Not ready to plonk down your first $100 on Quest games? Thankfully there’s an impressive number of free games, experiences, apps, and social VR platforms to keep you playing before you’re paying—all of them compatible with Quest 2, Quest Pro, and Meta’s latest, Quest 3.

Looking to make your Quest 3 gaming experience even better? Don’t miss our top picks for the most essential Quest 3 accessories.

Free Quest Games

Population: One

Population: One is basically VR’s most successful battle royale, letting you climb, fly, shoot, and team-up with whoever dares. The free-to-play game does feature microtransactions, but only for cosmetics, which is nice. It’s still a paid game on Steam though, which makes sense considering developers BixBox VR were acquired by Meta. There is more than just battle royale though: you can play in the sandbox for custom maps and rules, team deathmatch with customizable loadouts, a 12v12 war mode, and more.

Gym Class – Basketball

Gym Class – Basketball is the solution if you’re looking to shoot some hoops and dunk like you probably can’t on a physical court. Online multiplayer lets you go head-to-head for a pretty convincing game of b-ball thanks to the game’s physics-based and full-body kinematics.

X8

X8 is the VR hero shooter you’ve been waiting for, as you descend upon battle arenas in this 5v5 all-out brawl. In addition to versatile hero abilities, you can also activate turrets, tripwires, pop smoke and more. Also engage in some CS-style attack and defend in the game’s ‘Master Demolition’ mode.

Blaston

Once a paid game, this room-scale shooter is now free-to-play, letting you take on friends, family and foes in head-to-head 1v1 dueling. Refine your loadout and jump into the action as you scramble for weapons and send a volley of hellfire at your enemies, all the while Matrix dodging through this innovative bullet hell meets futuristic dueling game. Spend money on cosmetics, or don’t: it’s a massive slice of fun any which way. It also has a mixed reality passthrough mode!

I Expect You To Die: Home Sweet Home [MR]

From the same minds that brought you the I Expect You To Die series comes a short mixed reality mini-mission that lets you become a secret agent in your own living room. Smuggled out of a top-secret medical facility to recover in the comfort of your home, you’re now fitted with a new ocular implant, letting you decipher puzzles, dodge dangerous threats, fight robotic hornets, and use plenty of spy gadgets. Dr. Zor has set a trap – right in your home, and it’s up to you to thwart those plans and save the day.

Gun Raiders

Gun Raiders serves up a healthy slice of multiplayer shooter action with multiple game modes that let you jetpack through the air, climb from wall to wall, and shoot down the competition. There’s the same sort of microtransactions you see in bigger games, but it they’re all avatar skin stuff, so no pay-to-win here.

  • Developer: Gun Raiders Entertainment Inc.
  • Store link

Hyper Dash

Hyper Dash is a multiplayer shooter that basically fills in where Echo Combat never could (never mind that Echo Combat was never on Quest, and is now entirely defunct on Oculus PC). Letting you quick dash, sprint, and rail grind around, Hyper Dash manages to serve up an impressive number of modes, including Payload, Domination, Control Point, (Team) Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, and Elimination. You can also take on both Quest and SteamVR users thanks to the inclusion of cross-play.

Ultimechs

Ultimechs should look pretty familiar: it’s basically Rocket League, but instead of driving around in cars, you’re given rocket-powered fists to punch balls into the goal. Online multiplayer includes both 1v1 and 2v2 matches, offering up tons of opportunities to earn cosmetic gear that will let you outfit your battle mech into something unique. There are also now two paid battle passes too, offering up a ton of cosmetics to set you apart from the competition.

Battle Talent

Battle Talent is one of those fighting sims that let you go ham on ragdoll baddies, which in this case are wily goblins and loads of skelingtons. This physics-based roguelite action game lets you climb, run and slide your way through levels as you slash, shoot, and wield magic against your foes.

Cards & Tankards

Cards & Tankards is a pretty addictive social collectible card game, letting you collect and battle friends with over 180 cards. With cross-play against SteamVR headsets (also free on PC), you may consider hosting your regular game night playing more than a few rounds in the game’s characteristic medieval fantasy tavern.

Gorilla Tag

This humble game of tag started out life on SideQuest and App Lab, offering up an infectious bit of gameplay that’s now available for free on the official Quest Store. You’ll be lumbering around a tree-lined arena using its unique grab-the-world locomotion style that lets you amble around like a great ape. Chase the other apes and infect them or climb for your life as the infected chase you. Pure and simple. Make sure you’re far from TVs, furniture, babies, and pets because you will punch something in the mad dash for sweet, low-poly freedom.

PokerStars VR

No real cash gambling here, but PokerStars VR not only let you go all-in on games of Texas Hold’em, but now a full casino’s worth of table games a machines that are sure to light up the dopamine starved pleasure centers of your brain. It’s all free play, so you won’t be risking real cash unless you buy in-game chips, which cannot be turned back into real money: it’s only to keep your bankroll flush for free play.

Ancient Dungeon Beta

This plucky roguelite dungeon crawler is still in beta (still!), but there’s a reason it’s become an App Lab favorite. Explore a vast dungeon to explore, housing plenty of baddies just asking for the steel of your sword, knives, and arrows. You’ll climb over deep pits, dodge lethal traps, and search for hidden treasures. Smash all the pots and crates you can before it officially launches on Quest sometime in the near future.

Bait!

Since the Fishin’ Buddies update, this classic VR title has gotten a whole new lease on life as a multiplayer VR fishing game that lets you sit back and crack a cold one with the boys as you reel in the big’uns. The additional social areas also let you sit back between your fishing adventures to take part in casual mini-games.

Gods of Gravity

Gods of Gravity is an arcade-style RTS game where you compete in an epic showdown of between celestial gods (2-8 players). Scoop up ships and fling them to capture a nearby planet, or open wormholes to teleport them across the solar system. Hold planets and moons to boost your production. Mine asteroids for the powerful resources within. And if you dare, capture the sun for the ultimate buff. Then send a massive fleet to conquer your enemy’s home planet. Last god standing wins.

Social VR Platforms

Rec Room

Without a doubt one of the most fun, and most expansive VR titles out there… and it’s free. Sure, you can pay real cash for in-game tokens to buy spiffy clothes for your avatar, but that’s really up to you. Gads of mini-games await you in both first-party creations such as the ever so popular co-op Quests—that could be games in their own right—to user-created stuff that will keep your pocket book gathering dust. It’s social VR, so meet people and have a ball for zero dollarydoos. Fair warning: there’s a ton of kids.

VRChat

If you’ve been anywhere near the Internet in the last few years, it’s likely you’ve already heard about VRChat, the user-generated social VR space filled with… well… everything you can imagine, re-pro games included like Among Us, Mario Kart, and even a version of Beat Saber. Fashion your own avatar or download the millions of user-generated avatars out there so you can embody SpongeBob, Kirito from Sword Art Online, or any one of the million anime girl avatars that you’re bound to see there.

Horizon Worlds

Horizon Worlds has changed a lot since launch. It now includes more tools, user-generated content, and some more compelling first-party games which has rounded out things to make it more competitive with Rec Room and VRChat. You may want to check in just to see the state of Meta’s first-party VR social platform. Whatever the case, the price of ‘free’ is hard to argue with.

Continue on Page 2: Free Experiences & Apps»

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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.
  • TechPassion

    “Should” – Stop ordering people what to do. This website is mainly about advertising Facebook products. I am sick of it.

    • h4rr4r

      You should demand a refund.

      • Ron

        lol

    • BoopieDoopie 44830 (SpringTrap

      you’d be fun at parties

  • Just Another Guy

    Most of these aren’t games

    • Yeah, most are theatrical VR experiences or 360 videos. Very misleading title, there, Road.

      • Michelle Jones

        i like warching things like henry , invasion, imlooking for more stuff like that so my grandaughter can watch it, itsto hard for her to figure the controller. out…. if you know of any free onesi can geti would appreciate. it buddy

  • Also, try all the free demos of stuff like Beat Saber, Creed: Rise to Glory, Superhot, Synth Riders, etc.

    • Wild Tangent

      where are the demos?

      • Just type the names into the store and I presume they will show up. If not then I’m not actually sure to be honest.

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  • SideQuest should the #1 thing on the list. (followed by QuestORama!)

  • Nothing to see here

    I miss the amazing demos that you could download for free with the original Oculus developer kit. I wish they would make a compatibility layer and let us download them again as some were among the best things I have seen in VR.

    • Chris Hollman

      You probably can still play them, I play Robo Recall on both my Quest 2 and my Reverb G2.

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    • Nevets

      I agree. Nothing seems as exciting as those. An endless, tedious procession of shooters and rhythm games.

      Where are the Edge of Nowhere style adventures? Why not do a Pandemonium (PS1) style platformer? All these developers do is make endless copies of somebody else’s successful idea.

  • Great article, thank you. I will recommend your readers to read about Instant Apps Development

  • You should have included “The Unity Cube”… it’s an experience that is so artistic and immersive… and it is free!

    BTW, Spatial now has pivoted towards being a platform to host NFTs exhibitions, you should write that

  • Ace of Spadеs

    I dont see a single game that even remotely AA, all trash that looks like it was made bny high-school kids.

    VR went downhill in 2021, only one couple AA and zero AAA games

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Funny, it’s actually the simple look of a lot of games that attracted me. I like low poly games. And I’m fully aware the current Quests aren’t capable of delivering AAA type of graphics yet. And even mainstream PC’s aren’t ready yet to drive those latest PCVR headsets without the latest highend cards which are even hard to come by, even the 3060’s are insanely expensive.

      • Ace of Spadеs

        Thats not my point, also games can be scaled, like 2D games to have graphical settings [Most VR for some reason have ZERO graphical or resolution settings]

        If you want VR to survive it has to move pass the “cheap Chinese mobile phone for cheap F2P games” kind of device.
        It has to be PS5, xbox Series X kind of device.

        That attracts Big name studios that make big name games.

        But VR is going DOWNHILL, when Rift S came out, many studios jumped on the bandwagon, Bethesda ported 2 games and made 2 VR centric ones, DOOM VR and Cyber Pilot.
        Ubisoft dipped their toes in VR and made that horror/mind game, forgot its name, also they made that rather popular Star Trek game
        Bunch of AAA games got ported, Borderlands 2 and maybe some others
        Then Alyx came out and everybody was happy, thinking THIS IS THE VR MOMENT, THIS IS WHEN big publishers jump to VR and they DIDN’T.
        The state of VR is SAD, its exactly like I said: You buy VR to play Indie games, like a poor kid buy 90$ Chinese mobile phone to play F2P games, BUT VR is far from 90$, its 400-500 for Quest 2 [With cable, new facial interface, bobovr strap and controllers straps]
        1000$ for Valve Index, 1200$ for HTC Pro 2 and 3000$ for that Varjo whatever its called.

        Facebook trying to release more games but they all right in the Indie AA area and the sad part is that Best Selling VR game is Port of Playstation 2 era Resident Evil 4!

        • Rezerlius Carnelius Mazretin

          Dude why do you have to be so damn extremely biased? I know you’re not much satisfied with the Oculus quest games but I am having the best time of my life on the Oculus quest 2 Which I just got for Christmas VR didn’t go downhill That is where you are 100% wrong It’s improving every year Of course there will be some VR games that are not AAA games but they are pretty damn amazing there are plenty of best-selling quest games I recently bought like fruit Ninja VR Resident Evil 4 VR beatsaber super hot VR Pavlov VR echo VR VRchat If you look into the best selling quest games category there is a lot of quest games worth buying If you really are looking for AAA VR games you’re better off with PC VR or PlayStation VR those are the only two platforms they have a pretty large library of AAA VR games Even I have tons of fun with PSVR games other than that there are some things the quest 2 does better than PSVR when it comes to room scale customization and the Oculus touch controllers has two thumbsticks That makes PS move motion controllers look inferior But other than that I like both the quest 2 and PS VR for different purposes Like for example I’m mostly purchased dictionary games that doesn’t require a thumbstick unlike the quest 2 I mostly purchase games that require a thumb stick for the better experience And that’s pretty much it So don’t worry VR gaming is evolving and 2022 will be the year when VR really shines.

          • Im always Late

            im a bit late but damn i agree

          • Totius

            I think that you have entered into this world much more recently than him. You mention Super Hot which is a great game, but it was a launching title of Oculus Rift CV1 (and probably was already playable with the dev kit). All the best games had still to come back to 2016/17.. Nobody is anymore spending money for AAA titles, the last we have seen was Alyx. Now the best thing, in my opinion, you can do with the quest 3 is playing Cyberpunk or Red Dead Redemption, but because of obvious reasons you have to spend a LOT of money and have to spend a lot of time to tweak the settings to make it work.

          • ApocalypseShadow

            The year 2022 came and went…. lol..

            It didn’t get better. We’re still struggling to get good content beyond indie games.

        • Michelle Jones

          i have rez 4i likeit! wish there was somemulti init though..

        • Totius

          Oh man, I agree so much with you. It is such a pity what is happening.. I do not understand what is going wrong. But maybe yes.. it is still too much expensive for most people. PC VR is just too expansive to be self sustainable. It is the only explanation I have. I am absolutely sure that the “old times” of Lone Echo, Wilson’s Heart, LA noire, Fallout 4 will come back, we have just to be patient, and have to spend money for playing flat to VR games. Quest 3 in the meantime has some cool things that we will enjoy like VR chat or some nice things to show to family like this cool Lego AR game!

  • mark

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  • Beginner

    I’ve ordered this system for my wife and am wondering if there are simple VR experiences (like riding a roller coaster, or flying over/around a national park), as opposed to games, shoot-’em-ups, haunted houses/monsters and sports. I probably haven’t looked through Oculus’ full catalogue, but haven’t seen much of what we’d be looking for. Thanks in advance.

    • Heather

      Yes, there are a lot of VR experiences you can have besides just playing games.

      • Beginner

        Thanks Heather – I appreciate your responding. Can you recommend some titles?

        • Heather

          Rec Room,Altspace,BigScreen and Blades and Sorcery

    • ParaLaUAZ!

      My wife resisted our son’s request for an Oculus. She was eventually won over, but didn’t really see the value in it (not a techie) until I sat her down, pulled up YouTubeVR and sent her down the canals of Venice, one of her favourite cities to visit. She had literal tears in her eyes. So do look beyond Oculus’ own store for good VR experience.

    • Funnily, those two examples you picked are some of the worst things you could put her into, especially if you don’t want her being sick. Lol

      But, there’s loads of stuff outside of that:

      I mentioned Tales From Soda Island, which are short animations found in the VR Animation player app. Those are all really good.

      There’s All the Felix and Paul stuff, which is all 360 movies (from being aboard the ISS to watching a scene from a Jurassic World movie standing inside it), and are generally some of the best of that type in VR.

      Simple stuff but really effective for the casuals imo.

    • CrusaderCaracal

      If your wife has never played VR before I strongly recommend you don’t start off with a rollercoaster experience. Ease your way into it

  • Yu

    Ok

  • your mamma

    it was a poppy ranking and my game the best agme in the world wasent in here your mammas al suck

  • All the Tales From Soda Island stuff in the VR Animation player is well worth watching.

  • Person #126438

    Sh#t list. games arnt fun or they arnt games at all. if you want fun free games just go to applabdb or download sidequest

    • JAZE

      srue but battle talent is fun the rest is terrible

  • jaze

    Im not sure about this I think this should have sidequst game. Although it has battle talent a very fun and gory game.

  • JAZE

    this is such a bad list

    • Tanix Tx3

      It’s the same list copied and reposted over the years, every time someone mention ‘free quest games’.
      They might just copy this from older articles again and again without any update check.

      • ViRGiN

        they did just that

    • Joe

      So tell us a better list instead of just being a dick? Like, I’d genuinely love to know a good list.

      • Tommy

        Most free VR games suck. I mean, there are tons of free games on PCVR but I’ve only played a handful of good ones like:
        Payday 2
        War Thunder
        DCS
        Repubilque
        The Lab (not really a game)
        Shattered Lights

    • Arno van Wingerde

      Well put all your suggestions in the comments and maybe we end up with a better list.

  • Tanix Tx3

    Why pavlov? I tried and the quest version sucks. Especially the bots are really dumb.
    Better give AimXR a try.

  • Elic

    Gorilla tag is the best VR game I hate that you didn’t include it fuck you but yeah!

    • deven b

      they did

  • Elic

    I personally think that Tanix is wrong Pavlov shack is a pretty good game

  • Elic

    I agree with JAZE this is not a good list.

  • philingreat

    Mash Me Up, free multiplayer party games!

  • Corn Bread

    Hyper Dash was recently made FREE and should be a top pick for f2p games.

  • Mam Mem

    Not forgetting “First Steps”, preinstalled on each Quest 2, its very nice. The shooter in it is one of the funniest VR experiences ever. I’ve looked for a similar full game but have found nothing. That is a gap in the marked.

  • guest

    i dont think Gorillatag is free anymore

    • Tatertot

      It is and always will be

    • Free on Quest, PC have to pay

  • Where is “The Unity Cube”?

  • TTTpig

    Gorilla tag is honestly the best game on the quest store not only is it a great experience it also has amazing content creators such as jman curly vmt Apollo and Elliot and me!

    • CrusaderCaracal

      It’s a decent game but it is certainly not the best game on the quest store

  • ViRGiN

    Recycling articles is boring.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      See ist as a regular update, it would be nice if they could highlight new suggestions, so we do not have to read the same ‘news’ over and over again.

  • impurekind

    Skybox VR should be right up there for watching movies. I think it’s better than all the other options personally.

    • That’s not free

      • impurekind

        I honestly thought it was. My memory must be bad on this one.

  • CrusaderCaracal

    Got confused as to why all of the comments on a seemingly new article were from a few months ago until I found my own. I understand it takes time to write an article, but changing out the 2 for a 3 in the title isn’t writing an article. Not good enough.

    • ViRGiN

      they did it again

  • Too bad there is no mention of the games that run in the browser on the Quest. There are some great games right on the new tab page, for free.

  • Is there a reason you never include Open Brush? Not as if it’s not a continuation of a multi award winning classic app or anything… That and the whole “community run, open source” thing… Hurumph…

  • Lance Powell

    Reposting the same list, huh?

    Please add ‘Remio’ to the social apps next time, so we know you’re trying new stuff.