially at the lowest levels they’re turned to. To me, it still felt like this was a few steps behind where this support needs to be to make Flight Simulator and easy recommendation for PC VR users with moderate gaming rigs.
But going beyond even that, I’m still waiting for Flight Sim to become a more seamless VR experience. It’s still a lot of hassle moving between your mouse and either a flight stick or controller with the headset on and the lack of native VR controller support makes navigating menus a real pain, not to mention it’s missing a deeper level of immersion without them. The game, as a whole, is still practically pristine and an incredible technical accomplishment, but I’m hoping Asobo is in it for the long haul when it comes to improving VR support.
Fracked and Phantom: Covert Ops developer nDreams is opening a second VR studio dedicated to making “live games for VR.”
The new studio, named nDreams Orbital, is set to operate remotely (the original nDreams team is based in Farnborough, UK), and will be lead by Chris White. White previously worked on games like The Sims Social at EA and most recently joined VR fitness company, FitXR.
All of nDreams’ VR games to date have been single-player adventures of some sort, be it the upcoming PSVR exclusive FPS, Fracked, or even older titles like The Assembly. Live games will be a new avenue for the company, suggesting it’s looking at titles that consistently offer new and fresh content, be it different kinds of in-game events or cosmetic items.
In a prepared statement, White noted that VR still has “so much to discover, especially around experiences that engage players for years.” No other details about Orbital’s first project have been released at this time.
It’s been a busy year for nDreams overall. Alongside next month’s launch of Fracked (which is our current Upload Access spotlight game), the team announced a return to VR publishing with a $2 million fund in February and launched a learning and development initiative named nDreams Academy in April.
Don’t expect to see this new title for a little bit, then, but nDreams is hiring for the studio right now.
By now it can be said that Varjo is making the world’s most high-end VR headsets, and not just because they’re slapping on a hefty price-tag. With a core premise of ‘retina resolution’ that really delivers, Varjo’s headsets keep getting better even as they’re getting cheaper. Their visual performance offers an early glimpse of what mainstream VR headsets are unlikely to deliver for years to come.
We’ve been following Varjo since even before the launch of their first VR headset. Every time we’ve glimpsed a new headset from the company, there’s been clear progress in their mission to deliver the sharpest visuals of any VR headset. Varjo’s latest headset, the XR-3, is no exception.
During a meeting with the company in Silicon Valley I got fairly extensive hands-on time with the XR-3, both with its VR and AR capabilities. Despite being its least expensive headset yet, it’s also clearly the company’s best so far.
Photo by Road to VR
Cheaper but Not Cheap
Granted, the company’s headsets are far from anything you’d call affordable. At a whopping $5,500 (+$1,500 annually), XR-3 is the high-end of the high-end. But it’s a steal compared to the prior Varjo XR headset which cost $10,000 (+$1,000 annually). Meanwhile, the VR-3 (the model without advanced passthrough or inside-out tracking) has come down to just $3,200 (+$800 annually).
A Better Bionic Display
All of Varjo’s headsets make use of what they call the ‘bionic display’ system which makes use of a large ‘context display’ for a wide field-of-view, with an overlapping ‘focus display’ for true retina resolution (60+ PPD) at the center of the view. That’s two displays for each eye.
Image courtesy Varjo
The company’s earliest prototypes proved that the company’s unique display system really could deliver retina resolution at the center of the image, but it came with a handful of caveats. I used to have to make mockups (like this) to make it clear to people that only the very center of the display was retina quality and that the boundary between the focus display and the context display was quite apparent.
Varjo’s headsets have gotten better about this over the years, and on the XR-3, the boundary between the focus display and the context display is nearly invisible. This is thanks not only to better blending between the displays, but also because the lower fidelity context display (which provides the wide field-of-view) itself has been boosted in resolution significantly over previous models. Even if the XR-3 didn’t have a focus display for retina resolution at the center of the image, the resolution of the context display alone (2,880 × 2,720) exceeds something like the Vive Pro 2 (2,448 × 2,448).
It’s thanks to this boost in resolution that moving your eyes away from the focus display no longer brings an obvious reduction in quality. This makes it feel much more natural to look around with your eyes in XR-3, whereas on earlier headsets it could feel like you had to train yourself not to let your eyes wander from the center of the field-of-view. This pairs nicely with an expanded overall field-of-view compared to the prior version of the headset, which jumps from 87° to 115°, according to Varjo.
In practice, donning the headset reveals a higher fidelity view than I’ve seen in any other VR headset to date. The center of the field-of-view is truly ‘retina resolution’—the screen-door effect is non-existent and there’s not a hint that the center of the image is even made of pixels.
Photo by Road to VR
While the fidelity of the image is truly world class, there is one notable issue that kept me from being lost in it entirely. On XR-3 I noticed a surprising amount of pupil swim, which makes the image look wobbly as you move your head around, especially when you lock your eyes onto an object in the scene and continue to move your head. The effect was bad enough that I expect it will cause discomfort to some users who are very sensitive to motion sickness.
I don’t know the exact cause of the pupil swim on XR-3. It could be inherent in the lenses, or it could be a calibration issue. And while I didn’t have the company’s other headsets to go side-by-side with, I don’t recall noticing it so clearly on prior models. Hopefully it’s something that can be fixed.
You can pair Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck handheld console with an Oculus Quest, Gabe Newell has confirmed.
The Valve co-founder and owner spoke about Steam Deck in an interview to IGN this week, re-iterating that the device is essentially a portable, handheld PC and therefore Valve won’t stop you from trying to connect anything to it, including an Oculus Quest.
As we covered when the device was announced this month, Valve’s open PC handheld Steam Deck has all the connectivity for VR but not the performance. Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais said as much already, but now we’ve heard it from Newell himself with specific mention to the Quest.
Newell responded to a question about being able to install and use other software and stores besides Steam on the device, such as using the Microsoft Store to play Game Pass games on the handheld device. Here’s a full transcript of Newell’s response, in which he mentions the Oculus Quest (to watch the full question and response, head to the 8:40 mark in the video embedded above):
Newell: Our view is that the openness of the PC ecosystem is the superpower that we all collectively benefit from. So if you want to install the Epic Games Store on here, if you want to run an Oculus Quest on it… Those are all great. Those are features, right? That’s what I want to hear as a gamer. I don’t want to hear that somebody’s got some Trojan horse that’s going to try to lock me down. I want to hear… whatever I want to do, if there’s hardware I want to attach to it, if there’s software I want to install… I can just go and do it. We think that’s great.
It’s important to note that Newell is essentially saying that anyone who wants to connect a Quest to a Steam Deck will be able to give it their best shot — Valve won’t stop you from doing so — but that doesn’t guarantee great performance.
So you could join your Quest to your Steam Deck, either through USB or AirLink and have a portable PC VR experience. But, while Steam Deck is likely a more powerful machine than Quest itself, it likely still won’t be able to run high-end VR titles like Half-Life: Alyx or Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond. We’ll have to wait for the kit’s release later this year to find out just how capable it is in this area, though.
S&box is an in-development sandbox game designed as a sequel to the legendary Garry’s Mod (2006), a game that turned Valve’s Source Engine into a multiplayer playground and content creation tool which has spawned games, memes, and machinima. In a recent s&box development update, the studio says it has validated VR rendering for the game as a “first step” toward full support.
Released way back in 2006, Garry’s Mod is still a massively popular multiplayer sandbox game that allows players to create and share content built with a combination of in-game tools and modding extensibility. Conceptually it’s similar to something like Roblox or Rec Room, where players have significant flexibility in building their own universe of fun things to do together. The game still finds itself regularly among the 100 most popular games on Steam.
The Garry’s Mod development studio, Facepunch, is also behind a little-known game called Rust (2018), which has become a phenomenon in its own right.
Creator Garry Newman has been pondering a sequel to Garry’s Mod since at least as far back as 2015. And while development has been on-and-off over the years, things have picked up considerably since 2020, with Newman and other developers at the studio posting detailed updates on the game’s development, now called s&box. The Facepunch team says its goal is to “create a worthy Garry’s Mod sequel.”
“I fixed VR rendering, since starting the project we had worked a lot on improving some rendering flexibilities for Source 2 and adapting it to work for what we want but never validated for VR until now. Getting VR in a good state has always been a concern for us and I’m glad now that I’ve tackled the initial work to have it supported,” he wrote.
Pavlovic admits that proper rendering for VR is only the first step in truly adding ‘VR support’ to the game. For now that means it’s pretty much a ‘see-only’ experience, but going forward he notes that the work “opens the door for us to experiment with [VR] and build something that everyone could enjoy and build upon.”
What are the best PSVR games you can play today? Find out in our full list!
Sony’s PSVR headset has proven to be something of a white knight for VR in the industry’s early years. Despite being technically inferior to the Oculus Rift S, Valve Index and even older headsets like the HTC Vive on almost every level, Sony leveraged 20+ years of industry experience to create an awesome line-up for its PS4-based headset. In 2021, PSVR is home to many of VR’s best games and is one of the most accessible mainstream headsets available.
It’s important to get a list of the best PSVR games right, then. There’s plenty of obvious choices, but PSVR also houses many hidden gems from indie developers. We wanted to make a list that reflected that. You’ll be able to get all of these titles from the PlayStation Store on PS4, but also don’t forget you’ll be able to use PSVR with the PS5 as well as long as you have the camera adapter. Watch our breakdown of loading time comparisons here.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for our other best VR game lists, make sure to check these out:
Years on from its release and we still find ourselves staring out of the window, mentally picking away at Statik’s mysterious story. This is easily one of PSVR’s most inventive games, imagining the player’s DualShock 4 as a pair of puzzle-laden handcuffs. You need to experiment with what the various levers and buttons of each contraption do and then gradually solve your way out of your current predicament.
But it speaks legions about Statik that its fantastic puzzle design is outdone by the game’s sheer oddness. Supervised by the curious and world-weary Dr. Ingen, you’re left to piece together his seemingly random mumblings and musings into a cohesive narrative. It’s still got people picking it apart today, so much so that we’d love another game to help us fill in a few more blanks. Are you listening, Tarsier?
Looking for a rock-solid shooter campaign that makes great use of PSVR’s Aim controller? Sniper Elite VR more than has you covered. A lengthy 5+ hour campaign awaits here that mixes many of the series staples: cohesive and enjoyable stealth, thrilling all-out fire fights and, of course, some of the best sniping you’ll find in games.
You can play with Move or DualShock 4 but the Aim really brings the game’s close-range action to life. Here’s hoping Rebellion has a sequel on the cards for the future, because Sniper Elite VR is comfortably one of the best PSVR games.
There’s definitely an argument to be made for keeping VR games from getting too violent but Gorn basically rips any such debate’s jaw off and then beats it to death with its own arms. Before we step into the murky ground of ‘realism’, Free Lives has jumped all the way over to the other side of the canyon and spilled a frankly hilarious amount of blood in the process. Gorn is all about being the last man standing in a gladiator arena, and the game has little in the way of rules to stop you from doing that.
Want to pull a guy’s head off? Bash him in with a rock? Swing a mace into a face and knock some eyeballs out? Gorn lets you do all that and it feels wonderful. Not because we have psychotic tendencies but because it’s all so stupidly over the top that you can’t help but laugh. Beyond the stupidity, though, there is actually a great structure in place here that will keep you coming back to unlock new content and make battles surprisingly tense affairs, too. It’s as stupid as it gets but Gorn’s a game you should take seriously.
Firesprite’s VR debut is a tantalizing horror treat. It uses procedural generation to create a spaceship riddled with horrific enemies then asks you not sneak past them or, failing that, bring them down. Think Dead Space in VR. If the very thought of that doesn’t send you running for the hills then this could be for you.
The game’s randomized element helps provide a fresh experience time and time again. Plus, compatibility with traditional game controllers over VR motion controllers does give The Persistence a mechanical, refined edge compared to a lot of its contemporaries. If you’re looking for a genuinely deep, calculated VR game, this is worth enduring the scares for.
Puzzle masters Fireproof Games knock it out of the park again with a typically excellent rendition of The Room series, this time for VR headsets. This short, sweet adventure is set in The British Institute of Archaeology, where you’ll solve challenging puzzles in search of a missing archaeologist.
What makes The Room VR work is its commitment to the platform it’s appearing on. This isn’t just a bunch of puzzles that would work on a traditional screen; each and every one has been thoughtfully designed with VR at their core. Not a single mechanic feels over-used and there’s constant invention happening right before your eyes. That makes it easily one of the best PSVR games, especially if you’re into puzzles.
Virtual paintball in your living room. That’s the pitch behind a lot of VR shooters these days, but none of them realize it quite as well as Firewall: Zero Hour. It has a few hiccups, but First Contact’s multiplayer shooter is one of the purest expressions of leaving your own body and stepping into the role of someone else entirely that you’ll find in VR. This is the intense S.W.A.T. simulator you’ve always dreamed of experiencing.
It’s PSVR’s excellent Aim controller that makes Firewall a real standout. The unmatched sensation of holding an assault rifle in your hand makes you feel incredibly powerful and draws you back in time and again to recapture the rush. Plus multiple seasons of new content have added more maps and perks to the game even years down the line from release. It might not have seen some of the more significant quality of life improvements we were hoping for, but Firewall is still one of the best games you can currently get on PSVR.
You might consider this one cheating but, given that you can access the entire Hitman trilogy inside Hitman 3 if you own the first two games, we think this one’s fair game. IO Interactive did a tremendous job fitting the past few years of Hitman titles into VR and implementing at least some form of motion controls with DualShock 4 tracking. Hitman takes on new life in VR, becoming a much more personal and physical affair, and the series’ stealth elements really shine when inside a headset.
No, the transition isn’t entirely smooth; the motion controls can be tricky and we long for proper Move integration, but you simply can’t ignore the sheer breadth and quality of content on offer here. Fingers crossed this is just the start of IO’s VR journey, as the Hitman trilogy really makes for one of the best PSVR games to date.
As great as VR is, its initial novelty is bound to wear off after your first few weeks or so. If you want to recapture the magic of putting on the headset for the first time, there’s one destination that’s bound to deliver: A Fisherman’s Tale. This is a mind-bending puzzle game unlike anything you’ll see elsewhere. That alone makes it one of the best PSVR games.
In A Fisherman’s Tale, you solve intricate, scale-based puzzles in which you work… with yourself. Its best puzzles utilize a miniature model of the lighthouse the game’s set in. Lift the roof of the model and you’ll see a mini-you, imitating your every move. Just try and keep your brain from breaking as you hand yourself giant objects, or reach down to poke your own head. It’s a trip to say the least. Throw in a poignant story about self-acceptance and you have a short, sharp VR game that will stay with you much longer than most multi-hour epics.
It may be the wonderful rifle-shaped Aim controller that elevates Farpoint from a relatively simplistic first-person shooter to a wholly immersive experience, but that experience is powerful enough to earn it a place on this list. In Farpoint you crash land on an alien planet and must find a way home, shooting your way through hordes of spider enemies as you go.
Yes, spider enemies. It’s a little Starship Troopers, but there’s a genuine thrill to the Colonial Marines-style panic-fire battles. Surprisingly, though, there’s a hugely engaging story at the center of Farpoint that manages to strike a chord despite focusing on characters other than the player’s speechless shell. This was a promising start for developer Impulse Gear, but we’re hoping to see more from them in the future.
A stylish and effortlessly-cool VR rougelike that has you tackling runs of a randomized dungeon and starting fresh every time you die. A fast-moving progression system keeps the game rewarding and addictive, while the lively arcade action is easy to pick up and difficult to master. If you’re looking for a VR game you’ll revisit time and time again, look no further than Until You Fall. It’s one of the best PSVR games.
Moss is one of a handful of 2018 games that proved that third-person VR experiences don’t just work but can make for some of the absolute best content out on the platform right now. You guide an adorable little mouse named Quill through diorama-sized levels, solving puzzles and taking on fearsome critters in sword-based combat.
While it’s mechanically refined, the game’s real claim to fame is the bond you build with Quill over the course of the adventure. Playing as a larger companion to the tiny protagonist, you really start to connect with her as you work together to overcome obstacles. It feels very much like a team effort, which is quite a remarkable feeling in itself. Bring on Book 2.
Tony Stark finally took flight in VR in 2020 and the wait was worth it. This PSVR exclusive offers a full campaign with surprisingly deep combat, an interesting story and plenty of cinematic moments designed specifically with VR in mind. True, there were technical problems, but the pros were pro enough to outweigh the cons.
Published by Sony itself and developed by Republique studio Camouflaj, Iron Man VR literally managed to circumvent PSVR’s tracking limitations with clever techniques that allowed players to spin around on the spot and shoot or fly in any direction. Combined with the considered combat mechanics, you have something that balanced the pure joy of being Iron Man with the kind of demanding gameplay we’d expect from traditional games. This is easily one of the best PSVR games from 2020 – bravo.
Upon first glance, Ghost Giant appears to be a charming little puzzler that makes the most of its diorama-sized worlds. And that’s very much the case; in this adorable papercraft world you help your young companion out with different chores and tasks. That includes tickling clams and making intentive art in wonderfully tranquil locations. It’s whimsy, delightful and amazing in VR. But that’s only half the story.
Ghost Giant also hides a thoughtful take on depression, smartly communicated through this new medium. The game uses intimacy, scale and connection in engaging ways that bring you closer to the world and characters around you. It’s surprising and responsible, delivering some incredibly powerful moments. All told, it’s one of the most striking and unforgettable examples of VR storytelling yet seen and one of the best PSVR games.
Who would have guessed that, with everything developers could do, the closest VR has yet gotten to a ‘killer app’ is a rhythm action game with knock-off lightsabers? It seems ridiculous but just one go on Beat Saber and you’ll understand why it’s such a hit; it’s an utterly entrancing experience that makes you feel like a groovy Jedi master. That’s all you need VR to be.
You slash notes that arrive on time with a beat. It sounds simple but, in practice, there are few things more satisfying to do in VR. It won’t be long until you’re throwing your motion controllers around like a ninja. Plus you’ll be working up a sweat and instinctively dancing to the given track. Many people will tell you Beat Saber is one of the best PSVR games, and they’re absolutely right.
No Man’s Sky promised to bring its entire universe of billions of procedurally generated planets connected by unending oceans of space that can be explored by yourself or with friends all into VR. It’s had a few technical hiccups, but you can’t deny it delivered on that hugely ambitious premise. You can lose endless hours here journeying to the top of mountains, scouting below the oceans and duking it out in spaceship battles.
Better yet, Hello Games put incredible effort into this VR update, making it feel native to the game instead of tacked on. Still, remember this is No Man’s Sky; there are plenty of beautiful sights and sounds, but also a fairly punishing survival loop and resource-gathering grind to fight back against. If that sounds up your street, No Man’s Sky will probably be one of your most beloved VR games. The console version is slightly toned down from the PC release, but it’s still one of the best PSVR games.
Dreams is a tricky one to rank in a list like this. Depending on what you want to do with Media Molecule’s game creation platform (which is essentially its own development engine at this point), you’ll have different experiences. We wish the tutorial content was more VR-native, and there’s a lot of shovelware to sift through, just like in the main game. But these caveats are well worth getting past.
At the core of Dreams is a set of genuinely accessible and incredible tools that empower a vibrant community to make incredible creations. Whether it’s fun tributes to beloved franchises or the handful of fantastic original ideas, Dreams proves itself to be a powerful, if messy VR playground.
The London Heist minigame in PlayStation VR Worlds remains one of the most polished and engaging pieces of story-driven VR content out there. Lucky for us, developer Sony London decided to take its short tale of crime capers and turn it into a full game. The result is Blood & Truth, one of the most polished and immersive shooters yet seen on any VR headset, let alone PSVR.
What makes Blood & Truth great is that it isn’t ‘just’ a shooter. Every level has new types of interactions and mechanics to explore, fleshing the virtual world out and bringing it closer to the real one. Its story might be on the cheesy side, but its character models are unmatched and the stunning setpiece moments are often Uncharted-worthy. Don’t let the Guy Ritchie accents fool you; Blood & Truth is one to take seriously.
Capcom’s 2017 soft-reboot of its beloved horror franchise hit hard in the scare department. Switching to first-person put the horror right in front of you, daring players to fight their way through the Baker mansion. But on PS4 it went a step further with full PSVR support. To this day it remains probably the scariest thing you can see in VR.
This is very likely still the most high-profile VR game out there. It’s a huge AAA production with some of the best visuals you’ll find inside a headset and a full campaign with heaps of variety. It’s well-paced and incredibly tense, harking back to the series’ roots with a focus on limited resources and genuine scares. If you’re looking for a top tier PS4 game with full PSVR support, Resident Evil 7 is as close as it gets, making it one of the best PSVR games.
Who says VR can’t make your dreams come true? Well, whoever they are, they haven’t sampled Star Wars: Squadrons’ stunning VR support, which puts players in the cockpit of X-Wings, TIE Fighters and other iconic ships and lets them duke it out in either multiplayer battles or a full single-player campaign.
Squadrons is fun to play on a flat-screen but, in VR, it quickly morphs into one of the most exciting and immersive experiences you can have today. Detailed cockpits and authentic Star Wars polish bring out the child in you as you zoom around arenas, blowing enemies out of the sky. There are a lot of Star Wars VR experiences out there but, for our money, Squadrons is the best, and also one of the best PSVR games.
It turns out that the Skyrim of VR is, well, Skyrim in VR. There are definitely some awkward quirks to Bethesda’s port of its ever-popular fantasy RPG, but we were more than willing to put them to the back of our minds as we explored Tamriel like never before. With hundreds of hours’ worth of content, full autonomy to make the kind of character you want and an enormous world to explore, Skyrim VR is the closest we’ve come to fulfilling every adventurer’s dreams (outside of taking an arrow to the knee).
Not to mention that this has some of the best Move integration we’ve yet seen in a PSVR game, getting us as close to natural locomotion as possible without those much-requested thumbsticks. The fact that it fits inside the headset at all is simply astonishing. Skyrim VR is going to be hard to top for some time, and remains one of the best PSVR games to this day.
Pistol Whip may be the new kid on the block but, for our money, its sharpshooting, sharp sounding, beat-based gameplay proves to be even more hypnotic than Beat Saber. In this neon-lit shooter, you stream down corridors, blasting bad guys to grizzly tunes, avoiding incoming fire and trying to rack up the best scores to the beat.
Pistol Whip’s key is to take influence not just from the VR sales king but also Superhot and, most prominently, John Wick. Whereas Beat Saber wants to make you a dancing Jedi master, Pistol Whip aims to teach you gun-fu with style, elegantly fusing the rhythmic and cinematic together into a pulsating, vibrant monster of its own. Pistol Whip is definitely one of the best PSVR games.
Superhot is, without a doubt, the most instantly rewarding game to play in VR. The flatscreen original was great but, by bringing your whole body into this groundbreaking shooter, the developer completely flips the game on its head. In Superhot (stop me if you’ve heard this before), time moves only when you do. That means that when you’re still, the world around you is too. Every time you raise your arm or duck your head, the world crawls into life. You’re essentially a human video playback device.
Superhot gives you a stark realization of the physicality of VR and what that means for gaming. It’s an experience in which you are aware of every inch of your body. It also makes it effortlessly easy to feel cool in VR; every catch of a handgun or toss of a ninja star comes with an incredible strand of slick satisfaction you won’t find anywhere else. Superhot VR is currently the gold standard for VR shooters and, in our opinion, one of the very best PSVR games.
Since the day PSVR was announced, Wipeout seemed like an obvious fit for the platform. This would be the chance to realize the dreams we’ve all been had since the sci-fi racing series began on the original PlayStation. But even then we didn’t quite expect Wipeout: The Omega Collection to be quite the tour de force for PSVR it ended up being. It’s easily one of the best PSVR games.
Sony expertly tweaked several of its older games to fit inside the headset here. The result is a package with heaps of content, all of which you’ll want to see because the game is a flat-out thrill to experience. Shooting around circuits, air-braking across corners and letting machine gun fire rattle out in front of you is unbelievably exhilarating. Pair the extensive career modes with online play and you have one of PSVR’s meatiest and most polished games.
We would have never pegged a game based upon The Walking Dead to carry some of the best design and user-interaction you’ll find in VR, but Saints & Sinners delivers all that and then some. This sets the bar for VR zombie games with Boneworks-style, physics-based combat that has you wrestling with hordes of undead, throwing every ounce of effort you can muster into every swing and stab.
But this isn’t just a silly sandbox or wave-based survival game (though it now has that too). Saints & Sinners packs its action into a full, meaty VR campaign that sees you trekking through the remains of New Orleans. Add in human enemies, side-missions and the ability to kill zombies with a spoon, and you have one of the deepest native VR games on the market. Saints & Sinners will be one of the best PSVR games for some time to come.
Sony Japan’s Playroom VR compilation held a lot of delights when it launched on PSVR in 2016, but everyone agreed that the third-person platforming minigame, in which a small robot saved his friends with help from the player, deserved its own title. Astro Bot is the result of those requests, and it’s even better than many had imagined it would be. 26 levels of Mario-quality platforming await you here.
It sounds like hyperbole but it’s true; each one of Astro Bot’s levels packs new ideas that range from endearingly novel to properly groundbreaking. It’s an absolute joy to play from start to finish that never ceases to amaze you. Plus there’s power to the bond you’ll form with Astro on this adventure, breaking down the barrier between players and characters in ways not yet seen in gaming. For that reason, we’re crowning it as the best game on PSVR.
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Update 07/28/21: Five Nights At Freddy’s and Paper Beast were removed from the list. Hitman Trilogy and Sniper Elite VR were added.
Update 01/08/21: Red Matter and Accounting+ were removed from the list. Until You Fall and Star Wars: Squadrons were added.
Update 08/12/20: The Exorcist, Virtual Virtual Reality, Vacation Simulator, Transpose, Bow To Blood and Rec Room were removed from the list. Iron Man VR, Five Nights At Freddy’s VR, Pistol Whip, Gorn, The Walking Dead: Saints & sinners and Dreams were all added.
Update 04/08/20: Borderlands 2, Groundhog Day, Dirt Rally, Downward Spiral and Tetris Effect were taken off the list. They were replaced with Vacation Simulator, Virtual Virtual Reality, Red Matter, The Room VR and Paper Beast.
Update 12/04/19: Deracine, Thumper, Creed: Rise to Glory and Rez Infinite were removed from the list. Borderlands 2, Groundhog Day, No Man’s Sky VR and Accounting+ replaced them.
Update 08/01/19: Borderlands 2 VR and Arizona Sunshine were taken off the list and replaced with Blood & Truth and Ghost Giant. Astro Bot and Firewall traded places.
Do you agree with our list of the best PSVR games? Let us know in the comments!
25. Statik
24. Sniper Elite VR
23. Gorn
22. Persistence
21. The Room VR
20. Firewall
19. Hitman 3
18. Fisherman
17. Farpoint
16. Until you fall
15. Moss
14. Iron Man VR
13. Ghost Giant
12. Beat Saber
11. No Man’s
