Carly and the Reaperman is a unique blend of third-person platforming and VR physics puzzles. You play as both Carly, a tiny person trying to escape the underworld and return to life, and the Reaperman, a giant floating skull, and pair of skeleton hands in the sky.

Spirited Away

With minimal introduction, the game begins with Carly arriving at a spirit-inhabited subway station. She’s informed that if she can help free the spirits around her, they will help her on her journey. From this central hub world, you can enter different environments and begin exploring the game’s many puzzles.

The Reaperman, from high up in the sky, has a great view of the action. Through his eyes, Carly looks like a miniature figurine running through a living diorama. You can rotate this view by dragging the environment or with quick-turn keys on the left joystick. Like in The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets, it’s a lot of fun just to scrutinize the tiniest details of this miniature world. Like, why are there vending machines in limbo, anyways?

Managing both characters simultaneously, as you do in single-player mode, is often a fun challenge. Carly can run, jump, and operate levers, and the Reaperman can manipulate the surrounding environment, usually by moving large blocks. Carly is controlled with the right thumbstick, and Reaperman can manipulate objects with the grip buttons.

While puzzles start off simple, with Reaperman placing blocks for Carly to reach higher ledges, new twists will regularly appear. For example, some stages are set in the dark, with a movable torch so the Reaperman can light the way. In a few timed levels, Carly has to keep moving to stay ahead of a gigantic, flying, world-destroying whale.

Drag Me To Heck

In addition to solo mode, Carly and the Reaperman was designed to be entirely playable in co-op. On Quest, this means a friend can join your multiplayer game using a code and take over either Carly or the Reaperman. This requires voice chat to coordinate where blocks should go, adding to the game’s complexity. Unfortunately, co-op mode also crashed a few times during our testing.

That said, it is undeniably fun to have a new way to interact in virtual space. Talking together through a puzzle can be engaging. The Reaperman can dress up in silly hats, even though you’d rarely see it unless you play as Carly. And you can even fist-bump, which is really a must-have feature for any game like this. Cross-play is promised through a playable PC and Mac client, although we did not have a chance to try that out for this review.

Carly and the Reaperman contains a lot of levels, and many of them are quite sprawling and complex. In general, I preferred the game’s more straightforward Mario-like platforming and timing-based levels instead of the confusing riddles and mazes, which lead to us getting stuck.

The puzzles are the main draw in this game, because the story doesn’t always come across well. It’s mostly told through bits of dialogue with spirits. There doesn’t seem to be any meaningful connection between completing puzzles and freeing lost souls. So, I pushed a block into place and hit the button, and now you can remember you used to be a bird? Okay, that works for us. On to the next level.

Soul Searching

To help you find your way through the underworld, it would be nice if the game included a level select menu instead of returning you to the central hub each time. Because of this, it can be difficult to remember which sections you haven’t visited yet, and which ones you need to revisit to find 100% of the collectible fireflies.

If you’re lucky enough to have a friend who wants to play as the Reaperman to your Carly, or vice-versa, this is a solid choice for some virtual bonding. Even if you just play it solo, Carly’s journey is filled with soothing music and unusual art, along with challenging puzzles that require a lot of coordination.

This combination of console and VR gameplay styles is hardly an endless wasteland. You may not want to spend eons here, but for at least four or five hours, your soul should feel right at home.

Pass the Twinkies

You play as a new, nameless character among the original pack of survivors from the Zombieland films: Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita, and Little Rock. Looking slightly stilted and voiced mainly by soundalikes, these wisecracking companions give a decent approximation of hanging out with Woody Harrelson or Emma Stone. Woody Harrelson’s brother Brett performs Tallahassee’s voice, and Abigail Breslin reprises her role as Little Rock.

In the films, these characters thrive during the zombie apocalypse with scathing wit and gallows humor, not to mention superb zombie-shooting skills. In Headshot Fever, they don’t fight by your side, but they will provide you with an assortment of firearms and perks, comment on your overall speed, and express disappointment when you break a hot headshot streak.

The crew is holed up in a deluxe mansion as they prepare for the “Zombieland International” competition, also known as the “Nut Up Cup.” Before you can sign up for the Cup, you’ll have to visit locations around town to sharpen your zombie-hunting skills.

Always Double Tap

Each mission is blazingly fast, with a one-minute goal for killing all the undead in an area and reaching the exit along a predetermined path. The gameplay is reminiscent of light-gun classics like House of the Dead, but with a greater degree of depth once you start chaining combos.

True to Columbus’s famous “double-tap” rule, by landing two headshots in a row, you can activate a combo meter and slow down time. Each new combo rings with a satisfying electric guitar power chord. As you play, you’ll discover other clever ways to keep your combo alive, like shooting thrown objects (such as ashtrays, cups, and severed limbs) out of the air.

Although there are only eight main missions before the big finale, they can be replayed multiple times with different goals. You might have to shoot a hidden item in the background, use only a particular weapon, or beat the level with perfect aim. These mission goals will reward you with new guns, perks, and the in-game currency that reigns supreme in the post-apocalypse: rolls of toilet paper.

While the missions are rapid, they do contain additional replay value. You’ll want to revisit each scene more than once as you gain more abilities, just to check off another goal or collect more toilet paper. The developers have also indicated that virtual zombie-slaying runs could become a recurring e-sport event.  

Pants vs Zombies

The developers have hidden a few cheeky jokes into these scenes and keeping with the Zombieland movies’ dark and sometimes juvenile sense of humor. For example, a visit to eliminate your character’s undead parents reveals a kinky camera set-up pointed at their bed and a voyeur zombie lurking in the closet. Later, you’ll crash a zombie bachelorette party, complete with a gigantic fireman-stripper zombie.

This attention to detail also extends to your zombie targets. Many of the zombies in this game actually look different from each other, with a variety of clothing and faces. In many games, you’ll see the same few minions and boss zombies recycled, but Headshot Fever is more imaginative in its approach.

Zombie Kill of the Weak

Cheerful graphics, fast-paced gunplay, and generous doses of humor and personality provide a lot of excitement throughout the brief missions. 

The online leaderboards are a welcome feature. The final fight offers branching paths and a much greater degree of challenge. Still, there’s not much of an opportunity to explore this world at a slower pace or recreate any of the classic “Zombie Kills of the Week” using environmental objects or traps (besides the occasional “exploding barrels”).

While most of the point-and-shoot pistol controls work well, reloading your alternate weapons can feel imprecise. It’s not fun having a horde of zombies tear you apart because positioning your shotgun into the nebulous, chest-high reload zone didn’t register in time.

For a VR introduction to the crazed world of Zombieland: Headshot Fever delivers a fair amount of the films’ attitude and thrills. It never takes itself too seriously, and it often makes you feel like a stylish, zombie-slaying badass, cool enough to hang out with the heroes of the movies. If you like your zombie games on the lighter side, it’s easy to recommend this bloody, energetic blast of a game.

Gorn puts you into the leather sandals of an arena fighter who can wield various blades, hammers, and ranged weapons to dispatch your enemies. Fights can be accessed from a central elevator, with passages marked by the name of the gladiator boss inside.

War-Torn

Once you’re inside the arena, it’s a fight to the death against waves of foes. Grab an ax or club and swing it around, and it wobbles and bends like it’s made of rubber, or one of the looney-toon weapons from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. When your weapon connects with an opponent, you’ll often see flying teeth, eyeballs, and blood spatters, along with a sickening thud or squish. You can even pluck out an enemy’s heart and beat them to pieces with it.

The wobbly physical properties of these weapons ensure that the game can keep up with tracking your hand movements. Since your weapons have a generous amount of flexibility, you can more easily guide them around enemy shields or between armor pieces and connect solely with the squishy bits. As a result, the combat feels natural and fluid.

However, sometimes your weapons will get caught against the environment in strange ways. Blades will stretch and snap back like they’re made of taffy, and the dismembered limbs of your vanquished foes will go flying in all sorts of unexpected directions.

Bugging Out

Though it’s sometimes a bit glitchy, the combat can also be unintentionally hilarious. That’s because the loose physics extends to the gladiators you fight against. Your opponents will hop around like barely-tethered helium balloons. They’ll wave and waggle their weapons, clanging against their armor or hitting other gladiators around them. This can lead to surprising unscripted outcomes, like when they wildly swing their mace and accidentally hit another gladiator, damaging an arm or leg.

Just don’t expect as many surprises when it comes to character models. Despite wearing different types of destructible armor, your basic opponents all share the same face and body type and can get a bit dull. 

Only the bosses have completely different looks and play styles, making them the highlight of the game. One boss wears honey badgers on his arms, while another rides on a giant crab. You’ll also encounter a new type of floating, exploding enemy, but only in the final battle.

Like the enemy variety, the audio in the game is a bit disappointing. While each round is supposed to begin with a dramatic gong, it often didn’t play at all or, when it did, sounded very distant. The grunts and screams also sound generic, but it is fun when enemies growl and curse at you in a made-up language.

Thumbs Up

In terms of replay value, you can customize an endless onslaught of enemies, selecting your favorite weapons and physics settings. Giant mode, for example, makes you feel like David vs. Goliath, or perhaps Ant-Man vs. Thanos. However, without a high-score system or leaderboards, there’s not much point in replaying Gorn endlessly, especially since so many of your opponents look the same.

Despite its flaws, Gorn is a fun gladiator game for those who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty— at least, in a simulated sense. While you may not literally feel the blood of your enemies splash onto your leather sandals, Gorn does put you right up close to the violence, with all sorts of yucky dismemberments and brutal damage modeling.

Gorn’s in-your-face gore is slightly offset by the tiniest bit of cartoon humor. It’s also an interesting experiment in virtual combat physics. Take the mature rating seriously, and if you’ve got the guts, you’ll likely enjoy Gorn’s strange and satisfying combat.

Both offered ground-breaking portable technology for their time and a curated app store stuffed with notable indie games. Plus, some of the best games on each platform are not deep, console-like experiences. Instead, they focus on high replayability and reward persistent players. Until They Fall is very much in that same style, but it lacks the personality to go with its long-lasting premise.

Live, Die, Repeat

If you’ve ever played the Infinity Blade series on iOS, you might have an idea of what to expect from Until You Fall. The setup is essentially the same. You play as an unnamed swordsman, brought back to life, again and again, to fight hulking knights and glowing monsters. Earning just a bit more in-game currency each time allows you to gradually update your weapons.

Your weapons contain upgrade slots for power-ups, and can also charge up a super attack through repeated use. It’s a nice feeling to hold down the grips on each Quest controller and watch your weapons magically materialize, but they disappear as soon as you let go. You won’t be able to throw them around and interact with the physics in each environment. Clanging them together and watching the sparks fly, however, is a fun way to taunt your shambling foes.

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

With each playthrough, you’ll find yourself in the same enchanted crystal forest, with only minor variations in terms of scenery and enemies. The arenas are small, and locomotion can feel a bit disorienting, so you’ll likely rely on a limited dash function that also serves as a sneak attack.

Once you’re up close with an enemy, on-screen prompts will tell you where you need to raise and hold your weapons to block. Successful blocks will weaken your enemy’s defense meter. You can return the favor with a series of damaging combo swipes. Due to the constant on-screen prompts and meters, the swordplay feels overly busy at times, with a cluttered heads-up display that detracts from the immersion.

When you relax into Until You Fall’s familiar routine and view each encounter as a moderately physical warm-up instead of a life-and-death battle, it becomes more enjoyable. I find that it helps to think of these monsters as friendly sparring partners at the gym, who are just trying to help you get your steps and swings in for the day.

Die, Die Again

After the last enemy drops in an area, you can choose one of three random upgrades. These can build up your health meter or give you a temporary special ability, like extra damage or status effects. To really grind through the game, you’ll have to collect and spend aether, which provides permanent upgrades to your weapons.

Needless to say, this takes a long time, and you may tire of the same few environments and enemies before you can take on the game’s more challenging fights. Switching up weapons does add variety, and the random upgrades will make every playthrough feel slightly different. Some big bosses also require you to duck and weave, like a bladed version of Knockout League.

It’s Just Another Day

Until You Fall certainly has a winning design due to its weapon upgrades. Still, a small degree of charm is missing from the experience. The aforementioned Infinity Blade (a mobile game with a similar style, but certainly not made for VR) had frightfully intimidating opponents. Until You Fall’s zombie knights are just hanging out, looking sullen. 

Like Sairento VR and Ninja Legends, a few other Oculus games give you the feeling of becoming a deadly combatant, with a variety of unlockable weapons and extras. Those games also manage to present a unique and occasionally surprising game world. I’d like to see Until You Fall add more story details or atmosphere while also keeping the more successful gameplay elements intact.

There’s something special at the core of Until You Fall, especially in the way you can replay it often and progress each time. Someday, maybe a sequel or update will add more variety and depth. Until You Fall could use a bit more story, exploration, sandbox physics, and realism to make it a must-have. Still, it is undoubtedly a dash-attack in the right direction.

If you enjoy feeling afraid, Layers of Fear VR offers a few cheap thrills. Unfortunately, this version for the Oculus Quest looks terrible and is poorly suited for VR.

No Happy Little Trees

A port of a well-received PC horror game from 2016, Layers of Fear VR starts with a solid premise. You explore the mansion of a mentally anguished painter, and the house continually changes around you to reflect his state of mind. As you learn more about the painter’s past and family, the house intrudes more aggressively on your sanity.

Very quickly, you’ll learn that this house operates on dream logic. You’ll frequently walk through a door, turn around, and walk through it again to find yourself in a new location. The house’s ever-shifting architecture means that there is minimal grounding in reality. It often feels like one extended, unsettling hallucination, with very little calm to offset the constant craziness.

Without regular breathers and a chance to slowly rebuild tension between spooky rooms, the constant jump scares start to feel less effective. For example, it’s great when a painting creeps up behind you, or ghostly dolls begin to groan in the darkness. But when it happens every few seconds, you’ll learn to brace for those sudden movements and sounds.

Failing Art Class

Layers of Fear VR is an exhausting series of scare events, with some very light puzzle-solving sprinkled in. Most of the time, you’re just searching for a way out.

The game’s more successful atmospheric touches are due to quality sound design. You can expect whispers, creaks, and off-kilter lullabies— all the spooky sounds you’ll recognize from Halloween haunted houses.

But visually, the graphics in this Quest port are scary for all the wrong reasons. Muddy blobs of books and bottles clutter this nightmare hoarder house, and it’s frequently grainy and depressing to look at. The portraits, which should be sharply textured for dramatic effect, instead appear blurry and dim. Rather than madness-provoking peeling wallpaper, you’ll find yourself gliding by similar-looking beige and brown smears.

Apparently, this Quest port is a significant downgrade from the PC version. It’s disappointing that a game so heavily invested in the theme of art could miss the mark in that department.

Nauseous Quest

It gets worse. Utilizing first-person controls that have not been optimized for VR made me frequently feel nauseous while playing Layers of Fear VR.

In several rooms and hallways, the path forward only unlocks when you turn around and around. Spinning in circles, I began to associate the spooky violin strings and haunting piano melodies with real physical discomfort. I hope the developers choose to add a “teleport” travel option to cut down on the motion sickness you may feel from this half-baked PC port.

Something is also wrong with the font used in this port. The text flickers in black and white, and moving your head just slightly makes it much more difficult to read. On top of that, interacting with doors and switches feels imprecise.

Final Thoughts

Layers of Fear VR is a mediocre port on Quest. It does provide a few scary moments, a clever premise, and good sound design, however, at least on the Oculus Quest, Layers of Fear VR is also low-resolution and uncomfortable to play.

The haunted dolls and paintings occasionally made me feel spooked, but playing this poorly-designed port also made me feel sick. You’ll find better scares— and a much smoother, better game overall— in VR titles like Red Matter or Dreadhalls.

Be prepared — Trover Saves the Universe is an adult humor game from Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland. It’s full of cartoonish gore, potty talk, and a handful of deliberately whacked-out mind-f@#!s. If you’re used to this particular kind of hard, R-rated humor, you’ll be shocked and delighted in equal measure.

Doggone It

Showcasing a knowledge of gaming styles and conventions, Trover Saves the Universe starts with its own stupid-clever MacGuffin. You play as the Chairorpian, a creature who stays seated, mutely watching as the game’s strange events unfold. One day, a giant space creature called Glorkon abducts the Chairorpian’s adorable dogs and sticks them in his eye sockets. This gives Glorkon the power to combine worlds, threatening the cosmos.

Then the Chairorpian meets Trover: A purple, Meseeks-like creature armed with a lightsaber. Trover shoves special “power babies” into his eye-holes, so now you can control Trover with the joystick and buttons. He can perform jumps, attacks, and other third-person gaming basics like rolls and double-jumps. Trover also moves you through the levels, since he must be guided to a checkpoint before you can warp to him.

Dynamic Duo 

This gameplay mechanic feels totally unique, but occasionally, a little disjointed. Trover runs, jumps, and fights like any other third-person action hero. At the same time, the Chairorpian serves as your first-person camera view. Occasionally you’ll have to “pop-up” into the air to get a new view of your surroundings. Once you adjust to this unique arrangement, you can set your vantage point, then focus on the fighting and platforming, which is often varied and fun.

Later in the game, you can stack and throw objects by centering them in your view. This sometimes requires full neck motions that, while seated, didn’t feel very comfortable. However, it is satisfying to telepathically pick up a dropped javelin and send it flying at an enemy.

In porting this game from PSVR to the Oculus Quest, you’ll notice that the controls in the Chairorpian’s virtual hands bear little resemblance to the real ones you hold in yours. This occasionally makes using the controls confusing, like when a character screams at you to “use the D-pad,” which the Quest controllers do not have.

Everyone Has a Plumbus In Their Home

Trover Saves The Universe eases you into things with an increasingly weird tutorial spread over several levels. For example, instead of just handing you the pop-up ability, you have to talk to Mr. Popup, a flying, naked man with a bandage over his crotch. Why deliver instructions via text when it can be screamed at you by a freakish lunatic instead?

If you’ve ever seen Rick and Morty, especially the Interdimensional Cable episodes, you’ll be familiar with the stammering, free-wheeling style of absurd dialogue that infuses the game. Characters often seem to be making everything up as they go along. You’ll be told about a level called Shleemy World or someone named Doopy Dooper, and you’ll think, that can’t be a real thing, right? It’s nonsensical and often delightful.

And if you can’t get enough Rick and Morty, you’ll especially enjoy listening to this game’s characters yammer on and on about literally anything at all. Justin Roiland voices several main characters, and other members of the Rick and Morty cast are featured as well. Hours of rambling dialogue are included in the game, so if you’re in no hurry, it’s great to just sit and listen to the downright bonkers enemies and NPCs.

After completing the main game, which took me about four hours, you can replay each environment and search for hidden power babies, which increase Trover’s life bar. You’ll also find a bonus mission called Important Cosmic Jobs, which lets you solve puzzles in Trover’s banal office workplace. These extras are enjoyable, and Trover feels like a decent value at $30. However, most of that value comes from listening to an excessive amount of dialogue, so make sure you’re at least slightly familiar with Roiland’s style of humor before purchasing.

Final Thoughts

For all the random absurdity in Trover Saves the Universe, it seems unlikely that it would arrive at any kind of serious point, but sometimes, it does. For example, Trover shares his feelings about “spaceism,” a sort of racial tension between alien species. It’s either one of the main arcs of the story, or a random aside tossed in during the game’s marathon dialogue recording sessions. It’s a little hard to tell amongst all of the gross, delightful nonsense.

Space Invaders

Titans of Space PLUS is an elegant guided tour of our solar system, stopping at planets, moons, and a few major asteroids. You are placed in a miniature spacecraft, with large windows that let you take in some epic views, accompanied by a dramatic orchestral score. At each stop, you can view some key facts, apply map layovers showing the terrain, and spin the globes or hold them in your hand for a closer look.

A shortened, 20-minute tour focuses mainly on planets, while the longer 35-minute tour hits all the stops. After viewing the solar system, you’ll visit a few giant stars that are thousands of times larger than our Sun. Or more precisely, those giant stars will come to you, and you can get a glimpse of what our solar system would look like with a blue supergiant like Rigel at the center.

Keep Your Hands Inside The Tour Bus

Some of the stops on this tour are more impressive than others. When you reach Saturn, for example, you can actually exit the craft and jet around the rings in zero-G, which is a truly inspiring feeling. Often, though, you’ll be patiently reading scientific bullet points, like you’re stuck inside an epic, immersive PowerPoint presentation.

Titans of Space PLUS is a lot like an enjoyable IMAX movie at a museum. It’s educational, a bit jaw-dropping at times, and worth the price of admission. Once you’re done with the tour, though, there’s nothing else to do except take the ride again.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy

If you’re looking for a little more range in your space apps, consider purchasing Star Chart as well, which also shows you constellations and some VR scenes set on Mars and the Moon. Like Titans of Space PLUS, Star Chart has a guided tour of the solar system called the Orrey, but it’s not as majestic or insightful as Titans’ experience.

The two apps together, though, are a decent first attempt at a comprehensive, interactive space tour that both educates and enthralls. Neither app has it all on its own, so any potential armchair astronomer might consider purchasing both.

Ride the Snake

Taking a cue from futuristic racers like F-Zero, Radial-G is coated in candy-colored neon. Many of the game’s electric visuals are cel-shaded as well, which makes the ships look pretty impressive.

Once you spin up your engines, you’re propelled through one of nine tracks. Each of these tracks resembles a plate of spaghetti that has been thrown in the air. While each track varies slightly in terms of ramps and rotating gates, they all look and feel incredibly similar.

The soundtrack is similarly repetitive and, frankly, terrible. It’s a tuneless crash of techno bass and drums, and even fans of electronic dance music will probably find it grating. This is not a soundtrack that demands you stream it on Spotify or Youtube when you’re not playing the game.

Warning: Do Not Point Towards Face

To reach the finish line, you have to hold down the accelerator the whole time, and I didn’t notice any advantage to braking into turns. Compare this to the essential drift mechanics in Death Lap, the most recent Oculus Quest racing game. In Radial-G, you can also boost with the A button, but the boost that shares a meter with your shield depletes quickly, and can rarely be refilled. As a result, you’ll often hear an in-cockpit voice announcing “warning!”

Warning, indeed. The senseless, clanging cacophony of the combined visuals, gameplay, and soundtrack make Radial-G one of the least enjoyable VR games I’ve played. Even if you can get past all the noise (visually and aurally), the on-track racing gameplay leaves a lot to be desired.

Beyond hitting every green boost, there’s little strategy involved in winning each match. In career mode, there are a few variations on the same theme— timed laps, one-on-one races, and elimination mode, for example— but it all comes down to laying on the gas, dodging a bit to the side, and trying not to lose your lunch.

Last Place

All of Radial-G’s shortcomings make me appreciate even more the lengths that Death Lap went through to make the game more entertaining and accessible. Radial-G completely lacks the charm or originality of Death Lap in its vehicles and tracks, and Death Lap offers online multiplayer while Radial-G languishes in bots-only offline mode.

Death Lap also has comfort settings to reduce the whiplash you’ll get from driving quickly in first-person VR, but Radial-G’s gut-churning intensity seems to be its main selling point. If there was a way for Radial-G’s levels to put more emphasis on big, open expanses of…track, instead of tight turns and spirals, it might improve the comfort factor.

One gameplay mode in Radial-G has some potential, and that’s combat. While not every race has weapons, the ones that do give you an additional challenge beyond steering. Drones will drop mines in front of you, and you’ll occasionally get to blast a competitor who is speeding just ahead. But again, compared to the explosive melee of Death Lap, Radial-G is pretty tame, and even your vehicle’s destruction is just an anticlimactic fade to black.

Even if you’re a hardcore fan of F-Zero or other futuristic racing games, it’s hard to find much to enjoy about Radial-G. At best, it’s unoriginal and simplistic, and at worst, it’s physically uncomfortable to play. Without some significant improvements, I want off this wild ride as soon as possible.

These two competing philosophies are personified (or perhaps, “roboto-morphized”) as Efficiency Bot and Vacation Bot, the two robo-hosts of Vacation Simulator. One will try to speed you through the experience with data and graphs, showing you the optimal way to enjoy a vacation. The other will urge you to patiently explore, contemplate, and find satisfaction on your own. For most players, neither approach is entirely satisfactory on its own, so Vacation Simulator strikes just the right balance between guided activities and free-form fun.

Welcome To Vacation Island

Like its predecessor Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator takes place in a cartoonish future. You are the only remaining human, and robots have attempted to replicate human pastimes. After working yourself ragged serving sandwiches and fixing cars in the first game, you can enjoy a nice virtual vacation with the same offbeat sense of humor.

Vacation Simulator is a luxury-class upgrade, making it feel much more profound and much richer than the first game. Job Simulator confined you to small workspaces and had every robot customer fly to you. In Vacation Simulator, however, you get to freely explore a large play area comprised of one central hub and three distinct vacation zones.

Making Memories

Across a virtual beach, forest, and mountain, you’ll encounter plenty of bots who will entertain you with delightful banter and also give you tasks to complete, called “memories.” For example, building a sandcastle on the beach (in the form of a tricky 3-D puzzle) or serving hot dogs slathered in coolant will earn you the memories needed to unlock new activities. Some of these activities repeat between zones, like collecting bugs or shooting targets, but most of them are unique to each zone and are exceedingly clever.

One of the most surprisingly satisfying activities in the game is taking photos. Using an in-game camera, you can snap a pic of anything and bring it to a Photo-Bot. If you capture the right set of images, you’ll earn more memories.

You can even take selfies and pose with a wacky wardrobe that includes furry ears, rainbow sunglasses, a pirate hat, and much more. Removing the camera from your virtual backpack by reaching behind you feels like a genuine vacation moment. This activity should occupy you long after you’ve unlocked all the zones and reached the end credits.

Other standout memories I have of Vacation Simulator include unlocking sunken pirate treasure, skipping rocks on the lake, assembling a custom jigsaw puzzle in a cozy cabin, and discovering the abominable snow-bot. Collecting memories is a sure-fire motivator, and I was generally in awe of how inviting, accessible, and interactive this virtual world can be.

Not every memory you collect is perfect, though. I was disappointed to find that skiing down the mountain is simulated by a stationary mini-game set on a conveyor belt. Mountain climbing is similarly reduced to a single rotating climb-wall, though the shape-or-color matching needed to find your next grip is cleverly done. Knitting and painting are equally lacking, but in a huge collection of activities like this, a few are bound to let you down.

Frequent Flyer Miles

Numerous achievements and collectibles (like mini-games for an in-game console), plus multiple versions of the trickiest puzzles, mean that Vacation Simulator has some of the best replay value of any game in the Oculus Quest store. Short of Republique VR, which also has an overwhelming amount of in-game stuff to find and collect, I’m hard-pressed to think of any another game on Quest that so thoroughly rewards persistence and paying attention.

Vacation Simulator isn’t just deep— it’s also intelligent and charming. Every robot you encounter has a distinct personality, from the enthusiastic bird-watching bot to the so-over-it, bored-of-nature camper bot. With a friendly wave, you can speak to any of those bots, and their hilarious dialogue is punctuated by robotic lingo and error messages.

Like any good vacation, you’ll be sad when Vacation Simulator is finally over, but because of the enormous amount of activities, you’ll want to check in over and over again. Seeking out every last assigned photo, restaurant order, and puzzle solution will probably take most players at least 4-5 hours. It’s a considerable amount of quality content at a reasonable price.

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

Vacation Simulator’s visual style is simple, and the music is relatively forgettable. But more importantly, it’s a rare game on any console that can combine a strong concept with such wildly varied gameplay. These games are even rarer on the Oculus Quest, which tends to offer quick, flashy experiences that are a bit lacking in overall content and replay value.

Whatever kind of bot you are, efficient or patient, Vacation Simulator offers lots of wonderful activities for you to do. You won’t have to choose between your head and your heart, because Vacation Simulator satisfies both.

Initially designed as a free VR experience, Waltz of the Wizard places you in the workshop of a sorcerer whose walls are adorned with mysterious objects and art. Flasks, tomes, and skulls are crammed into every available inch of shelving. One of the skulls even speaks to you in verse, to provide you with some gentle guidance. A few of the objects have magical properties, like a genie’s lamp you can rub, or a mounted demon head that shoots fireballs.

Spell Check

Two objects in the room will command most of your attention: A cauldron in the center of your table with a few plates of ingredients, and a small xylophone with accompanying mallets.

To mix up potions, you can throw ingredients into the bubbling brew and create one of twelve spells. Some of these potions will let you make objects grow, shrink, fly around the room, or morph into delightful frogs and butterflies. It’s enjoyable for a few minutes, but once you’ve mixed all twelve combinations, the fun quickly goes “poof.”

The xylophone also holds a few brief secrets. By playing a short tune found on nearby glass balls, you can open a portal into another scene. These are all terribly uneventful and don’t produce much of a “wow” factor. One scene is set on a suspended bridge, but falling is not a concern, so it’s not even as impressive as a random VR Youtube video. Another teleports you in front of a tribunal of creepy, towering shadows. Still, compared to a game like Virtual Virtual Reality, it’s just not very intimidating.

One Minotaur Short of a Labyrinth

The one scene you can travel to that actually contains some worthwhile activity is the game’s labyrinth. Hinting at the possibility of an actual game, and not just an interactive experience, the labyrinth arms you with swords, fireballs, or crossbows, then sends you on a mini-mission to light three orbs and unlock a new magical artifact.

Protecting this treasure in the maze are undead knights with fiery skulls and a handful of traps like spiked walls and pressure plates. This level is an actual game, albeit a short one. I found myself thinking that this is what Dreadhalls would be like if you could actually defend yourself against the dark arts. I wish (maybe using that genie’s lamp) that the rest of the game was like this, and that you actually had to go out in the larger world to collect your room full of mystical treasures.

The Wizard of Flaws

Without more quests to guide you, Waltz of the Wizard: Extended Edition is a lonely, dull experience. You’re mostly limited to a room full of lightly-interactive objects, without much in the way of context. The cauldron allows for very little experimentation. Instead of blowing you away with the limitless possibilities of magic, the whole thing feels quite solitary.

Instead of an antisocial Saruman, holed up in your tower, Waltz of the Wizard should have let you roam the world like Gandalf, performing great feats and participating in epic battles. As a tech demo, Waltz of the Wizard is adequate, but it’s far from deserving of a true sorcerer’s moniker, like “The Great” or “The Magnificent.”