Mint Virtual Reality

Survivorman VR: The Descent brings Les Stroud's survival sim to Steam and PSVR 2 next month.

Based on Canadian filmmaker Les Stroud's Survivorman series, Survivorman VR: The Descent is a first-person survival adventure sim that initially launched last year on Quest. Following a helicopter crash in the Arctic mountains, you're guided by Stroud as you attempt to survive these harsh environments. Here's the new trailer:

Facing extreme cold, hunger, hazardous terrains and exhaustion, your health is monitored through a HUD-like display on your wrist. Survival involves gathering resources, solving puzzles and clever use of tools to stay alive. For more details, here's an official gameplay description:

In the immersive environment of Survivorman VR: The Descent, you will navigate dangerous terrain, gather precious resources, and solve difficult puzzles. You have a device attached to your wrist, presenting two crucial health metrics: your body temperature and calorie level. Keep these levels up, and you’ll continue to fight through the frost, making progress towards escape. But if they drop below a certain threshold, it could spell disaster, first causing detrimental health effects before you freeze to death.

Survivorman VR: The Descent is out now on the Meta Quest platform, while the Steam and PSVR 2 versions arrive on February 15. A content update for the Quest version will launch simultaneously.

ArcSine, a physics-based precision puzzle platformer, reaches PC VR next month.

Developed by Prop Logic over nearly seven years, ArcSine takes inspiration from Celeste, Sairento and Portal. Using a "jump & dash" locomotion system, movement involves shooting yourself through a "gun" to travel between platforms, avoid hazards and reach a portal at the map's end. ArcSine uses an auto-centering system to push you into the middle of your playspace, combined with an air-control system for navigating through environments.

Featuring approximately 340 stages, Prop Logic calls ArcSine "difficult, linear, storyless" with an increasing difficulty curve that progresses as you learn how to use the controls. Described as "a very physical game," ArcSine doesn't use smooth or snap camera turning and requires a small room-scale setup.

"It's the sort of game where you try and fail numerous times until you succeed. The target audience is players who enjoy the flow of focusing on a movement-centric problem with patience and determination and seeing the challenge through to its end, sanity notwithstanding," states Prop Logic founder Charlie Cushing in a press release.

In a further email to UploadVR, Cushing also provided a music sample from the soundtrack by Adam Coleman, which you can listen to below:

ArcSine arrives on February 19 on PC VR, and a free demo's out now on Steam.

Lawn Mowing Simulator VR reaches Quest this year to teach you the meaning of a quality job.

Developed by Skyhook Games three decades after the film The Lawnmower Man did its part to help popularize virtual reality, Lawn Mowing Simulator first appeared for flatscreen platforms in 2021. Announced by publisher Curve Games, it's now receiving an official VR adaptation, marking the latest sim to reach Quest following nDreams' PowerWash Simulator VR launch. You can watch Quest 3 gameplay footage below:

As you'd expect from the name, Lawn Mowing Simulator VR tasks you with garden management across different locations to keep them pretty. Alongside cutting grass and completing ground checks, you must also keep your equipment maintained from your own HQ, ensuring blades stay sharp and batteries get recharged.

Jobs are carried out through contracts and, as you advance, more mowers gradually unlock. That includes mowers from real-life manufacturers, Stiga and Ego, alongside the exclusive 'Knight' mower designed specifically for Lawn Mowing Simulator.

Lawn Mowing Simulator VR reaches the Meta Quest platform on March 21.

Orbeats delivers a new VR arcade rhythm game on Quest, but how does it fare? Here are our hands-on impressions:

VR rhythm games have a tough job standing out from the competition. In an oversaturated market led by Beat Saber, Synth Riders and Pistol Whip, Orbeats from Radical Forge caught my attention by mixing in VR racket sports. The end result feels closer to C-Smash VRS than Racket Club and while there's an interesting idea, the execution needs work.

Beyond the useful tutorial, Orbeats features two main modes. Journey Mode is the main attraction, featuring five different locations with good environmental designs, broken up into individual stages. I appreciate the practice option available for each stage and every level has three difficulty settings.

Armed with a futuristic tennis racket, you're tasked with destroying waves of blocks that form an alien defense system. Hitting blocks gradually increases your score multiplier, going up to x100, adding a competitive edge through online leaderboards. Missing blocks gradually depletes your health and reduces your multiplier, eventually killing you if you aren't careful.

Orbeats tries varying each stage with different blocks. Some grant a multiplier boost, others need multiple hits. There's also a few explosive blocks and some power-ups that make the ball massive. Hitting them gradually charges a meter to unleash a laser attack, a useful backup in a pinch. Your other hand acts as a tether to call balls back at a moment's notice, keeping gameplay under control.

So far, Orbeats' most interesting aspect is the Temple Guardians, bosses who appear in each area's last stage to protect the ruins. Alongside blocks, you're now fighting these guardians that actively attack you, and I found myself frequently dodging laser fire. This kept me moving, providing some enjoyable and necessary variety to an otherwise functional wave shooter.

With Survival Mode, that gradually cycles through multiple songs. A nice addition and, though the break between songs is appreciated, the repeated black transition screens are an immersion killer. The more chilled-out soundtrack isn't always to my taste either, though that'll be subjective depending on the person.

So far, Orbeats has been entertaining in short bursts and while I appreciate mixing rhythm gameplay with racket sports, the wave shooter mechanics just aren't that exciting. Presently, I'd be hard-pressed to recommend it over other VR rhythm games, but if you're someone who left C-Smash VRS wanting more boss fights, this could be worth a look.

Orbeats is available now on Quest App Lab for £10.49/$13.99.

Hunt Together, a new PvP psychological horror game, arrives on Quest.

Developed by Iron VR, Hunt Together is a multiplayer-only game for up to four players. Featuring two playable classes, Hunters and lifeforce-draining Ghosts, each comes packed with different skills and items. You can play between two gameplay modes, offering a 1v1 'Elimination Mode' and a 1v3 'Hide and Seek' mode with multiple maps available.

Here's the official description from Steam:

Your task will be to defeat your opponent with the help of numerous skills, items and usable environmental elements. The arenas of your battles are spooky, chilling locations, such as an abandoned mine, a haunted mansion or a forgotten orphanage. In addition to being able to face your friends in the Elimination Mode (1v1) or the Hide and Seek Mode (1v3), you also can acquire new skins for your favorite characters and develop their skills through a progression system.

Hunt Together arrives on the Meta Quest platform on January 25. A PC VR version is also coming in February with cross-platform multiplayer support.

Ready to set off on a time travel VR rescue mission aboard the RMS Titanic?

That's the premise of Titanic: A Space Between, which was initially announced last year. The announcement trailer confirmed you'll be sent back in time onto the Titanic with the aim of traveling through the ship and investigating what happened to a woman named Diana, who may have gotten stuck on board.

However, it looks like things will soon go astray, with the narrator announcing that the player has arrived aboard the ship 24 hours later than intended – presumably the point at which the ship begins to sink, judging by all the water present.

A Space Between comes from developers Globiss Interactive. It will be their first foray into VR, after previously releasing flatscreen titles Under: Depths of Fear and Filthy Hands on Steam.

Previously planned for Q4 2023, that's now launching on February 14 on Quest. Both trailers specifically note that the in-game footage is captured on Quest 2. For standalone footage, it looks pretty impressive – especially given it's dealing with moving bodies of water, which can be a fairly resource-intensive inclusion.

PC VR and PSVR 2 releases will follow at an unknown date. However, the latest announcement makes no mention of a Pico release, which was previously listed in the original trailer. We've asked for clarification on planned platforms and will update this article if we learn more.

Notice: This article was originally published on July 20, 2023. It was updated on January 24, 2024, to reflect the revised release window.

Dungeons & Dragons will receive an official VR game.

Announced today by Resolution Games, the publisher is collaborating with Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast for an officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons VR game. The news follows the Swedish team's work on Demeo, the co-op digital fantasy tabletop adventure we previously named our 2021 Game of the Year, and last year's PvP spinoff, Demeo Battles.

“As anyone who’s played Demeo can guess, we’re incredibly huge fans of tabletop roleplaying games,” said Tommy Palm, CEO and founder of Resolution Games in a prepared statement. "Dungeons & Dragons offers one of the richest fantasy worlds that has ever been created, and it only gets bigger with every new sourcebook and adventure. We’re beyond humbled to have the opportunity to work with such an incredible IP and look forward to sharing the first details of this new project in the future.”

Though Resolution's upcoming game marks the first official D&D VR release, this isn't the only attempt we've seen to adapt Wizards of the Coast's popular tabletop game for VR. While Demeo and Demeo Battles take clear inspiration from it with some creative differences, last October saw Dungeon Full Dive reach Steam Early Access, offering a virtual tabletop that lets you create your own heroes and maps.

No further details were announced for this Dungeons & Dragons VR game, and platforms currently remain unknown.

Demeo Review - A Social VR Masterclass In An Engaging Tabletop RPG

Is Resolution Games’ most ambitious VR title yet its best? Find out in our Demeo review! Demeo is one of those times it works. Y’know, it; the whole promise of leapfrogging the miles between friends and family and experiencing a genuine social connection in virtual space via the magic

UploadVRJamie Feltham

Arcade Paradise VR dropped a new gameplay trailer and we interviewed Nosebleed Interactive's creative director to learn more about the business sim's adaptation.

Revealed during our Winter Showcase last month, Arcade Paradise VR sees you turning a disused laundromat into a '90s arcade. Featuring 39 playable arcade cabinets, publisher Wired Productions announced that 12 of them have been "fully realized" for VR, joining 27 traditionally controlled games from the original release. Between reflex shooters, basketball and more, here's the new trailer:

Speaking to UploadVR on a video call, we recently interviewed Nosebleed Interactive's CEO and Creative Director, Andreas Firnigl. Over the nearly hour-long discussion I learned that Arcade Paradise's development began as a racing game prototype.

All of our games since The Hungry Horde have mini-games in them. We were developing a racing game prototype with RPG elements, so we wanted loads of unlockable content. One aspect involved unlocking games to play on your computer. We built the prototype, had a bunch of playable games and when we showed it to [Wired Productions], they said, "Why don't you just do the games bit of it?" And so, we effectively started building an arcade collection.

Firnigl explains the studio needed a "strong meta game" that went beyond arcade collections like Sega Ages, wanting a narrative and player agency to keep you coming back. I'm told the laundromat setting was inspired by Firnigl previously working "unglamorous" jobs where he'd "think about cool game ideas" and "gamify everything you do to make the time pass faster." The aim was to find a starting job that wasn't aspirational.

Questioning how Nosebleed balanced developing nearly 40 arcade games, Firnigl tells me they categorized them by three distinct types. "There's the showcase games which, if you think of it like a shopping centre, they were like the anchor stores. We had four or five of those that we spent quite a lot of time on," he responds. The rest are "mid-sized" and smaller games with varying complexities.

Was a VR port always in Nosebleed's plan? Firnigl says he "always wanted to do it," stating in the initial pitch document that it "would suit VR perfectly."

The plan was to make you feel present, make it feel authentically like an arcade. Not the 80s heyday, more when arcades found their feet in the early '90s before going into full decline. If we could have stimulated sticky carpets, the smell of cigarette smoke and chewing gum, we would have.

"One of the things that we found worked incredibly well is, aside from the arcade games themselves, the activities feel so much better than they did on flatscreens," he later explains, citing physical motion with Touch Controllers to carry out actions, as opposed to pressing buttons on a standard gamepad. One example cited is how the light gun games feel better than a flat screen because "you can literally shoot at the screen" instead of controlling a cursor.

You won't be playing with friends in Arcade Paradise VR. The flatscreen version only supported local multiplayer and that's been dropped entirely on Quest.

"We don't have online multiplayer because that would have added an extra year of development time onto the schedule... it would cost a lot more and not give that much more benefit, which is a bit of a shame," Firnigl says.

He says he'd rather save multiplayer for another game and believes players will prefer original arcade games built for VR – with six new ones built for the VR version. The update includes new voice lines from Doug Cockle (The Witcher 3), though Firnigl noted a few cabinets from the flatscreen release were removed too.

"There's a couple that we've lost. We tried getting pool working and it just didn't translate very well in VR," he informs me, also stating that Darts "wasn't that much fun."

While Quest 2 is the target platform, I asked whether they'd wider VR support since PC and PS5 already have the flatscreen version. "We might work on it in the future, but it's not something we're looking to," I'm told by a Wired representative. As for performance, Firnigl's not ready to officially confirm details for Quest 2 and Quest 3.

A release window remains unconfirmed, though Arcade Paradise VR is "coming soon" to the Meta Quest platform.

We're back with our weekly VR games and hardware roundup. Here's what you may have missed:

January was off to a busy start with CES 2024 and this week wasn't any different. Apple Vision Pro continued dominating headlines before next month's launch, and we went hands-on again. Previews suggest Apple's headset has a comfort problem, in-store demos are planned, its specs may have leaked and Apple Immersive Video was also detailed. Elsewhere, LG's creating an XR device, crowdfunding began for RayNeo X2, and Varjo Aero is officially discontinued.

VR gaming was equally busy and Air Link's creator revealed CitraVR will bring the 3DS emulator to Quest. Bulletstorm VR, Toy Trains, Crumbling and Retropolis 2 all released on multiple platforms, Grimlord and Vertigo 2 got new ports, while the Vestiges: Fallen Tribes Steam demo drops next week. Slender: The Arrival VR is confirmed, Vail VR has a full release date, while WIMO Games shut down. Finally, Saints and Sinners got its Quest 3 upgrade after the series grossed nearly $100 million.

There's a lot of news, so we're continuing our format for rounding up those stories we couldn't cover. Here's a few more VR updates:

Lethal Company Receives Full 6DOF VR Mod

Lethal Company, the highly popular co-op horror game from Zeekerss that launched last October, just received a VR mod with 6DOF and motion controller support. Created by DaXcess, you can download that now through either Thunderstore or GitHub.

Genotype Relaunch Planned Next Month With New Combat Update

Launched last October on Quest, narrative VR action experience Genotype will relaunch with a major content update. Promising overhauled weapon upgrades, further level upgrades, new challenges, environmental improvements and more, that arrives on February 8th. While there's no confirmed release date yet, a Steam version is also planned.

X8 Partners With VRML For Competitive Esports Events

Following last November's Steam and Quest launch, X8, Thirdverse's 5v5 multiplayer VR hero shooter, is partnering with the VR Master League (VRML) for competitive esports events, kicking off the pre-season on February 5th. Thirdverse also revealed that X8 reached 300,000 downloads.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin VR Mod Leaves Early Access Next Month

Team Beef's VR Mod for Wrath: Aeon of Ruin will leave early access next month. Originally announced back in 2021, Wrath is a hardcore boomer shooter heavily inspired by the Quake franchise. Previously launched in early access, the modding team confirmed a full release is coming on February 27, 2024.

Flock of the Low God Receives Big Update

Created by Top Right Corner (The Atlas Mystery, Belko VR), Flock of the Low God is a survival horror game inspired by MALUM. Following your father's sudden death after arresting the titular cult, you play as Officer Loren, a rookie cop trying to investigate his death. Following an early access launch on Steam and Viveport, a major update has just been released. Pico and Quest versions are also planned.

Other Updates

While those are some of the bigger VR news stories we previously missed, we're always trying to highlight a wider range of updates across the board. Here's what else we've seen:

• Mindway VR is now available in VRChat with Mindway's Sunset Lounge, also introducing a one week free trial.
• Perp Games released a new Madison VR gameplay sneak peek.
• Cactus Cowboy - Desert Warfare will receive additional content across all platforms.
• No More Rainbows is coming to Pico on February 1.
• Inter Solar 83 receives a major update for its closed alpha, adding new gameplay features.
• SEED Online, Sky Climb, Rascals Forever and Hop Step Sing! By My Side all launched on Quest App Lab.
• Painting VR and VR Driver School arrived on Pico.
• Terra Alia introduced its final set of updates, offering performance updates on both Quest 2 and Quest 3.
• Musical Range introduced custom song support.
• The Ruff Talk VR Podcast will host a VR gaming showcase on February 2, 2024.
• Wisdom Watcher got a new patch.
• Operation Serpens reaches PSVR 2 on February 23.

If you've got an update for a VR game we should know about for this article or future updates, you can use our contact page or email tips@uploadvr.com with details.

Soundscape, described as a "musical metaverse experience," reaches PC VR next week.

Developed by Groove Science Studios, Soundscape‘s attempt at a musical metaverse follows Soundscape VR: 2017. Built using Unreal Engine 5 with its dynamic global illumination and reflections system, Lumen, Soundscape promises exclusive artist performances from Deadmau5, Evanescence, Slash, and more.

In a press release, the studio states its intention is to simulate "an interactive audiovisual environment akin to a music festival." Featuring multiple virtual worlds, custom avatars and more, you can also listen to your own music streaming service which is integrated with an audio-reactive AI engine. Soundscape also comes with an "experimental psychedelic soundshooter" called Soundtag.

“We at Soundscape have a vision for the metaverse, one that amplifies human creativity and art through massively powerful immersive technology,” said Eric Alexander, Soundscape CEO and Founder. “The metaverse offers chances to create entirely new experiences – new artistic mediums – that defy what anyone has seen previously.”

Soundscape arrives exclusively on Steam with VR support for $39.99 on January 23.