Owlchemy Labs has something to celebrate, as the Google-owned VR studio announced that its tongue-in-cheek parody simulator game Job Simulator (2016) has officially broken the one million unit sales mark.

Job Simulator was a launch title for HTC Vive, PSVR, and Oculus Touch in 2016, putting it in an extremely favorable position in the early days of consumer VR. It also garnered wide-spread viral attention then too thanks to its ease of use, not to mention its madcap, object-oriented gameplay.

As one of the most visible and notable games to define the early days of consumer VR, Job Simulator decidedly makes for a pretty good metric of the industry’s overall health. It’s been a constant face on PSVR’s monthly top 10 sales list, and maintains high user review scores on both Steam and the Oculus Store. Notably, Job Simulator was also launch title on on Oculus Quest, further shoeing in VR first-timers for the studio’s patented brand of casual hilarity.

The only other studio to publicly release a similar claim is Beat Games, the Czechia-based studio behind the breakout rhythm game Beat Saber (2019), which crossed the one million mark back in March 2019. That critically doesn’t include its sales numbers from Quest, as the standalone headset launched two months after those figures were released.

Acquired by Google in 2017, Owlchemy is also known for its franchise sequel Vacation Simulator (2019) and the Emmy-nominated title Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017).

Oculus quietly released Quill Theater on Quest last month as a way to bring immersive art and animations made in VR to more of its VR userbase. The free app offers up a curated selection of content, including the incredible short film ‘The Remedy’, which shows the incredible potential of VR as a content authoring tool.

Quill is a VR drawing and animation tool which has been around since 2016. The tool allows artists to work in 3D but with the intuitive control of spatial input, creating a powerful combination of the ‘hand-drawn’ feel with the efficiency of computer graphics.

We’ve seen some really impressive artwork and animations created in Quill over the years (eagle-eyed users will spot a Quill cameo in Vader Immortal: Ep. I), but it’s never been very easy for artists to distribute their content, nor for users to find it.

Quill Theater, now available for free on Quest, hopes to fix that. While the app doesn’t allow the creation of Quill content, it has fully functional immersive playback, including pause & play controls, and the ability to toggle between any artist-defined angles.

Quill Theater is integrated into the Oculus TV app on Quest, which makes it a nice, lightweight way to browse for Quill content without loading a separate app first. For now the app only offers a small curated selection of content, but it looks like Oculus intends to broaden the scope of content in Quill Theater over time, hopefully forming it into a place where artists can find a sustaining audience and where incredible Quill artwork can finally shine.

Perhaps no project to date shows the potential of Quill as a complete end-to-end creative tool quite like ‘The Remedy’, a short film which was released recently on Quill Theater. Created by animator Daniel Martin Peixe, ‘The Remedy’ is a roughly 10 minute long story which establishes a very effective comic book-like experience by stringing together various Quill scenes to tell a complete narrative.

The short film is comprised of absolutely beautiful immersive artwork with direction that smartly leverages elements unique to VR (like playing with scale and offering a true first-person perspective). With carefully placed ambient sounds, music, and text bubbles, ‘The Remedy’ shows immersive artwork and animation coming into its own as a medium for rich storytelling.

With any luck, Quill Theater will eventually make it easy enough for artists like Peixe to attract an audience large enough to support sustained creation of such works. We really hope to see Quill Theater integrate closely with new Oculus tools which should make sharing such content with friends much easier.

Action-physics adventure game Boneworks released earlier this month to a strong reception despite little formal marketing. The title surpassed 100,000 players in its first week, reeling in an estimated $3 million in revenue despite being available on just one of several key VR platforms.

Boneworks’ First Week Sales Milestone

Not long ago it was news when a VR title reached $3 million in revenue across all platforms more than a year after launch. When Beat Saber launched in Early Access on both Steam and Oculus PC back in 2018, the indie project made waves for selling 100K units for $2 million in revenue in its first month, and has since gone on to become, as far as we know, the best selling VR game to date.

Now Boneworks, the action-physics adventure from veteran VR developer Stress Level Zero reached an impressive milestone for an indie VR release, selling more than 100K units in its first week, the studio confirmed. A rough estimate against the game’s $30 US price point suggests that game generated somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million in revenue in its first week (though this doesn’t account for regional pricing, Steam’s 30% platform cut, refunds, or free keys given away by the game’s developer). Even more impressively, the game reached this milestone despite being available only on Steam at launch.

Boneworks’ launch was so successful relative to other VR games on Steam that the title ranked in the highest tier of Steam’s ‘Best of 2019 Virtual Reality‘ ranking (which ranks by gross revenue for the entire year), despite Boneworks having launched just two weeks before the list was published. That means the game earned enough in two weeks to be comparable to the sales of games that have been earning revenue for the entirety of 2019, like Beat Saber, Gorn, Superhot VR, Pavlov, Blade & Sorcery, and Skyrim VR.

Content Marketing Success

Beyond pushing the envelope in physical simulation for VR interactions, Boneworks‘ launch success appears to have been driven largely by non-traditional content marketing.

Stress Level Zero founder Brandon Laatsch was formerly part of the major YouTube channels ‘Freddiew’ and ‘Node’, and leveraged his significant experience and connections in online filmmaking to expose Boneworks to an audience far beyond the core VR community.

Since April 2018, 10 videos showing off Boneworks at various stages in development were published on Node or Laatsch’s own YouTube channel, garnering more than 21 million collective views. The most successful of the videos (‘Boneworks – Next Gen VR Gameplay!‘) was released in April 2019 and has pulled in 6.7 million views alone.

The videos, which demonstrated compelling physics-based VR interactions, also spawned countless GIFs which were shared both within and beyond the VR community.

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Boneworks is only available on Steam at present. While it isn’t clear if the game will eventually come to Oculus’ PC platform, the studio has confirmed that a game ‘in the Boneworks universe’ is in development for Oculus Quest (though details are still scarce). Considering the game’s computationally-demanding physics simulations and limited comfort options, it’s doubtful that Boneworks will ever launch on PSVR due to the system’s limited processing power and Sony’s more stringent comfort standards. That said, the ‘Boneworks universe’ Quest-focused game could be perfectly suited for PSVR as well.

Update (December 31st, 2019): Clarified that the $3 million revenue figure is a rough estimate based on the $30 US price point and the confirmed 100K players in the first week. The estimate doesn’t account for regional pricing, Steam’s 30% platform cut, refunds, or free keys given away by the game’s developer.

Beat Saber had an awesome year in 2019, launching out of Early Access on the platform in May with multiple music packs following behind it, which featured bands such as Green Day, Imagine Dragons, and Panic at the Disco. It seems the Prague-based studio has done well to bring the flair of name brand music to the game, as it officially ranked as a Steam top seller this year.

Last year didn’t feature any VR games in Steam’s generalized list; this year Beat Saber has broken through to the ‘bronze’ level, which is based on gross revenue for this year.

Although this doesn’t specify sales numbers, it does put it in company with titles such as Far Cry 5, Tropico 6, Rimworld, and No Man’s Sky. That’s a pretty big feat considering the comparatively smaller install base of SteamVR headsets on the platform, which according to the latest Steam hardware survey accounts for only a little over one percent of total players using Steam.

Of course, this is only a single dimension of Beat Saber’s overall success this year, as it also sells on the PlayStation Store for PSVR, and the Oculus Store for both Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest.

While a bronze-level seller overall, in Steam’s 2019 list of VR Best Sellers Beat Saber ranks platinum, the highest level sitting above gold, silver, and bronze.

Take a look at the full of platinum-level VR top sellers below:

Platinum

• Arizona Sunshine (2016)
• Beat Saber (2018)
• Blade & Sorcery (2018)
• Boneworks (2019)
• Fallout 4 VR (2017)
• GORN (EA – 2017)
• Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades (EA – 2016)
• VR Kanojo / VRカノジョ(2018)
• Pavlov (EA – 2017)
• Superhot VR (2017)
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR (2018)
• Zero Caliber VR (2018)

You can check out the whole list here.

Valve also released a month-by-month breakdown of top new games based on gross revenue, which includes Beat Saber, Boneworks, Vacation Simulator, Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted, Trover Saves the Universe, GORN, Pistol Whip, and Nostos.

Valve let Tested’s Norman Chan and Will Smith into their headquarters recently for a multi-hour session with Half-Life: Alyx, the studio’s famed flagship VR game coming out in March 2020.

Chan and Smith couldn’t reveal plot details and some of the mechanics after their three-hour preview of the still in-progress game, but testing it out on eight major VR headsets did give them some latitude to talk about some of the game’s design elements as well as Valve’s work to make Half-Life: Alyx equally playable on all of the major PC VR headsets.

The 30-minute video shows off a small portion of what we assume are the early parts of the game. The video didn’t reveal much about the game itself, which is said to take around 15 hours to complete, although we did get a good look at some of the nuts and bolts, such as the quick inventory system, which lets you highlight and select items from a limited number of slots, locomotion schemes, and some of the super detailed art in the game.

Although still in-progress, locomotion thus far seems to include both teleportation and free locomotion, which also includes snap-turning. Rotational teleportation also lets you select your ‘landing’ position, ostensibly the same movement scheme seen in Oculus Home.

The video spends a good amount of time going through some of the finer points of platform-specific hardware such as ergonomics, viewing experience, and their individual motion controllers, all of which are important in its own right when thinking about which headset plays best with Half-Life: Alyx.

Chan and Smith agree that Valve Index is the most comfortable headset and adept at meshing with the game’s heavy emphasis on object interaction, which is thanks to the Valve Index Controllers (ex-Knuckles). Throwing objects, which has some measure of auto-aim, was especially suited to the open-hand design of the Index Controllers.

Smith rated the Vive Cosmos as the least reliable due to what he called the headset’s “hinky” motion controller tracking, something we noted too in our review of Cosmos. Much of the game requires aiming with iron sights, so having a stable, mostly occlusion-free tracking solution is key, something Cosmos just doesn’t seem to be able to handle when you bring your controllers too close to the headset’s inside-out tracking sensors. Smith mentioned that all of the systems they tested, including Cosmos, were entirely viable though, which include the original Oculus Rift, Rift S, HTC Vive, Valve Index, Samsung Odyssey Plus, Oculus Quest via Link, and the Pimax “5K”.

Tested mostly focuses in on headset comfort and motion controller design, things you ought to know about before buying any VR headset. Both new and old Touch variants seem to play well with the game’s manual reload scheme. Both the Vive wands and the Windows MR controllers were least adept at reloading, which may require Valve to implement some platform-specific workarounds. Comfort is well documented on all of the VR headsets we tested, so make sure to check out our hardware reviews if you’re looking to pick up a headset for Half-Life Alyx.

One of the least talked about factors here was the wide variation when it comes to headset display type and resolution. To Chan and Smith, Pimax “5K” suffers from its standard distortion, although it is remarkably comfortable and capable of using the Valve Index controllers, two big pluses.

In the end, Smith concludes that Half-Life: Alyx is “awesome on everything,” which they say demonstrates the fact that Valve isn’t just making a game to tempt prospective players into buying a Valve Index, but rather building something everyone, regardless of chosen PC VR headset, can enjoy.

Capcom has announced that Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017) has shipped 6.8 million units. This new figure, when combined with official in-game player stats, suggests that the game has achieved an impressive milestone of reaching more than 1 million PSVR players, making it perhaps the most successful VR title on any single platform.

Update (December 19th, 2019): The latest official figure from Capcom puts the sales of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard at 6.8 million units, showing continued growth since 4.8 million units at the time of our last check in 2018. The share of PSVR players according to official stats has also risen from 13.25% to 15.96%. The article below has been adjusted to account for the latest figures, revealing that the game’s PSVR player base could be as large as some 1,085,000 players.

The success of the game’s VR mode, which is only available on PlayStation, makes it surprising that we still haven’t seen the release of the VR mode for PC headsets like the Rift and Vive, despite precedent for PSVR exclusives coming to PC headsets, as we saw with Batman: Arkham VR and SUPERHYPERCUBE, among others.

Original Article (February 16th, 2017), Updated Figures: Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is not a VR-only game. Available on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch, the game was built primarily for traditional displays, but, on PlayStation only, the game has a VR mode which allows it to be played from start to finish on Sony’s PlayStation VR headset. That VR mode has received surprising praise for a game not built specifically for VR, and has seemingly propelled the game to be among the most successful titles (by number of VR players) on any single VR platform (whether ‘made-for-VR’ or just ‘VR-capable’).

Closer to the game’s launch we reported that official Resident Evil 7 stats from Capcom claimed over 81,000 PSVR players. Less than a month after the game’s launch, those same stats read nearly 133,000 PSVR players. In March 2018, the official stats showed some 419,000 players, and now the count at the end of December 2019 is at 752,817.

But there’s a catch. The official stats are only based on data from users who specifically opt-in to share them, which means they represent only a subset of the actual figures. The latest figures from Capcom however show that the game has shipped 6.8 million units across all platforms.

That number gives us some additional insight into the full scope of the data. Specifically, it lets us adjust the total number of players from the game’s opt-in data (presently 4.72 million players) up to 6.8 million players (with the acknowledgement that ‘shipped to retail’ vs. ‘sold to customers’ will create some margin of error). And since we know that now 15.96% of the 4.72 million opt-in players are PSVR players, we can reason that a similar percentage of the actual total players are also PSVR players, which would put a best guess of the game’s total PSVR playerbase around 1,085,000 players.

To put the numbers into perspective, the single best selling VR game we’re aware of is Beat Saber, which announced it had sold more than 1 million copies across all platforms back in March 2019 (though this was before the launch of Quest); Resident Evil 7, has likely reached more than 1 million VR players on PSVR alone.

Another way to put the number of Resident Evil 7 figures into perspective is the revenue contribution from PSVR players which—if our best guess is 1,085,000—comes out to $48.8 million (assuming 75% MSRP to account for reduced pricing over time). Of course, we can’t account for the number of PSVR owners who happened to buy the game and only tried the VR mode as a novelty versus the number of owners who bought the game specifically for its VR support.

It’s also worth acknowledging an important variable that we can’t control in the 1.08 million player estimate, which is the potential difference in opt-in rates between different platforms. It could be that PSVR users are more likely to opt-in to data collection than other player groups. It also could be that they are less likely—we don’t have a good reason right now to bet one way or the other, so for now it’s an unknown. That opt-in rate could adjust the 1.08 million PSVR player figure up or down.

Even if we scrap the extrapolations, the official count of 752,817 VR players on a game available only on one headset speaks well of both the size of the PSVR install base, and the power of a AAA production tied to a well known IP to attract VR players hungry for content.

No matter which figure you look at, that makes Resident Evil 7 a surprising VR success, especially for a game that’s only playable in VR on one headset, and not actually designed specifically for VR in the first place.

Skydance Interactive and Skybound released a new gameplay video for their upcoming VR game, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, which is slated to arrive late next month.

Promising crafting, exploration, freedom of choice to side with warring factions, and plenty of visceral melee combat, Saints & Sinners aims to deliver 15+ hours of survival-horror goodness.

Unlike the upcoming VR game from Survios, The Walking Dead Onslaught, which lets you play as the show’s characters, Saints & Sinners is based in the show’s universe, however features entirely new characters and stories set in the ruined city of New Orleans.

And although we’ve seen some pretty gruesome stuff in the first gameplay video, which was revealed back in October, this one shows off probably one of the creepiest missions to do in a world overrun by zombies: investigating a NOLA-style above ground cemetery at night. If you’re looking to see some of the character interactions, definitely check out the first video linked above.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is slated to arrive on January 23rd, 2020, and will support Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Vive Cosmos, Valve Index, and Windows VR headsets, launching via Steam and the Oculus Store.

Between Beat Saber, Pistol Whip, Audica, and plenty more, it’s fair to say that rhythm games are a key VR genre. And while we didn’t expect it from Blood & Truth, the gritty PSVR-exclusive shooter, we’re happy to see the game get its groove on in its latest and final ‘Challenge’ DLC update.

After launching earlier this year, Blood & Truth has seen three DLC updates which have expanded on the game’s core shooting mechanics with shooting-range challenge modes like Time Attack, Skeet Shooting, and Trick Shots.

The fourth and final DLC update brings a surprising rhythm shooting mode to the game. The update offers four stages set to songs from the title’s soundtrack; London Studio explains:

You’ll need to shoot each vinyl-shaped target that appears on the specially-created rig, with more points awarded the more on time to the beat your shot is – and how close you are to bullseyeing the target. To help you perfect your timing, a colour-coded ring will overlay onto a target when it’s time to shoot. And don’t worry about reloading: all guns in this mode have infinite bullets and are on automatic.

Chaining successful shots will activate a multiplier, which is your ticket to earning a spot on the Challenge’s online leaderboard.

The studio notes that both aim and timing contribute to your score.

But that’s not all for this update. Those who played through Blood & Truth’s solid campaign will recall the club scene where there’s an interactive DJ deck that lets you mess around with some music and effects before the fighting breaks out. In this latest update you can now get in front of an expanded version of the DJ deck, which now has six different tracks, for unlimited remixing without worrying about dodging any bullets.

As with all prior Blood & Truth DLC, this update is free and available now!

Not current on the latest season of Rick and Morty? Well, it’s revealed in episode two of the latest season that Rick, the genius misanthrope that he is, has a secret toilet on a depopulated paradise planet where he can relax, unwind, and truly feel alone with his thoughts. And now you can too—provided you own an Oculus Quest or Oculus Go.

The aptly-named Rick’s Toilet app was a quick side project created by Evan Stimpson, an indie developer at Soulcom Studios who’s currently on working on a flying car racing game for Quest and Go called Skylane.

You won’t find Rick’sToilet on the Oculus Store though, but rather on the unofficial sideload repository, SideQuest.

While the free app was originally built for Go, Stimpson has since added support for Quest as well. And now you too can pinch one off in paradise as you gaze over the picturesque mountains and sparkling aurora on your very own off-world crapper.

To sideload Rick’s Toilet, or any other app from SideQuest, you simply need to install SideQuest on you computer, set it up on you Quest/Go, and connect the headset to your computer via a USB cable. Follow the how-to section on the SideQuest website for more information. And wash your hands, you filth animals.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew (2017), Ubisoft’s co-op space sim that puts you on the bridge of your very own Federation vessel, is now available on Oculus Quest.

The Quest version is being sold for $30, which is $5 more expensive than when it launched on PC VR and PSVR respectively, however it does include the Next Generation DLC, which costs $10 when purchased separately on those platforms.

David Votypka, senior creative director at Ubisoft’s Red Storm, says it has cross-play functionality “with the game’s original platforms.” We would assume this not only covers the Rift version purchased through the Oculus Store, but also includes PC VR versions purchased through Steam and Viveport, and for PSVR through the PlayStation Store—although it’s still unclear at this time.

If you already bought Star Trek: Bridge Crew and The Next Generation DLC from the Oculus Store for Rift (read: not Steam or Viveport), the Quest version of the game is free. However if you have the game but don’t have the DLC, the Quest version costs $10.

Although you can technically play through the game’s missions and procedurally created end-game content on your own, the real fun is in jumping in with three other people in co-op mode. There, you can take on the roles of Captain, Helm, Tactical and Engineer, and experience what it’s like to wok together to beat back the Klingon Empire in the base game, and the Borg in the Next Generation DLC. Check out our review of the PC VR version to find out why we gave it a [9/10] score.

While we did rate it highly (and expect no less from the Quest version), you may want to set your phasers to stun for the time being, as some user reports suggest the game is currently suffering authentication issues, which is thanks to (you guessed it) Ubisoft’s Uplay. One user suggests linking your mandatory Uplay account and then physically restarting the headset. In the meantime, we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled on the Ubisoft forums for more information on the infinite login loop issue for more information when it arrives.

Sacralith: The Archer’s Tale (2018), a story-driven bowshooter from Moscow-based indie studio Odd Meter, demonstrated some relatively high polish when it was first released on PC VR headsets last year. Now, the studio says its making its way to PSVR on December 17th.

We were mightily impressed with this medieval bowshooter when it was first released on Steam back in May 2018, giving it a resounding [8.7/10] in our review.

Although it didn’t generate much press following its relatively quiet launch on PC, Sacralith: The Archer’s Tale ultimately shows a fair measure of expertise in visual polish and storytelling. It also boasts a more lifelike quality not often seen in lower budget productions, which is thanks to some pretty impressive motion capture.

Not only that, it’s also an engaging, but pretty difficult game, as you use multiple arrow types to grind down seemingly endless hordes of baddies on your way through its campaign.

While some may recoil in horror at the mere mention of teleportation, Sacralith’s node teleportation scheme is actually molded around the game in such a way that it adds to its difficulty; you’re forced to you use different vantage points to shoot down foes, which at times intentionally limits how close you can get to the steady stream of enemies.

We’re hoping Odd Meter was able to squeeze enough of that near ‘AAA’ goodness onto the more demure PS4 platform, and was also able to contend with PS Move’s tracking limitations, which sometimes makes VR archery a challenge due to sensor occlusion.

At last night’s Game Awards, Oculus announced it’s been working with Twisted Pixel Games to create a new VR beat’em up called Path of the Warrior, which is out now on for Rift and Quest.

Inspired by classic arcade titles such as Double Dragon (1987), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game (1989), Streets of Rage (1991) and Final Fight (1989)—Path of the Warrior promises to let you attack your opponents “with any number of objects from pool cues and trash cans to frying pans,” the studio says in an Oculus blog post.

The game, which can be played in either single-player or in co-op mode, is said to span five hours of gameplay across a number of environments, ranging from bar fights to creepy carnivals.

In the trailer, it’s clear painfully clear you can pound the squishy faces of a number of typical ’80s bad guys too, and even toss them into parts of the environment for even more points—all of it while adding to the game’s patently classic combo counter and special attack meter. The studios say you can also unlock special attack boosts by beating bosses, and save bystanders who give you power-up snacks.

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Also known for Oculus exclusives Defector (2019) and Wilson’s Heart (2017), Twisted Pixel Games has been working with Oculus Studios on the game since October 2018.

“Kicking this project off was a chance to go back and play a bunch of old brawler games that we hadn’t touched in many years,” says Oculus Studios executive producer Mike Doran. “While I’d love to do a game more like Tower of Doom or Shadow over Mystara some day, with Path of the Warrior we wanted more of a Double Dragon feel. That comes through in a few ways—the large variety of background stages and enemies being a big one. We also wanted to have tons of environmental props and ways to defeat enemies, so brainstorming those was a lot of fun. Where else can you battle a guy with daggers for hair?”

Path of the Warrior is now available on the Oculus Store for $20, supporting both Rift and Quest, which includes cross-buy as well as cross-play support.

Everyone’s favorite block-slashing rhythm game, Beat Saber (2018), just got a new music pack featuring the tunes of Green Day. The newly released Green Day music pack comes alongside a free update for all supported platforms that includes the long-awaited 360 and 90-degree mode for a number of levels.

Beat Saber’s newest music pack launched last night at The Game Awards, which also just so happened to feature a live performance by the group.

The Green Day Music Pack, priced at $9, includes six songs from Father of All… and American Idiot:

Boneworks by Stress Level Zero is described as a narrative VR action-adventure using advanced experimental physics mechanics. In this article, we check out the game’s core mechanics.

Cas & Chary Present

Cas and Chary VR is a YouTube channel hosted by Netherland-based duo Casandra Vuong and Chary Keijzer who have been documenting their VR journeys since 2016. In partnership with the channel, Road to VR shares a curated selection of their content.

In Boneworks, you enter an artificially intelligent operating system called; MythOS. Something mysterious has happened in the operating system, and it’s up to you to find out what that is. Throughout the game, you’ll enter a variety of levels in the story mode, and you progress through them by doing physics-based puzzles and combat.

The game has three game modes: Story mode, Arena mode, and Sandbox mode. The Arena mode unlocks after you finish the story and you can unlock the Sandbox mode earlier in the game in a specific way, but I won’t spoil that for you.

One of the first levels is an extensive tutorial that’s basically a museum that you walk through, and at every exhibit, you learn how to use the game’s mechanics. Not only does this level teach you what locomotion options there are, but it also shows you most of the weapons and items available in the game and how to interact with the environment using physics.

You probably heard of Boneworks before if you keep up to date about VR games since there is a lot of hype around this game. But what makes this game so exciting? The heavy use of physics simulation in the game is something you don’t see often in VR games because it’s very challenging to do right. Most games have scripted interactions which use static logic to determine outcomes (like swinging a sword at an enemy will deal X damage), but much of the logic in Boneworks is based on physical simulation.

In the video, around the 03:00 mark, I show you these VR interactions with physics-driven items. For example, each weapon has its own weight. If you try holding a sledgehammer with one hand, it’s almost impossible for you to accurately slam it on a barrel because it’s too heavy to carry it with one hand. With two hands it’s easier, but still, a sledgehammer does not act the same as a lighter weapon.

The developers added realistic colliders in almost every object, and instead of forcing you to grab an item at one specific spot like most games do, the item is grabbable on far more places. Being able to hold an object how you want gives you much more freedom to use it creatively (like holding a dagger with an underhand or overhand grip). Some of these things might seem like small things, but they can greatly enhance the feeling of immersion and agency in the game.

There are also other mechanics that I like. For example, there is ‘force-grab’ which allows you to grab items from a distance, so you don’t have to crouch down to pick up items from the ground. The realistic weapon handling makes for some exciting combat, especially when you forget how to reload a weapon in the heat of the moment when there’s a bunch of creepy zombies coming at you. Thanks to the physics, you can improvise–throw your gun at the zombie and start swinging with your fists! I also like the inventory system that shows you the open slots on your body to put your equipment.

While I can tell that the developers put a lot of passion into the physics mechanics in the game, some parts weren’t as exciting to me. The story, for instance, is very mysterious, but even three hours in, I still don’t feel like I’ve been grabbed by it.

While I enjoy the physics mechanics, it also makes for some awkward movements and interactions. For example, I could get my arms or body stuck between two pipes, and I would struggle to get myself out. Those awkward moments also make the game pretty intense comfort-wise. If I don’t watch out, I have a hard time playing long periods without getting motion sick. Motion sickness is a very personal thing, though, so I would not take my word on it before trying it out yourself. However, since these intense moments seem to be caused by the physics-driven gameplay, I feel like I had to mention it. There are some comfort options to choose from in the controller settings menu, like head or hand-related locomotion that could help out, but the game warns you from the very start that it is intense.

So far, I’ve also found more puzzles than combat. The puzzles are huge, and to solve them, you need to use the environment around you creatively. There are multiple ways to solve a puzzle, and I like that. They can be head-scratchers, though, and it might get frustrating at times, but anyone who likes puzzle games would probably see this as a challenge.

Some other things I like is that the game rewards exploration. You can find and collect ammunition in every level which also acts as currency to get new items and weapons out of wall dispensers. The game is also full of secrets and easter eggs which are fun to seek out.

Boneworks by Stress Level Zero is out now for $30. The game supports most major VR headsets: Valve Index, HTC VIVE, Oculus Rift, and WMR. I’ve played the game on the Valve Index with the Index controllers myself, and I’ve also tried the Oculus Rift S and the Touch controllers. Both headsets play well with the game.

I recommend everyone who likes exploring VR games to check out this game. You probably don’t want to get this game just for the story, but you will want to check out these physics-driven implementations.

Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency brings a lot to the table in terms of variety and action, although it edits out some of what made the first an interesting exercise in exploration and intrigue. Adrenaline is still a key ingredient here, and levels a heaping dose of bow-shooting action on top of a slightly more demure exploration experience than the first, which makes it feel a little more generic of a game, but still a good example of a fun and well-realized entry into the stealth combat genre.

Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency Details:

Developer: Neat Corporation, Fast Travel Games
Available On: Steam (Index, Vive, Rift), Oculus Store (Rift)
Reviewed On: Rift, Vive
Release Date: December 12th, 2019
Price: $30

Note: It’s impossible to talk about the sequel without at least mentioning the first in the series—I won’t spend much time recapping, but I’ll be mentioning it throughout for continuity’s sake. If you’re new to the series and are hoping to read a spoiler free look at number one, look no further than our review of the first Budget Cuts (2018).

Gameplay

The original Budget Cuts is very much about using your wits to find key cards, search for door codes, and follow clues left by your missing meat-bag colleagues, who’ve been mysteriously spirited away and replaced with a cast of quirky office drones. Here, you’re basically tasked with finding the thing, moving to the next thing, and sneaking around, all the while hoping to avoid (or kill) as many of the revolver-toting sentinels as possible—lest you catch a single bullet, effectively throwing you back to an earlier auto-save point. Tactically-placed fax machines connect you with Winda for objectives, which leaves you free to figure things out by reading and basically putting two and two together at your own pace. It was fresh, funny, and most importantly took to the medium with a spirit of innovation.

The second picks up where the first left off, however its tone and objectives are much more action-oriented, which effectively strips away much of the constant object-searching and key card-hunting from the first. All of that’s still there, albeit minimized in favor of forward-moving action, making the sequel somewhat of a different beast. At times, its can be a real thrill ride, although I found it lacking some of the first’s unique and celebrated spirit.

Before playing, I was prepped to expect more of everything: more action, more weapons, more puzzles, and more intrigue. I didn’t get everything on my wishlist, but Budget Cuts 2 does manage to serve up enough of that in the five hours on standard difficulty to satiate. Still, I felt it could have gone a bit deeper, and offered a few more ‘wow’ moments with its new action-y outlook on life whilst retaining some of the cleverness of the first.

Whereas the first Budget Cuts focused mainly on sneaking through cramped, multilayered spaces, sometimes giving you a few different parallel routes to the same objective, the second in the series tends to be a bit more linear, as it feeds you less options as you traverse through levels.

Like in the first, the real choice ultimately comes down to whether you want to engage in combat, or take the time to sneak around by checking if the coast is clear first via your portal gun preview window.

Mission Insolvency however has a lot more guards and a few new methods of killing them. It also has a greater variety in spaces, offering up everything from small offices filled with cubicles to large warehouses where you can let your new weapon sing. And at that point, it’s hard to care why you have a bow and arrow when you can gank a robot in the head from 30 meters away.

All of this is well appreciated, although I would have liked to see a grander, more elaborate set of ways to accomplish each major task—different routes or different methods of solving an objective, which seems to have been sacrificed on the altar of efficient, uncomplicated action. In the end, it seems Budget Cuts 2 focuses more on providing a greater variety of tasks instead of a greater variety of how to accomplish them. You’re given new baddies, less (but more varied) door puzzles, a singular boss fight, a timed task, and a wave shooter-style interlude at the end—more variety than the first by a fair margin.

The biggest addition, which has forced the developers to offer those larger environments, is the bow and arrow—or rather the bow and ‘any sharp or explosive object you can find’. Introduction of the new weapon is admittedly a bit ham-handed; office drones apparently compete in archery competitions in their time off now? And there’s grenades now too? In a stealth combat game where being detected could get you ganked in an instant? No fear, even the loudest grenade won’t bring baddies running. AI has a very limited field of view, and almost no sense of hearing.

A quick aside: the reasoning for knives was at least plausible in the first, with Winda hacking the supply ordering system and switching out letter openers for throwing knives, however in the sequel you’ll find arrows littered everywhere for no more reason than as convenient fodder for your bow.

Flimsy reasoning aside, the bow works well enough, although it intentionally hobbles you by giving you a two-handed device in a game where your don’t actually have hands 100 percent of the time by default.

The unique portaling locomotion scheme introduced in the first Budget Cuts works equally as well in the sequel, adding the bow into the mix does complicate things. Instead of zapping around with the portal gun in one hand whilst carrying a knife in the other, you have to be a little more pensive when you use the bow, and consequently requiring you to switch the tool head on your hands much more often. Until you get the muscle memory down, you may be struggling to quickly switch tools in the heat of battle, leading to many frustrating deaths.

Thankfully the bow eats all sorts of ammo, including arrows, throwing knives, and even scissors, so you should find a few ways to take down robots. That said, archery is still very much skill based, as the projectile is effected by gravity, making it necessary to practice so you can get a feel for how much it will drop (your sights do a good job of keeping you lined up laterally at very least).

One of the new items here is a radar tool, which lets you mark enemies and then see them through walls as they go on their rounds. While it was admittedly much more useful than the tool its supplanted, the looking glass that lets you reveal hidden text, it definitely could have played a bigger part in the game. I very rarely used it, and there were zero missions in which it became vital to success.

So Budget Cuts 2 is basically a shooter now, right? Kind of, yeah. There’s a real scarcity of ammo, as it’s both doled out at few intervals and, unlike the first, now ammo self-destructs when you use it—so no more collecting your spent knives or arrows from a dead baddie. You can even knock out baddies now with hard objects, and pull the gun of their hands, giving you a precious moment to flee.

You’ll also have a new enemy type to contend with on top of revolver-clad sentinels and drones, which are now equipped with guns of their own. Curious little boxes labeled with TransCorp’s ‘TC’ logo are littered everywhere, which you soon find out is hiding a super badass inside—and enemy with a riot shield and helmet, protecting him from frontal assaults and from your muscle memory of executing clean head-shots.

Budget Cuts 2 offers up its pros and cons in almost equal portions, however there’s still plenty of its core moments, like when you make a mad dash to safety from the red-eyed robotic monsters of the game.

In the end though, I really would have liked to see Budget Cuts 2 longer and more complex than number one, which would be more in-keeping with the spirit of innovation that brought the first to notoriety. It seems a tad shorter and, well, just different—and not in a way I’m entirely sure I personally gelled with. I really enjoyed almost every bit of the first game, save the final boss encounter. Without revealing too much, I was a little dismayed when the credits rolled after going through what was essentially ended on a ‘protect the thing’ style wave shooter—neither doing service to the stealth combat genre, nor particularly interesting from the standpoint of a modern VR game in general.

Immersion

Here’s an open secret: one of my least favorite tropes in VR gaming is the ‘helpful narrator’, which invariably chimes in with hints and mission objectives at every turn. Winda has unfortunately become a constant companion in your ear, as the fax machines of old are now replaced with a wireless headphone. I really think it smacks of laziness on the part of the developers, as they undoubtedly did it to generate quicker, more pointed action instead of giving you more of those fun little post-it note hints, or napkin drawings found in an overlooked cupboard. Having a mission objectives list and a voice in your ear telling you where to go and what to do basically makes me feel more like one of the robots I’m tasked with killing, and removes some of the fun of exploration as a result.

That said, number two has a few more benefits that shouldn’t go unnoticed in the immersion department; notably the character animations when baddies die.

The first time you stick a sentinel in the leg, and they limp around helplessly like wild animals, it basically left me wondering if it would still pursue me, or pick up its gun again for another potshot. A robot’s death is much bloodier (oily-er?) than I would have expected, which really makes you want to get your first shot right, if only to spare yourself the inevitable moaning it does about how it still has time left on this planet. Jesus. Re-reading that makes me feel like a monster.

The environments were also more varied and felt more alive as a result. There’s a lot more variability in terrain, such as stairs and ramps. but there are basically no-go zones for your portal gun, which introduces a bit of frustration where it otherwise wouldn’t be in a flatter, more office-like environment. It’s a give and take that essentially tests the limits of the default locomotion scheme.

I did contend with a few bugs in the sequel, although nowhere near the extent that saw the first pulled on the literal day of its release, which some reported was entirely borked, and unplayable. The developers have mentioned that bug-squashing and more polish are coming to the launch version, but I didn’t run into anything but minor flickering of some assets in heavier scenes, and a few misplaced bits of dialogue.

Comfort

Teleportation is the only way of moving around Budget Cuts 2—it’s a fundamental part of the game’s basic mechanic, and even though some hardcore anti-teleportation pundits may be automatically against it, I argue that it not only makes sense in terms of comfort, but is well explained enough to be an integral part of the world at large. You simply couldn’t play the game any other way.

Teleportation is by far one of the most comfortable ways of moving around in VR (although it infringes on immersion), and it probably won’t leave you with the flop sweats and a spinning head, making it good for newcomers and sensitive users alike.

There is snap turn for forward-facing setups (namely the OG Oculus Rift), and 360 support, but you’re going to be standing and using your body to play this game. Seated in not an option, and not encouraged, as you regularly have to squat and hide behind barriers, unless you want to constantly micro-correct for where you’re standing with the portal gun.