The VR Awards’ second annual award show was held last night, and the winners are in. Taking the award for VR Game of the Year was Cloudhead’s room-scale adventure The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone (2017).

As the sequel to The Gallery – Episode 1: Call of the Starseed (2016), episode two picks up where we left off last; you’ve received a magical Gauntlet that gives you a mysterious new power. You travel to Ember, a desiccated and long-forgotten world, where you search for your sister Elsie, uncover the history of Ember, and reveal the true intentions of the dark figure seed in Starseed.

We gave Heart of the Emberstone a very solid [9/10] rating in our spoiler-free review. You can check out it out here.

Although the game was launched in October 2017, the VR Awards’ cutoff date for consideration was in August, with the event taking place on October 9th of last year— leaving it in the running for this year’s VR Awards. Last year’s GOTY was awarded to Raw Data (2017) by Survios, which was still in Steam Early Access at the time of award consideration.

The VR Awards is a London-based ceremony and dinner that saw some 300 delegates attend last year from industry players such as Google, Epic Games, Oculus, HTC, AMD, Universal and Framestore.

Competition to take the show’s GOTY wasn’t light this year either, as the shortlist included games such as Beat Saber, Lone Echo, and both Skyrim VR and Fallout 4 VR.

VR Awards GOTY 2018 Nominees

  • Bethesda Softworks – Fallout 4 VR
  • Bethesda Softworks – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR
  • Beat Games – Beat Saber
  • Survios Inc. – Sprint Vector
  • Ready At Dawn – Lone Echo / Echo Arena
  • Hidden Path Entertainment – Brass Tactics
  • Vertical Robot – Red Matter
  • VRWERX – Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul
  • ARVORE Immersive Experiences – Pixel Ripped 1989
  • inXile Entertainment – The Mage’s Tale
  • Cloudhead Games Ltd. – The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone
  • Electric Hat Games – TO THE TOP
  • nDreams – Shooty Fruity

Other award winners included HTC Vive Pro for Best VR Headset, Ultrahaptics for Most Innovative VR Company, Manifest 99 for Best VR Experience, Carne Y Arena for Best VR Film, Coco VR for Best VR Marketing, and Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire for Best Out-of-Home Experience.

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Check out the full list on the VR Awards website.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • impurekind

    Beat Saber deserves some kind of award.

    • David D. Taylor

      Especially since it seems that game has had an impact on the industry that no other title really has to date.

  • Schadows

    While it wouldn’t be the winner, i’m surprise not to see Budget Cuts in the nominees (especially seeing games like Shooty Fruity or Brass Tactics being present)

  • davidabrooks

    Lone Echo should have won.

    • dogtato

      Yeah my first thought on reading the headline was “lone echo must have been the previous year”

  • doug

    Short game, at 4 hours.

  • Mythos88

    I had more fun (and spent more time) just getting to Riverwood in SkyrimVR

  • Mah

  • Totius

    Lone Echo, Fallout or Skyrim should have won

  • david vincent

    Weird choice.

    ‘Heart of the Emberstone’ is good but way too short, it didn’t give me strong memories.
    ‘Lone Echo’ in the other hand…

  • doug

    Just played it. Great graphics and immersion, but it feels like the developer asked how they could get triple the playtime of episode 1, and they brainstormed the following: backtracking, books laying about to read, labyrinths, slow elevators, and lots of dialog stand and to listen to. It even has the player backtracking ON slow elevators, several times. I’m having a hard time believing real gamers voted it #1.